Mukesh Ambani-owned Jio to Deploy New Submarine Cable Systems
By Muntazir Abbas, ETTelecom
January 9, 2020
NEW DELHI: The oil-to-retail conglomerate Reliance Industries Limited’s (RIL) telecom arm Jio will be deploying two submarine cable systems connecting Singapore and Europe, taking high-bandwidth connectivity from America’s western and eastern coasts allowing higher data speed to Indian Internet users.
“The two submarine systems will provide direct connectivity to the top content hubs worldwide, and the deployment is set to boost India’s data availability,” an industry source told ETT.
The India-Asia-Xpress (IAX) will connect Mumbai and Chennai to Singapore and interconnect with other far east countries towards the west coast of the US, and the India-Europe-Xpress (IEX) will connect Mumbai to Europe and interconnect to the east coast of the US.
The two cables are expected to be operational in two years or early 2023.
Jio did not reply to an e-mailed query.
The undersea systems would offer direct access to global innovation centers and content hubs to deliver low latency and high reliability necessary for cloud and platform-driven digital applications and services.
The proposed submarine system through multiple branching links, according to the privy to the matter, will provide options to extend the connectivity with other southeastern Asian destinations, covering the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean, the Middle East, Northern Africa and other locations in the Mediterranean.
The IAX and IEX systems will provide more than 100 Terabit per second (Tbps) of capacity at transmission speeds of more than 100 Gigabit per second (Gbps), and would employ the latest wavelength switching and intelligent rerouting to ensure rapid upgrade and flexibility to switch waves across multiple locations.
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In 2017, Jio deployed AAE-1 submarine system, a 100 Gbps (Gigabits per second) technology-based submarine system, stretching over 25,000 kilometres connecting major data centres in three continents with partners such as China Unicom, Etisalat, and Omantel.
The submarine systems will be the first in India to align with open access principles rather than the traditional closed framework, and provide flexibility and scalability.
