The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat has witnessed the ceremony of signing a transit agreement between Telecom Egypt (TE), Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) and PCCW Global, a leading telecommunications provider in Hong Kong. The agreement was signed in the framework of the Belt and Road Digital Economy International Cooperation Initiative, during the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, held in the Chinese capital, Beijing, attended by President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and a number of government heads of about 37 countries.
Under the agreement, PEACE cable will cross Egypt through various new terrestrial routes between the two landing stations in Zaafarana and Abu Talat, where TE will provide the cable with the state of the art landing facilities. The total value of this agreement is estimated at US$ 45 million over the lifetime of the cable. PEACE cable is a 12,000 km submarine cable system with landing points in Pakistan, Djibouti, Egypt, Kenya and France.
Talaat also witnessed the signing ceremony of a Letter of Intent (LoI) between TE, PEACE and its parent company Hengtong Optic Electric co., one of the Chinese giants in the field of industry and technology. PEACE will provide another transit route in Egypt to accommodate the growing demand of traffic to Europe with a total value of $ 20 million.
Under the LoI, Hingtung will provide Telecom Egypt with fiber optic cables at competitive prices to be used in implementing TE strategic plan to cover the whole country with optical fibers. The agreement to execute the LoI is expected to be finalized within the next two months.
In addition, Talaat witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between TE and Huawei to cooperate in the field of advanced mobile networks to upgrade and develop TE networks and services provided to customers. In this context, TE and Huawei will conduct a number of technical experiments.
TE Managing Director and CEO Adel Hamed has signed the agreements.
