Qatar’s Ooredoo tapped to build Iraq’s data route to Europe

Iraq has awarded Qatar’s Ooredoo a contract to build internet transit capacity to Europe, deepening Baghdad’s bid to become the Gulf’s overland alternative to vulnerable Red Sea cables, AGBI reports. The project routes data through a corridor linking the southern port of Faw to the Rabia crossing on the Turkish border — the same 2k km fiber backbone Communications Minister Mustafa Jabbar Sanad activated in July as part of Iraq’s Civilizations Road digital corridor, the state’s first internet transit network.

“Our policy prioritized establishing Iraq as a secure, high-speed internet transit route with low latency,” Sanad told state-run Iraqi News Agency, citing shorter distance to Europe, incentivised pricing, and infrastructure insulated from weather and regional conflict as the deciding factors over rival Arab transit routes.

Ooredoo’s second bite at the same corridor: The agreement uses an Indefeasible Right of Use structure to lease network capacity — Iraq’s first use of the model — and has already drawn interest from several Gulf states in the past week, according to Sanad.

GO DEEPER- Ooredoo signed a separate agreement with France’s Alcatel Submarine Networks in January 2025 to build Fibre in Gulf (FIG), a submarine cable linking the six GCC states and Iraq to Europe with up to 720 Tbps of capacity, outside traditional cable routes.

Why it matters: Iraq is one of several competing land corridors Gulf states are financing to route data around Red Sea chokepoints exposed by regional conflict. Ooredoo Oman and Saudi’s stc are separately buildingSONIC, a terrestrial Saudi-Oman link, while a UAE-backed consortium is pushing a rival USD 700 mn Iraq route, WorldLink, targeting 900 Tbps capacity on a similar Faw-Turkey path. Iraq isn’t locking in one transit partner — it’s auctioning the same corridor to whoever builds fastest.