Reliance Globalcom has lit its Hawk submarine cable in Egypt, adding another 20 Tbps of capacity that it says will enable consistent capacity levels between Europe, the Middle East, and India. The subsea network also includes a landing point in Cyprus, providing an alternative route to the troubled North Africa region.
With this extra capacity in place, the service provider will be able to better respond to its enterprise and wholesale service provider customers.
"Our existing customer base of over 37,000 corporates in India, over 1,400 corporates in Europe and USA, and over 200 carrier customers will benefit from this lowest latency network between India, Middle East, Europe and USA," the company said in its announcement.
Reliance built the Hawk cable system to provide what it says is the first Mediterranean gateway and hub via the island of Cyprus. Following last week's deliberate cut of the SeaMeWe-4 cable in Egypt, Reliance still carried 180 Gbps of data between Europe and the Middle East via the alternate route.
With a focus on network diversity and uptime, the Hawk system has two routes: an express route connecting Marseilles, France and Alexandria, Egypt as well as a spur to Yeroskipos, Cyprus as a low-latency alternative route on the Europe-to-Middle East network segment.
While Reliance has been making various upgrades to existing and new routes, the submarine cable business it has also been challenging for Reliance in recent years. Last July, Reliance decided not to pursue an initial public offering of its FLAG submarine cable unit due to what it says are "unfavorable" market conditions.
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