The ViaTunisia subsea cable segment between Marseille in France, and Bizerte in Tunisia, has reached Ready for Service (RFS) marking the transition from construction to full operational availability on a direct and resilient new route between southern Europe and North Africa. 

From infrastructure design to live connectivity 

The journey to RFS began long before the cable touched the seabed. Designed as an open, point-to-point system with a 25-year design life, ViaTunisia moved through each phase: marine surveys, factory acceptance tests, cable loading, laying, shore landings and final splicing. Marine operations were carried out by Orange Marine's Sophie Germain and Elettra TLC's Teliri cableships, under the coordination of Elettra TLC, with system design and equipment delivered by Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN).

A European-supported infrastructure

ViaTunisia was co-financed by the European Union under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF Digital) program.

The Grant Agreement, signed in December 2022, provided funding covering 30% of the construction and management costs. This demonstrates the EU's commitment to reinforcing digital connectivity, supporting the rapid growth of data traffic driven by digital transformation and AI, and enabling new opportunities for digital services, investments, and innovation.

Creating a new digital bridge between Europe and Africa

ViaTunisia extends directly into Orange's global infrastructure in Marseille, through a fully redundant urban fiber ring connecting all the Data Centers in the city. This set up enables seamless interconnexion and distribution of international capacity across Europe.

By combining the resilience, security and performance of a global backbone with Marseille's role as a leading interconnection hub, ViaTunisia provides direct, high-capacity connectivity between North Africa and the wider digital world. It also multiplies route options in this area, especially in natural disaster-prone areas, minimizing outages caused by cable failures, thus improving overall network resilience.

About Orange

About Orange Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators. The Group aims to be the trusted partner for everyday digital life by providing individuals, businesses and communities with reliable connectivity and innovative services. As of the end of 2025, Orange connects 340 million customers (including MasOrange) across 26 countries and generated 40.4 billion euros in revenues.
As a trusted player, Orange leverages the excellence of its very high-speed broadband networks to deploy digital infrastructure in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The Group is a European leader in fiber, with 100 million connectable households, and convergent offers. In France, Orange connects 34 million customers and was ranked No. 1 by the regulator Arcep for the quality of its mobile network for the 15th consecutive year. In Africa and the Middle East, the Group’s growth engine, Orange serves nearly 180 million customers and promotes digital and financial inclusion through its connected solutions.
Under the Orange Business brand, the Group supports companies in transforming their networks as well as in AI, trusted cloud and cybersecurity. Orange is also a major player in the wholesale market, where it has a leading global telecom infrastructure and significant capabilities for deploying and operating submarine cables. A committed innovator, Orange relies on 700 researchers and holds a portfolio of 11,000 patents.
Orange is listed on Euronext Paris (symbol ORA). More information: www.orange.com.

Orange and any other Orange product or service names mentioned in this material are trademarks of Orange or Orange Brand Services Limited.