Bahrain: Beyon Announces BHD 94 Million Investment in Digital Infrastructure
Beyon has announced a major investment of more than BD 94 Million in state-of-the-art digital infrastructure helping to support the acceleration of Bahrain’s digital transformation and the growth of the country’s digital economy, in a press conference attended by Beyon Chairman Shaikh Abdulla bin Khalifa Al Khalifa.
During the event, Beyon CEO Mikkel Vinter announced that Batelco, part of the Beyon group, has joined the SEA-ME-WE 6 (Southeast Asia – Middle East – Western Europe) consortium, which is building a 21,700 km-long undersea telecommunications cable system connecting Bahrain with 14 other countries.
It will offer one of the lowest latencies available between the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Western Europe and will significantly boost Beyon’s global network infrastructure. SEA-ME-WE 6 will have the capability of transferring more than 100 terabits per second. The new subsea cable will create a layer of network diversity and resilience for the heavily used routes connecting the Middle East towards Europe and Asia.
Additionally, Batelco is investing to build a regional subsea cable, the ‘Al Khaleej’ Cable which the Company will fully own, enhancing the region’s data exchange and will extend from Bahrain to other regional countries including Oman, UAE and Qatar. This fully owned subsea cable will help to diversify routes and augment international connectivity for the region.
They also announced Data Oasis, which will be the biggest technology hub in the Kingdom of Bahrain and include a newly built advanced Data Centre for the Company. It will be located within Beyon Data Oasis and is being developed on a 140K Sq. Mts. site located in the south of Bahrain
Beyon Data Oasis will incorporate the SEA-ME-WE 6 and the Al Khaleej cables into the Data Centre, therefore enabling hyper scalers and businesses to access seamlessly integrated solutions and helping to strengthen Bahrain’s position as a leading regional technology hub. Furthermore, the new Data Centre will feature multiple Megawatt power capacity and utilize clean power technologies provided by the Company’s Solar Park, aligning with its sustainability plans to increase alternative power sources.
In addition to Beyon in Bahrain, the SMW6 consortium includes its sister company Dhiraagu in the Maldives and additionally Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Bharti Airtel (India), China Unicom, Djibouti Telecom, Mobily (Saudi Arabia), Orange (France), PCCW Global, Singtel (Singapore), Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, TM (Malaysia), Telin (Indonesia) and Trans World Associates (Pakistan).
The SEA-ME-WE 6 submarine cable connectivity to Bahrain and Al Khaleej Cable is expected to be completed by Q2 2026.
