IOX has started surveying a new route with Alcatel to link India and South Africa. IOX (Indian Ocean eXchange) will also connect the islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues as waypoints on the cable. Plans allow later links to Madagascar, La Reunion, and Sri Lanka. IOX follows a near-great circle path of 8850km to link East London, South Africa and Puducherry, India, helping reduce latency.
According to a press release from Alcatel (now part of Nokia) who are planning and installing the cable on behalf of IOX, the cable will support a design capacity of 13Tb/s per fibre. (IOX Cable Ltd and Alcatel Submarine Networks to build first open cable connecting Mauritius and Rodrigues islands to South Africa and India). In future, links to the African East coast are planned. So in future, despite its apparent remote location, Mauritius could become a data hub countries around the Indian Ocean.
“IOX is committed to delivering its end-users with advanced infrastructures that incorporate technology innovations. Leveraging ASN’s state-of-the-art technologies we will be able to continue to support and drive broadband infrastructure development based on new socio-economic models centered around the new digital economy.” – Arunachalam Kandasamy, Founder and CEO, IOX Cable Ltd
“We are proud to support IOX in this project, one which will be a step-change in capacity for Maurititus and Rodrigues. ASN is confident that the bandwidth, resilience and traffic routing of the IOX Cable System, combined with our technology capabilities, will enable us to address the fast-evolving expectations and demands of end-users.” – Philippe Piron, President, Alcatel Submarine Networks