Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), the submarine cable subsidiary of Reliance Communications (RCom), has shortlisted three vendors for the construction of its India Cloud Xchange (ICX) sub-sea cable.
However, the names of the vendors were not disclosed.
The new ICX fibre system will run about 5,060 km between Mumbai and Singapore, and will also have a branch landing in Thiruvananthapuram or Chennai, the company said in a statement.
“In the coming month we will finalise the vendor selection process and initiate the process to construct the ICX cable, which will integrate with our GCX global network infrastructure for direct connectivity to major business centres in Asia, West Asia, North America and Europe,” said Bill Barney, Chief Executive Officer at Global Cloud Xchange.
Last June the company announced plans for the cable as part of its strategy to provide a direct sub-sea route to bridge an important gap in the emerging markets corridor, and to meet soaring bandwidth demands of new cloud-based applications and services.
The ICX cable will be a four-fibre pair system with initial design capacity per fibre pair at 80x100G using a next-generation coherent submarine fibre.
This new segment will deliver termination in West Asia, Europe and to the US East Coast through interconnection with GCX’ Falcon, Hawk and FA-1 systems.