Speakers:
- Mai Barakat, research analyst – S&P Global (Chairperson)
- Brenden Rawle, senior director for business development – Equinix
- Mahesh Jaishankar, managing director – CMC Networks
- Maxime Anne-Archard, vice president, digital infrastructure development – Orange Wholesale International
- Omar Alsaied, GM, business development – Ciena
- Ambrogio Michetti, chief corporate & revenue officer – Sparkle
The data centre market is currently experiencing exponential growth, the infrastructure required to support it is struggling to keep pace.
As new hubs emerge across the Gulf Cooperation Council region and existing sites expand rapidly, ensuring diverse, high-capacity connectivity has become the critical challenge facing the industry.
Speaking on a panel at Capacity Middle East 2026, senior executives from Ciena, Orange, Sparkle and CMC Networks revealed traditional models of network deployment are no longer fit for purpose in an era of AI-driven demand and hyperscale expansion.
“The demand story is great for all of us,” said Mahesh Jaishankar, managing director at CMC Networks. “The supply constraints are real.”
He revealed that one major hyperscaler has already leased an entire submarine cable company for the next three years, securing all production and ships in what he described as turning “access to the supply chain into a competitive advantage.”
The scale of the challenge is staggering. Ambrogio Michetti, chief corporate and revenue officer at Sparkle, cited calculations based on public data suggesting that by 2031, the region will require 31 times the fibre capacity currently in place.
“This is an important data point considering the increase in the region,” he said. “Of course, we’re not fully exploring what AI will bring yet- we’re still waiting for clearer data, which will evidently change the conversation.”
Beyond bandwidth: The new connectivity imperative
Omar Alsaied, general manager of business development at Ciena, explained that the industry is witnessing a fundamental shift in how infrastructure is planned and deployed.
“The core of this data demand is coming from two things: cloud services and AI utilisation,” Alsaied said. “If you look at Google, AWS, ByteDance, all the hyperscalers, Microsoft Azure- count the number of services being offered today. It’s in the hundreds.”
”If you look at the two video models recently- image-to-video models like Google Veo or ByteDance’s Jimeng- what’s interesting is that these services are almost commoditised for consumers.
The moment you make something commodity and available, two things happen: prices go down because they compete for these services, and more demand happens.”
Commenting on AI, Brenden Rawle, senior director for business development at Equinix, said: “It’s understandable when we talk about network trends and bandwidth trends that people pivot toward AI. I completely understand that,” he said.
“But as a data centre operator, if you look at bandwidth right now, the main driver of internet bandwidth is still consumer internet traffic: streaming, gaming, video platforms.”
Meanwhile, Rawle cited industry data showing predictions of 50% to 100% year-on-year growth for enterprise traffic, whilst Zayo reported a 330% increase year-on-year in requests for data centre-to-data centre capacity.
“The message to this region in particular is: keep working hard on connectivity and getting the bandwidth in the ground,” he said.
The permitting bottleneck
Whilst demand continues to accelerate, supply-side constraints are creating significant headaches.
Maxime Anne-Archard, vice president of digital infrastructure development at Orange Wholesale International, said: “There’s a disconnect to some extent- a lack of sense of urgency,” he said.
”We’re all very aware of data centres, connectivity, AI, but I’m not seeing that urgency on the permitting side, and it’s hurting us.”
”On the permitting side for cables, especially subsea cables, this is a nightmare for all of us,” Anne-Archard continued.
”In some geographies, the time to get permits is increasing significantly- not by weeks, but substantially. The number of constraints is lining up and not decreasing.”
Michetti echoed these concerns, noting that deploying infrastructure requires navigating a complex regulatory landscape.
”We’re touching not only several regulations throughout our deployment routes, but also different regulations when we arrive,” he explained. “It’s an interesting, very challenging puzzle. It keeps us awake, but it’s not stopping us.”
However, there are positive signs. Jaishankar suggested that whilst ground-level implementation remains challenging, awareness at the highest levels is growing.
”Governments and policymakers are extremely aware of the opportunity that AI poses today. They see it as the next industrial revolution and want to be at the forefront,” he said.
”The rapid speed of this opportunity is driving many new cables coming to the region, new cables being deployed, new routes crossing the Red Sea or through Iraq- all within the region to support these AI factories being created.”
Planning for the unpredictable future
According to Rawle, Equinix has fundamentally changed its approach to new facilities.
”We’ve moved to a model where, going through our corporate development of new facilities, we start speaking to connectivity and network providers before work has even started- three or four years out,” he said.
For one significant European campus, detailed conversations with providers are already underway more than four years before completion.
The reason for this extended timeline is the complexity of modern data centre campuses.
”Many very large campuses being done now are mixed-use. They’ll have AI cloud, large hyperscale deployments, hyperscale edge deployments, networks, and retail colocation,” Rawle explained.
”With that mix of different use cases, you don’t really know exactly what networking you’ll need in three, four, five years. But what you do know is you’re going to need a lot of fibre and a lot of diverse fibre.”
Alsaied detailed how this manifests in practice, describing the layered approach required.
He said: “Interconnecting the data centre hubs, or what hyperscalers call zones- that’s one metro solution which needs strong data centre interconnect solutions where you open the bandwidth, put a layer of control, making it easy for hyperscalers and customers to own the network, control it, and provision it without waiting months.”
Meanwhile, Alsaied noted that Ciena is in its sixth generation of silicon, “pushing the limits, all to help bring down the cost per token or the cost of 100 gig.”
He observed a remarkable shift in the conversation: “Two years ago, we never heard the word ‘token’ in our region. Now you see leaders, country leaders, talking about it- including the Minister of Telecom in Saudi Arabia being proud of how the country is reducing cost per token, because that is the new economy.”
Breaking free from legacy thinking
There was broad consensus amongst the panel that the industry needs to fundamentally rethink how it operates.
Alsaied stated: “Long gone are the days of old contracts and bundled business where somebody comes in and sells you the mobile equipment, towers, connectivity, gets into the data centre, and takes all the servers. Those tactics are from the ’80s and ’90s.”
Instead, he advocated for a new approach, calling for collaboration, “and collaboration means pre-planning, he noted.
“If you know demand is coming, liberate yourself from legacy, move into new contracting and agile contracting models, get the innovators, and use predictive analysis.”
Anne-Archard continued: “On the service provider side, we’ve been able to deploy infrastructure so far, and the challenge is getting the right power, the right skills to build systems in the right places. But we’re on track. The time we need to deliver infrastructure hasn’t increased- actually, we’re delivering faster.”
When asked for their single key takeaway, the panellists’ responses revealed the industry’s priorities. Jaishankar noted “speed of execution,” whilst Anne-Archard called for closer collaboration across the ecosystem.
Michetti concluded: “Innovation in models of acting in the market, developing a collaborative approach toward challenges, developing new rules, and integrating the growth of AI development in the region and across the globe.”
