2Africa Pearls deployment on hold as ASN cites force majeure: report

Details: John Tanner; Category: Optical & Fixed Networks; 16 March 2026; 7002 views

Work on the Middle Eastern segment of the 2Africa Pearls subsea cable system has reportedly stopped due to the war between the US, Israel and Iran as Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) says it’s unsafe to continue operations.

The 2Africa Pearls system – which was first announced in 2021 – is designed as an extension of the broader 2Africa system to connect Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia.

However, the segment connecting Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq runs via the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. The strait is now a focal point of the US-Israel-Iran conflict as Iranian forces – which control the strait – have been attacking tankers and ships belonging to the US and its allies, which has had a major impact on global oil prices.

According to a report from Bloomberg on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter, ASN has sent force majeure notices to customers saying that it’s too dangerous to continue cable deployment operations in the region. ASN said its cable installation ship in the Persian Gulf is currently stranded in the port of Dammam in Saudi Arabia.

Work on the core build for the 2Africa system looping the African continent was completed earlier this year. Bloomberg reports that while much of the 2Africa Pearls extension has already been deployed, some of the landing stations haven’t been connected yet. 2Africa Pearls was slated to be ready for service sometime this year.

Backers for 2Africa and 2Africa Pearls include China Mobile International, Meta, Bayobab, Orange, stc’s center 3, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC.

TeleGeography analyst Alan Mauldin told Bloomberg that new subsea cable projects that also run through the Persian Gulf – such as the SEA-ME-WE 6 club cable and Ooredoo’s Fibre In Gulf (FIG) cable – have also been put on hold because of the war.

On the other side of the Arabian peninsula, the Red Sea – a popular corridor for subsea cable projects looking to create more internet capacity routes from Europe and the Middle East to Africa, India and Southeast Asia – has also proven highly vulnerable, with numerous cable breaks and outages reported throughout 2025.

In November 2025, Bloomberg reported that that work on the segment of 2Africa that runs through the Red Sea had been paused, partly due to permit issues, but also because of attacks on ships by Iran-backed Houthis. The same report said the Google-backed Blue-Raman cable had also temporarily stopped work for similar reasons.