Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), a subsidiary of Reliance Communications (RCOM), today announced Eagle Express Submarine Cable Systems stretching from Mumbai—Westward to Italy and Eastward to Hong Kong.
The submarine cable will be completely self-financed, with no upfront financing or investment requirements from the company. In addition, GCX has also entered into key partnerships to expand its cloud ecosystem and data centre footprint, further solidifying India’s position as a key global hub with a strategic edge in the next wave of technology growth and expansion across emerging markets.
“The Cloud and Fiber initiative is our response to the key requirements in the global marketplace, driven by the explosive growth in cloud and infrastructure programs by enterprises around the world,” said Bill Barney, CEO of Reliance Communications & Chairman/CEO, Global Cloud Xchange.
“Nearly half of the world’s population is reachable with a short distance from India’s borders, giving the country a strategic edge in the new digital era. This initiative levels the playing field for India’s companies to compete globally,” added Barney.
“The demand for international bandwidth connected to Asian countries is expected to increase more than 10-fold between 2017 and 2023, while bandwidth linking Europe to the Middle East and the rest of Asia is forecast to grow seven-fold in the same period,” according to Alan Mauldin, Research Director at TeleGeography.
“India provides a strategic location in the context of the larger global subsea cable network. New cables extending to the East and West from India will help accommodate surging capacity demand and enhance network resiliency,” added Mauldin.
With India’s position as Asia’s third-largest IT market after Japan and China, GCX’s growing infrastructure has already started attracting major cloud players in the country, including New York-listed Alibaba, which has partnered with GCX to enable Alibaba cloud to offer its cloud services to the country’s growing start-up community and larger companies. Plans are also underway with other key telco, OTT and data center partners from across major growth markets to ensure that the ‘Cloud and Fiber Initiative’ delivers infrastructure and bandwidth required to support the next wave of economic growth driven by the cloud revolution.
The Eagle cable system, targeted for completion by the end of 2020, will create a Next-Generation IP and cloud environment across the emerging markets corridor that encompasses the Middle East into Europe, as well as the large economies of China, India and Indonesia.
Based on state-of-the-art 100G technology, the new cable network will be four/six fiber pair systems, with an initial design capacity of 12-24 Tbps per fiber pair, using next-generation coherent submarine fiber.
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