The EPEG fibre system, due to launch in exactly 76 days from today, has been designed to offer an alternative connectivity solution linking western Europe directly to the Gulf region. Market experts have often commented on the lack of redundancy, resiliency and terrestrial links in the Gulf, and there are expectations within the sector the new route, spanning 10,000km with a design capacity of 3.2Tbps, will go some way towards addressing this.
“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,” said Frank Orlowski, VP at 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.”
Orlowski believes EPEG will play a pivotal role in the future development of the region. Ancotel’s carrier neutral data centre provides the cable with a landing point in one of Europe’s largest aggregation network hubs. The cable will launch in Barka, Oman, as a submarine system, and continue on a terrestrial path, spanning across the Persian Gulf, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, eastern Europe and terminating in Frankfurt, within ancotel’s facility.
“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,” added Rick Parry, VP international planning at Cable&Wireless Worldwide.
The EPEG consortium, consisting of Omantel, Rostelecom, Iranian operator TIC and Cable&Wireless Worldwide signed an agreement in June 2011 to build the cable.
