The data highway is being redrawn in the desert
More than 90% of Europe–Asia data and telecommunications traffic flows through Egypt and the subsea cable corridors converging at the Red Sea and Suez Canal region, according to research by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That concentration is now a liability.
Houthi attacks have effectively halted subsea cable construction in the Red Sea since 2024, stalling projects from tech heavyweights Google and Meta. The disruption has handed an opening to Gulf players willing to build around the problem — literally.
Qatar's Ooredoo Group is moving fastest. Its Fibre in the Gulf (FIG) subsea cable system, scheduled for completion in late 2027, will be the largest ever built in the GCC. Ooredoo is investing over $500 million in the system, which will span almost 2,000 kilometres and deliver planned capacity of up to 720 terabits per second.
'FIG will be the first cable connecting Asia to Europe, but completely circumventing both the Suez Canal and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and running from Oman through Iraq and Turkey into Europe,' Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, CEO of Ooredoo Group, told Fortune.
Fakhroo acknowledged that the U.S.-Iran war has added complications. 'The war has added complications in terms of logistics and supply chains,' he said. 'Certain markets, such as Iraq, have been somewhat put on hold or delayed.' The Strait of Hormuz has blocked cable-laying ships, forcing Ooredoo to pivot: the company is accelerating land-based infrastructure investment and purchasing cables while continuing seabed surveys in accessible areas.
The demand case is not in dispute. 'There hasn't been any new capacity built in the last five to seven years due to a number of reasons, including geopolitical events,' Fakhroo said. 'And yet, every year, these data flows increase by about 30%.'
Ooredoo's ambitions extend beyond construction. The company wants to own and control the full stack — from subsea cables to landing stations to terrestrial fiber. In May, it announced a partnership with du to land the FIG system in the UAE and advanced construction of landing infrastructure in Qatar and Iraq.
It is also working with Saudi Telecom Company on the Saudi Oman Network Infrastructure Corridor (Sonic), a terrestrial fiber-optic network spanning 1,931 kilometers through desert terrain. Announced in February of last year, Sonic is scheduled for completion within 24 months. The corridor runs from cable landing stations in Jeddah through primary data center clusters in Riyadh and Muscat, extending toward the southeastern border with Oman — a 'Digital Bridge' across the Arabian Peninsula.
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The numbers tell a straightforward story: a 30% annual increase in data demand colliding with zero new capacity built in half a decade is not a policy problem — it is a capital opportunity. Ooredoo is pricing that opportunity at over $500 million and betting that sovereign AI ambitions in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar will generate the anchor demand to justify the build.
For Washington, the strategic read matters as much as the commercial one. A data corridor that runs from Oman through Iraq and Turkey — entirely outside Egyptian and Suez chokepoints — reshapes who controls the information backbone between Asia and Europe. Capital rewards clear rules and stable jurisdictions; the Gulf states are offering both. The market has already voted: the race to own the data highways is on, and the Gulf is not waiting for Brussels or Beijing to set the terms.
