Taba, Egypt

Taba, Egypt: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Taba is a town in the South Sinai governorate of Egypt, situated near the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba. Its coastal position on the Gulf of Aqaba makes it a natural point for submarine cable connections across that narrow body of water. Two submarine cables land at Taba, linking Egypt directly to Jordan and forming a short but dedicated cross-gulf corridor between the two countries.

Both cables at Taba serve the same bilateral pairing — Egypt and Jordan — establishing Taba as a focused regional interconnection point rather than a wide-reach intercontinental hub. The Taba-Aqaba cable, one of Egypt's earliest submarine cable systems, and the more recent Coral Bridge system together represent a layered approach to connectivity across the northern Gulf of Aqaba.

Cables Landing at Taba, Egypt

Taba-Aqaba is a 13-kilometre submarine cable with a ready-for-service date of 1998, making it one of the earliest submarine cable deployments in Egypt. The cable connects Taba, Egypt to Aqaba, Jordan, spanning the narrow width of the northern Gulf of Aqaba. Its short length reflects the tight geographic proximity of the two terminal cities across the gulf.

Coral Bridge is a submarine cable with a ready-for-service date of 2025, also connecting Egypt and Jordan. Like Taba-Aqaba, Coral Bridge links the two countries across the Gulf of Aqaba, adding a second and more contemporary cable route to the same bilateral corridor that Taba serves. No length has been specified for this system.

Regional Context

Within Egypt's nine submarine cable landing points, Taba ranks in the top 22 percent by cable count, hosting 2 of the country's 23 submarine cables. The country's larger landing points — Zafarana with 10 cables, Abu Talat and Suez each with 7, and Alexandria and Port Said each with 5 — handle significantly more cable systems, many of which involve intercontinental routes. Taba's role is more specialised, concentrating exclusively on the Egypt–Jordan bilateral link across the Gulf of Aqaba.

Network Role

Taba functions as a bilateral cable point, with both of its submarine systems dedicated to the same country pair: Egypt and Jordan. The Taba-Aqaba cable, operational since 1998, established one of Egypt's first cross-gulf connections, while Coral Bridge, entering service in 2025, provides a second modern route along the same corridor. Together, they give the Taba landing point a dual-cable presence on the Egypt–Jordan link, which traverses one of the shortest submarine cable distances in Egypt's national network at 13 kilometres for the older system.

In the broader submarine cable graph of the region, Taba represents a dedicated point-to-point node rather than a multi-directional hub, connecting two neighbouring countries across a narrow but strategically placed stretch of water at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba.