By A Staff Reporter - MUSCAT — Global telecom giant Cable & Wireless Worldwide is set to launch work on a project that will establish a new submarine cable connection between Oman and Western Europe. Dubbed the Europe-Persia Express Gateway (EPEG), the submarine cable project is the first fibre system that will provide an alternative, more direct and robust connectivity solution linking Western Europe directly to the Gulf Region.
Developing the EPEG cable system is a consortium that includes Omantel, Russian Rostelecom, TIC and Cable & Wireless Worldwide. The system was specifically designed to provide high-speed, reliable connectivity solutions between Oman and Frankfurt, Germany. When completed, it will have an initial capacity of 540 Gbps with design capacity up to 3.2 Tbps. The shortest route is 9,430 km with a round-trip latency between Frankfurt, Germany and Barka, Oman measuring at 91.97 ms.
Last June, Omantel inked a deal with the three international telecom partners to be part of this submarine cable venture. EPEG system will provide a major alternative cable route from Oman to Europe. At present, cables mainly go through Egypt and Gulf of Suez.
However, with this new route from Oman to Germany, telecom operators will get better option to existing routes. As per this deal, Cable & Wireless, Rostelcom and TIC will build and develop part of the network which operates through their own country to make sure most efficient and inexpensive deployment of EPEG.
“We believe that the Europe-Persia Express Gateway is an important international network development as it will be providing high capacity, diverse connectivity from the Middle East Region to Europe,” says Rick Perry, Vice-President International Planning at Cable & Wireless Worldwide.
The cable starts in Barka as a submarine system and continues on a terrestrial path to Western Europe where it will terminate in Frankfurt (Germany) where it will interconnect with the data centre of ancotel GmbH, Europe’s leading carrier neutral interconnection company. The submarine cable project currently scheduled for completion in May 2012, Frankfurt-based ancotel serves more than 400 customers from 60 countries and its Frankfurt data centre represents the largest interconnection hub in Europe. With the EPEG system landing at ancotel’s interconnection facility, companies from the Gulf Region will get access to one of the largest aggregation network hubs in Europe.
“Until now, the entire Gulf Region has been fed by sea-based systems that have not offered diverse connectivity resulting in extensive outages throughout the region when severed,” comments Frank Orlowski, Vice-President, ancotel GmbH. “Global and regional governments agree that there is a direct link between the economic development of a region and the robustness of the telecommunications infrastructure available. EPEG will play a vital role for the future development of the region and ancotel is proud to be a part of this project.”
All types of carriers and providers including incumbents, VOIP providers, broadband providers, content delivery networks, and web hosters use ancotel to improve their network performance and to lower their costs. ancotel operates 50,000+ cross connects which customers use for voice and data interconnection (Ex. IP-Transit, Peering, TDM Voice and VOIP, VPN and so on).
Ancotel’s satisfied customers include: 1&1, A1 Telekom Austria, AboveNet, AT&T, Belgacom, BT, Cable & Wireless, China Telecom, Colt, Deutsche Telekom, euNetwork, GTS, iBasis, KDDI Corporation, KPN, Level 3, NTT, RETN, Swisscom, Tata Communication, Telecom Italia, Telefonica O2, TeliaSonera, Tuerk Telekom, Verizon and Vodafone.
