By Bosphorus News Geopolitics Desk
A 240-kilometer submarine cable between Syria and Cyprus is placing the divided island inside two separate digital infrastructure projects. In the south, the Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (Cyta), a public corporate body of the Republic of Cyprus, operates an international cable network extending into Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. In the north, Turkish Cypriot authorities and Türkiye are building a separate fiber system centered on Türk Telekom.
Cyta, the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment (STE) and U.S.-based UNIFI Communications signed the construction and maintenance agreement for Ugarit 2 in Damascus on July 28. The cable will run from Tartus to Cyta's Pentaskhinos landing station on the southern coast of Cyprus, with service targeted for early 2028.
Northern Cyprus operates outside that telecommunications system. Its external connections run principally through Türkiye, while the Republic of Cyprus network has multiple submarine routes toward Europe, the Levant and North Africa.
Ugarit 2 is designed as a repeaterless system with 24 fiber pairs, 31 terabits per second of initial capacity and a stated design capacity of 370 Tbps. It will replace the original Ugarit cable, which entered service in 1995 with a capacity of 622 megabits per second. Prysmian has been selected to supply the submarine cable, Elettra for marine installation and Nokia for the first phase of optical transmission equipment.
Pentaskhinos already carries much more than traffic between Cyprus and Syria.
Cyta's KIMONAS subsystem links the station with Chania in Crete and onward through Greek and European networks. ALEXANDROS connects Pentaskhinos with Abu Talat in Egypt and Marseille in France. Cyta also operates coastal fiber links connecting Pentaskhinos with its other landing stations on the island.
Ugarit 2 consequently gives Tartus access to infrastructure built to carry traffic beyond Cyprus. The project partners describe the new system as a route into European internet exchanges and the wider global network.
Syria is building a domestic network behind that international connection.
Communications and Information Technology Minister Abdulsalam Haykal has linked Ugarit 2 with SilkLink, the telecommunications infrastructure program awarded this year to Saudi Telecom Company (stc) in partnership with the Syrian Sovereign Fund.
SilkLink is valued at SAR3 billion and calls for more than 4,500 kilometers of fiber-optic network, data centers and international submarine cable landing stations. Saudi Exchange filings say stc will hold 75 percent of the project and the Syrian Sovereign Fund 25 percent.
Haykal has described Ugarit 2 and SilkLink as parts of an effort to turn Syria into a connectivity gateway linking Europe, the Gulf and Asia.
The Turkish Cypriot side is rebuilding its network under a different model.
Türkiye and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) signed a supplementary fiber protocol on August 19. The detailed agreement published in 2025 defines the investor as Türk Telekom or authorized TRNC companies in which Türk Telekom holds shares and gives the investor responsibility for designing, constructing, maintaining and operating the fiber infrastructure covered by the project.
The operating term in that published agreement is 25 years.
It also requires the investor to reach 150,000 homes or business premises during the first year, provided the permits, excavation approvals and other administrative measures set out in the agreement are delivered.
The project reaches beyond household broadband.
Article 7.1(i) of the published protocol says that, barring a defined change of control, no company other than the investor is to be authorized to carry internet traffic from the TRNC abroad. Another clause grants the investor exclusive authority to construct the fiber infrastructure covered by the agreement, while separate provisions require wholesale access for authorized internet service providers.
Those terms may no longer tell the whole story.
Bosphorus News reported after the August 19 addendum that neither the full supplementary text nor the detailed feasibility report had been published. Turkish and Turkish Cypriot officials say the new agreement clarifies provisions that had generated legal and political objections, but an article-by-article comparison remains impossible until the text is released.
The two projects are technically different.
Ugarit 2 is an international submarine cable linking Syria with an established Cyta landing station in the Republic of Cyprus. The northern project is mainly a fiber rollout inside the Turkish Cypriot system, although the published contractual structure also reaches into international traffic and control of the underlying network.
Their external orientation is clearer.
The Republic of Cyprus already has cable routes toward Greece, France, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. Ugarit 2 sharply expands the Syrian leg of that network and places it inside Syria's broader reconstruction of its digital backbone.
Northern Cyprus, meanwhile, is moving toward a system in which Türk Telekom or a company linked to it would hold a central role in the physical fiber network and, under the currently published terms, international internet traffic.
Neither project is designed to connect the island's two telecommunications systems. Each expands external connectivity on its own side of the divide.
The scale of the Syrian upgrade is substantial. The old Ugarit system has linked Cyprus and Syria for more than three decades, but its 622 Mbps capacity belongs to another generation of telecommunications. Ugarit 2 is expected to begin at 31 Tbps, with the consortium saying later upgrades could take it to 370 Tbps.
The project has another unusual component. UNIFI says development has proceeded under a specific license issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), with the American company serving as prime contractor and holding a 5 percent stake.
The consortium describes Ugarit 2 as the first major international infrastructure agreement executed under Syria's post-sanctions economic framework. That is the project partners' characterization, but the supply chain itself is international: a U.S. communications company, European cable and marine contractors, Nokia transmission equipment and Cyta's Mediterranean network.
Cyprus is useful to the Syrian project because the cable does not end there in any practical sense. Traffic reaching Pentaskhinos can enter routes running toward Greece, France, Egypt and other networks beyond the island.
Northern Cyprus is being tied outward through a different infrastructure program. Turkish and Turkish Cypriot officials have placed fiber alongside planned electricity and natural gas connections when describing deeper infrastructure integration with Türkiye.
By early 2028, if Ugarit 2 stays on schedule, Tartus is expected to have a high-capacity route into the Republic of Cyprus cable network while the Turkish Cypriot north moves through its own Türkiye-centered fiber transition.
Cyprus remains divided on land. Its digital infrastructure is extending the two sides into different external networks.
Sources: Cyprus Telecommunications Authority, UNIFI Communications, Syrian Telecommunications Establishment, Saudi Exchange, TRNC Public Information Office, Bosphorus News review and reporting.