Iran wants Big Tech to pay fines for undersea internet cables in the Strait of Hormuz

“Allies have to make a choice: pay the fine and accept Iran’s concession on the Middle East Gulf’s underwater activities, or accept that future mistakes can be canceled forever,” he said. Windynaval intelligence company, in a blog post. “A single transoceanic cable costs between $300 million and $1 billion to operate. The expected cost of Iran’s defense costs, from Tehran’s point of view, is set to be very low.”

The Strait of Hormuz has been a no-go zone for shipping since the conflict began earlier this year – and new cable projects have also been put on hold. In March, French state-owned Alcatel Submarine Networks informed clients that it could not fulfill ongoing contracts because one of its large cable-laying vessels ran aground near Saudi Arabia, according to Bloomberg. This led to the suspension of the Meta-backed undersea cable project aimed at expanding internet services across Africa.

The colored lines show the submarine cable routes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Going on land

All this has encouraged the efforts of the US and Gulf technology companies to develop land routes for internet cables that pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to The Whole World. But the independent projects carried out by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates represent competition rather than regional integration—and land projects may face their own political challenges with strategies planned across countries such as Syria, Iraq, Sudan, and Ethiopia.

Many of the top US companies involved in the AI ​​data center buildout have purchased plans to transmit data through fiber-optic cables that run along protected routes and oil and gas pipelines, from the southern tip of Iraq to the Turkish border and through Europe. The Whole World report. Once completed, the project by IQ Networks, an Iraqi telecom company, will provide a direct link between the Gulf and Europe.

The need to look for fiber internet alternatives comes at the top of another Big Tech topic from the war with Strait of Hormuz Crisis. When the US and Israel launched airstrikes against Iran in the first weeks of the war, Iran retaliated attack ships near the Strait along with the targeting of various infrastructures in the Gulf region. Iranian drone attacks on data facilities disrupted Amazon Web Services in the region as well You spent months on Amazon to fix it while forcing another data center developer to stop the Middle East operations.