An agreement has been reached for the installation of a submarine communications cable system (Quantum Cable) to connect Greece, Cyprus and Israel. It will run parallel to the EuroAsia Interconnector, planned to link the power grids of the three countries.

It has just been revealed that a Memorandum of Cooperation was signed last week in Nicosia between Quantum Cable and a leading global sector player based in the US for the communications cable system’s installation.

This subsea ultra-fast cable system will be installed at a depth of more than 3,000 meters. Its overall development cost is expected to reach approximately 200 million dollars and will be undertaken by the Quantum Cable firm.

Nasos Ktorides, who heads both Quantum Cable and the EuroAsia Interconnector consortium, formed to develop a 2,000-MW electricity interconnection, noted that the Quantum Cable submarine communications cable system will offer considerable capacity to handle tens of millions of concurrent high-resolution teleconferences between Asia and Europe.

A simultaneous launch for the two projects is being planned, which would greatly reduce the development costs of both.

Ktorides noted that the fiber-optic cable connection will also play a supportive role for the growing demand in high-speed connections, Cloud, data center and electronic services between Asia and Europe.

Last June, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his Israeli and Cypriot counterparts, Benjamin Netanyahu and Nicos Anastasiades, respectively, agreed to support the development of the undersea cable, whose broader scale is seen as a vital link between Europe, the Middle East and Asia.