Aden, Yemen

Aden, Yemen: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Aden is a port city on the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, situated on the north coast of the Gulf of Aden near the eastern approach to the Red Sea. Positioned approximately 170 km east of the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, the city sits at a natural junction between the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the wider Indian Ocean corridor. Two submarine cables land at Aden, connecting Yemen to a range of countries across Asia, Africa, and Europe.

The two cables terminating at Aden serve distinct purposes within the regional cable graph. One is a short bilateral link to neighbouring Djibouti, while the other is a major intercontinental system spanning 25,000 km and touching multiple countries across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. Together, these two cables make Aden a point where both regional and long-haul submarine connectivity converge on Yemen's southern coastline.

Cables Landing at Aden, Yemen

Asia Africa Europe-1 (AAE-1) is a 25,000 km submarine cable system that reached ready-for-service status in 2017. It connects Aden to a wide set of countries including Cambodia, China, Djibouti, Egypt, France, and Greece, forming one of the longer intercontinental routes in the region. The cable spans the corridor between Southeast Asia and Western Europe, with Aden serving as one of its Middle Eastern landing points along that path.

Aden-Djibouti is a 269 km submarine cable that has been in service since 1994, making it the earliest submarine cable to land in Aden. It provides a direct bilateral connection between Yemen and Djibouti across the Gulf of Aden. As a short regional link, it serves the narrow water crossing that separates the Arabian Peninsula from the Horn of Africa.

Regional Context

Within Yemen, submarine cable infrastructure is distributed across three landing points. Al Hudaydah hosts three cables, making it the most connected landing point in the country by cable count. Aden, with two cables, ranks second alongside Al Ghaydah, which hosts a single cable. Aden is therefore a mid-tier landing point within Yemen's submarine cable landscape, sitting in the top 67% of the country's three landing points by cable count.

Network Role

Aden functions as a two-cable landing point that bridges both short-range regional connectivity and long-distance intercontinental routing. The Aden-Djibouti cable provides a direct cross-gulf link to the Horn of Africa, while AAE-1 extends connectivity across a corridor running from East and Southeast Asia through the Middle East and into Southern Europe. This combination means that Aden participates in both the narrow regional segment across the Gulf of Aden and the broader Asia-to-Europe submarine cable route.

Within the broader submarine cable graph of the region, Aden's two cables place it as a secondary but internationally connected node on Yemen's coast, complementing the higher-capacity hub at Al Hudaydah and providing Yemen with southward-facing cable access along the Gulf of Aden's northern shore.