The world’s first high capacity undersea broadband cable system to link all major Southeast Asian nations to Africa and Europe via the Middle East is planned to be completed by 2016.

Seventeen global operators have this week inked an agreement to build and maintain submarine broadband cable Asia Africa Europe-1 (AAE-1).

The work is to be carried out by the AAE-1 consortium, which consists of members such as Saudi Arabian telecom firm Mobily, Telecom Egypt and China Unicom.

The submarine cable is planned to extend a distance of 25,000 km, stretching from Hong Kong to France, and offer more than 40 terabits.

North African nations Egypt and Djibouti are to connect to the cable, which is to also have touch points in Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia , Oman, the United Arab Emirates , Qatar, Yemen , Greece and Italy.