Israel will build fiber-optic links between Europe, Asia, the Mediterranean and the Red Sea

CTOnews.com, June 18 (Xinhua)-- Israel's Ministry of Finance said on Sunday that it would build a 254km optical fiber line between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, creating a continuous communication link between Europe, the Gulf states and Asia.

According to Tuyuan Pixabay, the Israeli state-owned energy group EAPC will build the cable along an oil pipeline it operates between the Mediterranean port of Ashkelon and Eilat in the northern Red Sea.

Any telecom company licensed in Israel can use the line and will be connected to undersea cables from Europe, Asia and the Middle East, the department said in a statement.

When CTOnews.com looked at the information, Israel said last year that it was considering shutting down its old copper wire network and transferring all communications services to the newer optical infrastructure.

It is reported that the deployment of Israel's high-speed Internet network has been relatively slow. Israel ranked 67th out of 224 countries in terms of Internet speeds in 2021, according to the Cable report. The data show that Israel's average download speed is 34.97 megabits per second, higher than the global average of 28.69 megabits per second, but lower than about 107 megabits per second in the Netherlands, 97.61 megabits per second in Singapore and 92.42 megabits per second in the United States. Israeli telecommunications companies claim that the high cost of deploying fiber-optic networks has led to such delays, especially outside central Israel.