OFN Buys Dark Fibre Across Iraq to Link Its Gulf Cable to Europe

OFN, Ooredoo Group’s international connectivity arm, signed a dark fibre deal with Iraq’s iQ Networks on October 7, buying multiple fibre pairs to carry transit traffic overland across the country.

The agreement extends OFN’s separate landing arrangement with the Iraqi Telecommunications and Post Company for the Fibre in Gulf subsea system, which OFN is building as the largest undersea cable ever laid in the Gulf Cooperation Council region. FIG is designed for up to 720 Tbps across 24 fibre pairs and will link Qatar, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq in a single Gulf loop. At the Iraqi landing, the dark fibre pairs carry traffic north toward Türkiye and on to Europe, handing wholesale customers a land alternative to sea-only paths.

“This agreement marks the next phase of a disciplined, multi-stage infrastructure programme,” said Khalid Hassan Al-Hammadi, chief executive of OFN.

Asoz Rashid, group chief executive of iQ Group, said the pairing of Iraq’s location with the FIG system could establish “the primary route linking Asia, the Gulf and Europe.” Iraq’s Ministry of Communications attended the signing in Doha, and the work remains subject to regulatory and governmental approvals.

TeleGeography puts the average annual spend on new submarine cable construction at more than $2 billion over the past nine years, and international internet bandwidth passed 2,259 Tbps in September 2026. iQ Networks says traffic on its Silk Route network, which crossed 1 Tbps in 2024, keeps climbing as AI and cloud providers seek new routes between the Gulf and Europe.