Commissioning of the intercontinental superhighway cable, which will employ 100Gbps transmission technology and a minimum design capacity of 40Tbps, will start before the end of this year. When it officially launches by Q1 2017, AAE-1 will be 25,000km long and bring 19 operators together along the low latency Eurasian express route.
A consortium statement says the project has entered its last phase of construction after successfully laying subsea cable across four oceans.
“Six specialised cable ships and numerous support vessels have been engaged in completing the installation in the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Indian Ocean and Gulf of Thailand. Network equipment has been deployed and tested at more than half of the AAE-1 cable landing stations. The protected transit routes across Egypt, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore are also nearing completion,” the statement added.
AAE-1 will connect Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Oman, UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy and France. It has two diversified points of presence (PoPs) in Asia (terminating in Hong Kong and Singapore at carrier neutral data centres) and three onward connectivity options in Europe via Greece, Italy and France (terminating in two Marseille carrier neutral data centres).
Last month, India’s Reliance Jio announced it was to connect to the AAE-1 subsea cable.
