Medusa's ViaTunisa subsea cable now live

The France-to-Tunisia route of the Medusa Submarine Cable System, named 'ViaTunisia,' is now live.

Telecom operator Orange has announced that the "ViaTunisia" segment of the Medusa Submarine Cable System, linking France to Tunisia, is now operational, creating a new high-capacity digital corridor between Europe and North Africa.

The telco, which acts as the landing partner in both Marseille and Bizerte, said ViaTunisia connects directly to its global network in Marseille through a fully redundant urban fiber ring linking all the city's data centers.

"This set up enables seamless interconnexion and distribution of international capacity across Europe," the telco said in a statement.

Orange added that ViaTunisia's journey to being ready-for-service began 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," it added.

The telco stated that by combining the resilience, security and performance of a global backbone with Marseille's role as an 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," Orange explained.

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

The telco added that 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," Orange explained.

The CEF Digital program also provided co-financing for the Medusa system, together with Orange and AFR-IX Telecom.

The Medusa system stretches 8,760km and connects 17 landing points across the northern and southern Mediterranean.

The ViaTunisia subsea cable going live happens as numerous companies are rolling out or developing their own subsea cables to connect Africa with the rest of the world, especially in the first half of 2026.

Just last month, Canalink, GUILAB, International Mauritania Telecom, Orange Group, Orange Côte d'Ivoire, Sonatel and Silverlinks signed a memorandum of understanding to build a subsea cable linking Europe and South Africa.

Also in May 2026, the Republic of Guinea joined the Medusa Africa submarine cable project by signing a construction and maintenance agreement that gives the country its second international subsea link.

The EllaLink submarine cable landed in Nouadhibou, Mauritania , in May 2026, giving the country a second direct and secure connection to Europe.

In February 2026, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria signed a landmark subsea fiber‑optic agreement designed to boost connectivity, strengthen regional cybersecurity and ensure reliable high‑speed Internet access.

Associate Editor, Connecting Africa

Matshepo joined Connecting Africa as Associate Editor in May 2022. The South Africa-based journalist has over 10 years' experience and previously worked as a digital content producer for talk radio 702 and started her career as a community journalist for Caxton.

She has been reporting on breaking news for most of her career, however, she has always had a love for tech news.

With an Honors degree in Journalism and Media Studies from Wits University, she has aspirations to study further.