Omantel, the sultanate’s leading provider of integrated telecommunication services, has joined in a consortium with several East African telecommunication service providers to lay the Gulf to Africa (G2A) undersea fibre-optic cable, which is set to revolutionise connectivity from Oman to East Africa, including Ethiopia and Somalia. The G2A undersea cable represents the first phase of Omantel’s expansion eastwards into the African continent, providing cable connectivity to the Middle East, Asia and Europe and transforming Oman into a communications hub in the Middle East, Omantel said in a press release. The state of the art cable system, scheduled for completion by the end of 2016, will comprise a 1,500km subsea segment and a 1,500km terrestrial segment with a capacity 20Tbits of capacity with the latest 100G technology. (Muscat Daily)