New subsea cable to provide alternate Asia-Africa route
Created June 12, 2017
Technologies and ProductsA new submarine cable system, IOX Cable System, will enhance communications capabilities along the more than 8,850 km of its route between India and South Africa. When laid, the new fibre system will provide the first open cable in Mauritius, and connect for the first time the island of Rodrigues. Providing an ultimate design capacity of over 13 Tb/s per fibre pair, the system will also deliver connectivity to current and future undersea cables on the east and west coast of Africa, and operate as a gateway to the continent and as a new alternate route between Asia and Africa.
The IOX Cable System will integrate a number of Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) subsea communications solutions, including the 1620 SOFTNODE and ROADM branching unit offering dynamic features for system resilience. It will also utilise ASN’s submarine repeaters, all managed by its end-to-end submarine network management system. As an element of the contract, ASN (part of Nokia) will also be in charge of project management, system design, marine operations and system commissioning, supported by IOX’s own team of personnel.
The system’s deployment will support ultra-fast data transmission to address the growth of digital communications and cloud computing requirements in this region. It will enable IOX to offer differentiated services, while strengthening service, reliability and redundancy to existing cables.
John Williamson
