GCX completes India landing and data centre for Eagle subsea network
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GCX completes India landing and data centre for Eagle subsea network

Global Cloud Xchange (GCX) has confirmed its India landing and the completion of IDC-5, its new Indian data centre, all in preparation for its Eagle subsea cable network.

Due for landing in India by the year 2020, the Eagle subsea cable network will be split into parts, Eagle East, running from Mumbai to Hong Kong, with a number of branches, and Eagle West, running from Mumbai to Sicily via the Red Sea and Egypt. The project forms part of the group’s wider ‘Cloud and Fiber’ Initiative.

“When Eagle lands in two years, it will be connected to the world’s largest cloud operators inside India’s newest and largest data centre,” said Bill Barney, CEO of RCOM, and chairman & CEO of GCX. “We are delighted to have completed IDC-5 in time to make it an anchor on the world’s ‘Cloud & Fiber initiative’ which will play a pivotal role in the hyper growth of technology expansion across the Emerging Markets Corridor.”

The new IDC-5 data centre – India’s largest data centre- is located in Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City (DAKC) in Mumbai. The facility has a capacity of 40MW over its almost 450,000 sq ft area and 6,000-rack capacity. In addition, the site is Green data centre which holds a IGBC pre-certified for Gold rating. It has also been designed with a separate utility block for high-voltage equipment and DG sets, as well as robust floor loading of 1,200 Sq m for earthquake seismic zone 4.

“India has a key strategic location in the global submarine cable network. New cables extending to the East and West from India will help to accommodate surging capacity demand and enhance network resiliency,” said Alan Mauldin, research director, TeleGeography. “Demand for international bandwidth between Europe and Asia is expected to increase nearly 9-fold between 2017 and 2023 and bandwidth linking Europe to the Middle East is forecasted to increase seven-fold during the same period.”

The Eagle express cable system will drive 120Tbps of capacity towards Hong Kong and an additional 120Tbps towards Europe once live. It will leverage 100G technology using next-gen coherent submarine fibre. By avoiding the outage-prone zone of Malacca Strait, Eagle will be the fastest Mumbai to Hong Kong route, as well as the fastest between India, the Middle East and Europe. The landing points in Hong Kong and Europe are expected to happen in the next 60 to 90 days.

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