IOX Cable, a Mauritius-based company, and Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), part of Nokia, have signed a turnkey agreement for the deployment of the IOX Cable System, the first open subsea cable connecting Mauritius and Rodrigues Islands to South Africa and India.
The new submarine cable system, spanning more than 8850 kilometers, will provide design capacity of over 13 terabits-per second per fiber pair, and allow connectivity to current and future undersea cables on the east and west coast of Africa, delivering a gateway to the continent and a new alternate route between Asia and Africa.
Arunachalam Kandasamy , founder and CEO of IOX Cable, said: “IOX is committed to delivering its end-users with advanced infrastructures that incorporate technology innovations. Leveraging ASN’s state-of-the-art technologies we will be able to continue to support and drive broadband infrastructure development based on new socio-economic models centered around the new digital economy.”
Philippe Piron , president of Alcatel Submarine Networks, said: “We are proud to support IOX in this project, one which will be a step-change in capacity for Maurititus and Rodrigues. ASN is confident that the bandwidth, resilience and traffic routing of the IOX Cable System, combined with our technology capabilities, will enable us to address the fast-evolving expectations and demands of end-users.”
The IOX Cable System will integrate ASN’s latest innovations in subsea communications, including the 1620 SOFTNODE and ROADM branching unit and utilize ASN’s submarine repeaters, all managed by its end-to-end submarine network management system.
As part of the contract, ASN will also be in charge of project management, system design, marine operations and system commissioning supported by IOX’s own team of industry experienced personnel.