السعودية تقترح ربط رقمي خليجي على غرار الربط الكهربائي، وتتيح 14 جيجاواط لمراكز البياناتSaudi Arabia proposes a Gulf digital link like the power grid link, and offers 14GW for data centres

Saudi Arabia has called on the Gulf Cooperation Council states to build a sustainable digital link between them, with shared computing capacity that protects the GCC states' data sovereignty and helps their companies compete globally. The call came in a speech by Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha at the 30th meeting of the GCC ministerial committee for post and telecommunications in Bahrain, Al-Jazirah reported, citing SPA.

The minister said the Kingdom has added more than 8.4 terabits per second of international capacity to keep data and communications flowing across the GCC, raising capacity by about 80% to 18 terabits per second. He said Saudi Arabia has submitted a proposal to the GCC General Secretariat and the presiding state for a sustainable digital link modelled on the Gulf's electricity grid interconnection.

On energy and computing, he said the Kingdom has made available a range of sites and up to 14 gigawatts of power for data centres serving Saudi Arabia, the GCC, the region and the world, and called for a sustainable model of cooperation on these centres.

He stressed the importance of opening markets and aligning standards for Gulf companies, noting that GCC states are home to more than 20 billion-dollar companies and that the Gulf accounts for about 95% of venture capital investment in the region. The next phase, he said, requires the Gulf to work as a single system in data, computing, cloud and AI.