The Gulf’s AI boom is driving the race to control the data highways
Gulf governments and telcos are investing billions in subsea cables, terrestrial fiber corridors and data centers to reroute critical Asia–Europe data traffic away from chokepoints and to capture AI/cloud compute growth. Major projects include Ooredoo's FIG cable, the STC-led Sonic corridor and SilkLink investments, and regional compute expansions targeting multi-gigawatt AI capacity.