The ViaTunisia submarine cable, linking Marseille and Bizerte, has officially entered service. The cable was commissioned by Orange, the French multinational telecommunications operator, marking the completion of the project and the start of commercial operations for this new telecommunications link between Southern Europe and North Africa.
The cable was developed as an open point-to-point system with an expected operational lifespan of 25 years.
Technically, the cable is directly connected to Orange’s network infrastructure in Marseille through a redundant metropolitan fiber-optic loop linking the city’s data centers.
This connection ensures the distribution of international capacity to European networks and creates an additional link between North Africa and Europe.
Construction of the system involved hydrographic surveys, equipment testing, cable loading, submarine installation, onshore landings, and final integration into the network.
The undersea installation works were carried out by the cable-laying vessels Sophie Germain of Orange Marine and Teliri of Elettra TLC. Elettra TLC coordinated the maritime operations, while Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) supplied the system design and transmission equipment.
Quoted by W.Media, Orange Wholesale CEO Michaël Trabbia said “The ViaTunisia segment between Marseille and Bizerte is now operational. This new segment of the Medusa system, provides a direct, secure, and resilient route between Europe and North Africa, with enhanced access to the digital hub of Marseille and its interconnection capabilities to Europe.”
Co-financed by the European Union, ViaTunisia addresses the concrete challenge of supporting growing usage, securing data flows, and increasing routing options in a strategic area.
The project received funding from the European Union through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF Digital) program. Under a grant agreement signed in December 2022, the EU covered 30 percent of the project’s construction and management costs.
Project stakeholders said the new cable increases available connectivity options in the region and provides an alternative path for traffic in the event of disruptions affecting existing subsea infrastructure. The route is intended to support growing demand for international data capacity driven by digital services, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence applications.
A “real step forward” for Africa
Getting a cable to Africa’s shores does not automatically improve internet access for businesses and everyday users. Countries still need terrestrial fiber, local data centers, and affordable last-mile infrastructure to carry that capacity inland. As one industry expert quoted in that piece put it, “We have hundreds of terabits offshore, but we struggle to get one terabit around Nigeria.”
Africa is getting more international bandwidth, and faster than at any point in its digital history. ViaTunisia going live is a real step forward, especially for North Africa, a region historically underserved by subsea capacity relative to the continent’s west and east coasts.
Whether that capacity reaches the people and businesses that need it most remains the harder question.
