Atlas Offshore

Overview

Atlas Offshore is a submarine cable system spanning 1,634 km across the western Mediterranean, connecting France and Morocco. It serves the corridor between continental Europe and northwestern Africa, providing a direct link between these two countries.

Route and Landings

In France, the cable lands at Marseille, a well-established hub for submarine cable infrastructure on the Mediterranean coast.

In Morocco, the cable lands at Asilah, a coastal town on the Atlantic-facing shore of the Strait of Gibraltar region.

Ownership and Operators

Atlas Offshore is owned solely by Maroc Telecom, the Moroccan telecommunications operator. As the country's principal telecoms provider, Maroc Telecom holds full ownership of the system without a consortium structure.

Technical Profile

The cable extends 1,634 km between its two landing points, traversing the western Mediterranean and passing through or around the Strait of Gibraltar region to reach the Moroccan Atlantic coast at Asilah.

Status and Timeline

Atlas Offshore entered service in 2007 and is currently operational. It has been in service for nearly two decades, providing connectivity between France and Morocco over that period.

Regional Context

The France–Morocco corridor hosts a number of other submarine cable systems, several of which are considerably longer intercontinental systems that use France as a landing point en route to Asia, Africa, or the Americas. These include 2Africa, Asia Africa Europe-1 (AAE-1), the PEACE Cable, SeaMeWe-6, Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), and Apollo. Atlas Offshore, by contrast, is a shorter, regionally focused system dedicated specifically to the bilateral link between France and Morocco.

Measured performance data from 77 ping tests over the past 60 days shows an average round-trip latency of 83.9 ms, with a best recorded result of 35.8 ms. The average figure is notably higher than the physical distance alone would suggest, reflecting routing and network conditions beyond the cable itself.

Strategic Role

Atlas Offshore provides a direct submarine connection between Marseille and Asilah, supporting bilateral connectivity between France and Morocco. Owned entirely by Maroc Telecom, the cable gives the operator a proprietary route to Europe without reliance on shared capacity across multi-owner consortium systems. Its relatively compact footprint at 1,634 km makes it one of the shorter cable systems in this corridor, purpose-built for the France–Morocco link rather than as part of a broader intercontinental route.