This development represents a complementary measure to the undersea 2Africa Pearls cable network, enabling seamless overland continuity of data flow between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. It reinforces the physical resilience and capacity of the 2Africa system, supporting more robust connectivity across the region.
center3, a subsidiary of stc Group, plays a pivotal role in hosting carrier-neutral data centres, interconnection points, and submarine cable systems, as part of stc’s broader digital infrastructure strategy. Through this new initiative, centre3 and stc Bahrain are building on the existing undersea framework and extending its reach via land, thus enriching the connectivity ecosystem across land and sea.
The 2Africa project itself—spanning about 45,000 km and designed to deliver 180 Tbps—remains the backbone of global connectivity, reaching into Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and beyond. The new terrestrial segment is designed to bolster that by providing direct routing and redundancy to internal networks within the Gulf region.
Officials from both partners have underscored the strategic nature of this development. While no public statements have yet been released, this terrestrial corridor aligns closely with Gulf nations’ ambitions to reinforce their positions as regional digital hubs, elevating resilience and capacity for emerging sectors such as cloud services, content delivery networks, and AI-driven platforms.
This ground link could afford multiple tangible benefits: it reduces single-path dependency, enhances data transfer speed with potential lower latency, and augments security by offering alternate routing during undersea cable maintenance or disruption. Linking the Gulf to the Red Sea overland also aligns with national digital strategies, particularly Bahrain’s Economic Vision 2030, which emphasises robust ICT infrastructure as a foundation for economic diversification.
center3, launched in October 2022, has aggressively expanded its digital footprint—already managing multiple submarine cables and data centres across the Middle East, positioning Saudi Arabia as an emerging internet exchange hub between Asia, Africa and Europe. This terrestrial link further underscores that ambition, integrating Bahrain into that broader regional architecture.
On the infrastructure side, this move suggests both companies are pursuing a multi-modal network design, blending submarine and terrestrial assets. The ambition is clear: to deliver seamless, high-capacity connectivity that supports growing digital demands, future-proofs network reliability, and caters to both enterprise users and hyperscalers.
With the 2Africa Pearls submarine cable now landed successfully in Bahrain and fully operational, the terrestrial interconnection promises to knit together the Gulf’s digital infrastructure fabric more closely than ever before.
As this terrestrial route develops, its impact will likely be felt across multiple sectors—from financial services, healthcare and smart city platforms, to entertainment streaming and IoT applications—all of which rely on resilient, high-speed networks.
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