Ooredoo Group's international connectivity arm OFN will buy multiple dark fibre pairs from Iraqi infrastructure provider iQ Networks to carry traffic from its Fibre In Gulf (FIG) subsea cable across Iraq and into Turkey, the company announced on Wednesday.

The deal creates a terrestrial corridor linking FIG's landing point in Iraq to overland routes toward Turkey and, ultimately, Europe. It follows a landing agreement Ooredoo signed with Iraqi Telecommunications and Post Company (ITPC) in March 2025, which secured the cable's physical entry point into the country.

What is the FIG cable?

Ooredoo first revealed the FIG system in January 2025. The subsea cable aims to connect all six Gulf Cooperation Council states — Qatar, the UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — plus Iraq, with 720 Tbps of capacity across 24 fibre pairs.

OFN says the capacity targets sustained demand from hyperscalers, cloud providers, AI platforms and data centre operators — a customer set that now drives most new subsea investment in the region.

Why does route diversity matter?

The iQ Networks agreement adds a second geographical leg to FIG's reach. Combined with the ITPC landing deal, the terrestrial corridor gives international customers an alternative path for data traffic between the Gulf and Europe, rather than relying on existing routes.

OFN CEO Khalid Hassan Al-Hammadi said the project will strengthen route diversity and let customers scale transmission capacity to their own requirements.

"By bringing together FIG's subsea capacity and iQ Networks' terrestrial infrastructure, we are advancing a more integrated and resilient connectivity proposition for international customers," he said in a statement.

Commercial claims from both operators frame Iraq as the beneficiary. iQ Group CEO Asoz Rashid argued the deal supports Iraq's ambition to become a strategic regional hub for international data transit and to capture greater value from traffic crossing its territory.

"The sheer scale of this collaboration with OFN reinforces Iraq's position as a key gateway for international connectivity," Rashid said. "By combining Iraq's strategic location and iQ's leading terrestrial infrastructure with the scale of the FIG subsea system, we have an opportunity to establish the primary route linking Asia, the Gulf and Europe."

Whether the corridor becomes the primary Asia–Gulf–Europe route, as Rashid suggests, will depend on pricing, latency performance and uptake relative to established alternatives through Egypt and the Red Sea. The companies' statements are positioning; the contracts and capacity commitments will decide.

What happens next?

The plan remains subject to regulatory and governmental approvals, as well as any other required approvals, both companies noted. No timeline for the terrestrial link's activation, and no financial terms, were disclosed.

With FIG announced in January 2025, the ITPC landing agreement signed in March 2025 and the iQ dark fibre deal now in place, Ooredoo has assembled the main building blocks for a Gulf-to-Europe corridor — pending the approvals that will determine when traffic actually flows.