Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (Cyta) and Syrian Telecommunication Establishment (STE) have signed an agreement to build an alternative Cyprus-Syria high speed submarine cable under the provisional name ‘Alasiya’. A feasibility study for the building of the new cable is to be completed within three months, whilst the two telcos also came to agreements on a strategy for providing capacity to Europe as well as a framework for international telephony termination rates between their two networks.
In December 2008 CommsUpdate reported that Cyta and STE had agreed to initiate feasibility studies for establishing a second undersea fibre-optic link between their countries, alongside an agreement to increase internet capacity by upgrading the existing UGARIT submarine cable link between Tartous in Syria and Pentaskhinos in Cyprus. The 239km UGARIT cable launched operations in 1995, and its design transmission capacity is limited to 622Mbps.