Qatar is planning a new overland data-cable corridor to Europe, joining regional efforts to find alternatives to the Red Sea’s vulnerable subsea routes.
The country’s biggest telecom company Ooredoo will invest more than $500 million in fiber running from Oman through Iraq and Türkiye into Europe, a path it says will deliver faster connections.
The Gulf’s artificial intelligence ambitions are driving such infrastructure spending.
Saudi Arabia and Syria are in talks on a separate $500 million link that would connect the kingdom to Europe. That project will help turn Saudi data centers into regional compute hubs, offering redundancy to the vulnerable Red Sea chokepoint that dominates global internet flows.