FEATURE
IOX UPDATE
Connecting Mauritius And Rodrigues Island to South Africa and India BY ARUNACHALAM KANDASAMY
I
nnovation in the business world is accelerating exponentially, with new, disruptive technologies and trends emerging that are fundamentally changing how businesses and the global economy operate. The Internet is one such technology which has changed the lives of billions of people throughout the world and fiber optic submarine cables are the critical communications infrastructure that carry more than 98% of international communications. IOX (Indian Ocean Xchange) is building a next generation submarine cable system to provide enhanced connectivity between the emerging markets in India and Africa and empowering the countries in the Indian Ocean Islands with abundant capacity, diversity and innovative services. IOX will be providing services that will carve a niche for itself in the growing submarine cable market by: • Creating a new route in the Southern Hemisphere that will provide much needed redundancy over the existing routes. • Ensuring seamless connectivity by providing an open
access cable system in the main geographies. • Building strategic partnerships that will create a network that provides onward connectivity across multiple continents. • Providing an integrated ecosystem of services by offering capacity, transformation services, managed services, regional innovation hubs, as well as cloud and datacenter services.
THE IOX CABLE PROJECT
The IOX cable system spans more than 8,850 kms, connecting Mauritius and Rodrigues Island to South Africa and India, with optional links connecting to Reunion island, Madagascar, Seychelles, Maldives, Kenya, and Singapore, with a total design capacity of up to 54Tbps. The first leg of the IOX cable system is scheduled to go live in the second half of 2019.
SUBMARINE CABLE PATH
From Mauritius, the submarine cable route is northeasterly to Puducherry, India with a spur to Rodrigues, and JULY 2018 | ISSUE 101
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