CAIRO: Telecom Egypt began its TE-North cable system across this week across the Mediterranean. The Telecom Egypt cable network, that will stretch to over 3,600 kilometers and will be using Alcatel-Lucent's most recent technology available, a statement from the company said. The cable that will link the area of Abu-Talat in Egypt to Marseilles in France, and will be the first network in the Mediterranean to operate at 40 gigabytes per second. The new network will also extend a branch to Cyprus. Alcatel-Lucent employed the latest 1620 Light Manager product for the upgrade. The new technology significantly bolsters the system s original design capacity from 10 terabits a second to more 20 terabits a second. This will help Egypt keep up with the growing demand, will improve the service efficiency toward global operators. Mohamed Elnawawy, senior vice president at Telecom Egypt, said in a statement from the company that “Western peering points meet newer eastern peering points in Egypt. The TE-North upgrade presents an enhanced cost point, sheer capacity levels and more resilience which presents the IP cloud with another reason for Egypt being a natural centre for global IP peering and transit.” BM