Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), a subsidiary of Reliance Communications plans to invest about $45 million for establishing a sub-sea India Cloud Xchange (ICX) cable infrastructure providing direct subsea route to connect Mumbai and Singapore.
The ICX cable infrastructure is part of the company?s strategy to provide a direct subsea route to bridge the gap in the emerging markets corridor, and deliver a direct Mumbai-Singapore route to bypass the current outage-prone terrestrial routes between Mumbai and Chennai.
Based on 100G technology, the ICX cable will be a four-fibre pair system with initial design capacity per fibre pair at 80x 100G using next generation coherent submarine fibre. The new ICX fibre system, spanning 5,060 kilometres between Mumbai and Singapore, will also have a branch landing in Thiruvananthapuram or Chennai.
The company plans to complete the project by second quarter of 2016. The entire cost of the project is pegged at $200 million, out of which GCX will be putting in $40-45 million over a period of 24 months, and the balance will come from the company?s three other partners including a telecom player. Revenue from the new venture is likely to start coming in within 18 months.
Bill Barney, chief executive officer, GCX, says, ?With Singapore as a regional hub and a gateway for multinational companies doing business across India and emerging markets, the ICX cable will complement GCX global network infrastructure for direct connectivity to major business centers in Asia, the Middle East, North America and Europe.?
