Ethio Telecom, Djibouti Telecom and Sudatel Advance Horizon Cross-Border Fiber Project
It is designed to provide global carriers and hyperscalers with an alternative low-latency route for subsea cable traffic across the Red Sea, connecting cable landing stations in Djibouti and Port Sudan through Ethiopia.
Ethio telecom , in partnership with Djibouti Telecom and Sudatel Group , has advanced the pre-commercialisation phase of the Horizon Cross-Border Terrestrial Fiber Initiative, following a high-level stakeholders’ workshop held in Addis Ababa.
The initiative is being developed as a secure terrestrial fiber corridor linking Djibouti, Ethiopia and Sudan. It is designed to provide global carriers and hyperscalers with an alternative low-latency route for subsea cable traffic across the Red Sea, connecting cable landing stations in Djibouti and Port Sudan through Ethiopia.
The workshop brought together technology and connectivity companies to discuss the commercial and technical requirements of the high-capacity corridor. Network architecture expertise for the project includes contributions from Nokia, Ciena and BringCom, while participants included Google, Meta through HIPConsult, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Airtel Africa, Bayobab, WIOCC, center3, Saudi Vision and China Mobile International.
According to Ethio telecom, participating global operators and technology companies expressed interest in leveraging and monetising the Horizon corridor’s multi-terabit capacity, signalling potential demand for the regional infrastructure.
The Horizon initiative is jointly being developed by Ethio telecom, Djibouti Telecom and Sudatel Group. Beyond data transport, the project is expected to support colocation and hosting services, with landing access in both Djibouti and Sudan.
The fiber corridor is designed around a protected and redundant architecture aimed at improving network resilience and performance. Its infrastructure is intended to support growing digital workloads, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence, fintech, e-commerce and digital content delivery.
The partners say the initiative represents a broader effort by African telecom operators to combine infrastructure, technical expertise and regional connectivity to strengthen cross-border digital infrastructure and improve the continent’s links to global networks.
