Orange, infrastructure investor Equitix and Irish subsea cable developer MDM have formed a joint venture to deliver Pisces, a planned 3,125 km submarine cable connecting Ireland directly with France, Spain and Portugal. The 16-fiber-pair system will provide an alternative to routes transiting the United Kingdom, with deployment expected during 2028. Carine Romanetti has been appointed CEO of PISCES Cable System Limited.

Pisces will connect Galway, Ireland; Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, France; Sopelana, Spain; and Carcavelos, Portugal. Orange will build a new cable landing station in Sopelana. Designed to offer open-access dark fiber, the system will give carriers, cloud providers and data center operators additional connectivity along Europe’s Atlantic coast. The partners position the project as supporting European digital sovereignty and Ireland’s connections with continental data center markets.

The project has secured funding support through the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility. Equitix is investing through Equitix Infra Ireland, its Irish greenfield infrastructure fund, whose anchor investor is the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. Orange Marine and Elettra Tlc completed the marine route survey in August 2026; engineering and permitting are now underway. The announcement does not specify total project cost, ownership percentages or aggregate design capacity in Tbps.

“As Europe accelerates its AI ambitions, subsea infrastructure along the Atlantic coast becomes more critical than ever,” said Valérie Cussac, CEO of Orange Wholesale International.

Analysis

Pisces adds a direct Ireland–continental Europe corridor to Orange’s broader subsea infrastructure portfolio. Its planned French landing, Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, already hosts Google’s Dunant transatlantic cable, where Orange provides landing infrastructure and terrestrial connectivity. This creates a relevant interconnection location, although the announcement does not identify specific commercial arrangements between Pisces and Dunant. Orange’s recent activation of the ViaTunisia segment of Medusa illustrates a parallel investment in route diversity between Europe and North Africa.

From a network engineering perspective, the distinction is between physical diversity and delivered capacity. A route avoiding UK transit adds another option for network planners, but end-to-end resilience also depends on landing stations, terrestrial backhaul and protection arrangements. The 16-fiber-pair specification describes the physical infrastructure; it does not establish a Tbps figure. Engineering and permitting remain the next delivery milestones ahead of the planned 2028 deployment.