MUMBAI: Spanning more than 8850 km, c will provide Mauritius with route diversity and connect Rodrigues for the first time to a submarine cable, enhancing ultra-high speed broadband services.

A new submarine cable system, IOX Cable System, spanning more than 8850 kilometers, will enhance communications capabilities along the India to South Africa route, providing the first open cable in Mauritius and connecting for the first time the island of Rodrigues.

IOX Cable Ltd - a Mauritius-based company - and Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), part of Nokia, have signed a turnkey agreement for the deployment of the IOX Cable System, which will increase the availability of ultra-high speed broadband services, and reinforce Mauritius as a communication hub in sub-Saharian Africa.

The IOX Cable System will stretch from Mauritius to Rodrigues, to the east coast of South Africa and then on to the east coast of India. Providing an ultimate design capacity of over 13 terabits-per second per fiber pair, the system will allow easy connectivity to current and future undersea cables on the east and west coast of Africa, delivering a gateway to the continent and a new alternate route between Asia and Africa.

The system’s deployment will support ultra-fast data transmission to address the growth of digital communications and cloud computing requirements, enabling IOX to offer differentiated services, while strengthening service, reliability and redundancy to existing cables.

Arunachalam Kandasamy, Founder and CEO of IOX Cable Ltd said: “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.”

Philippe Piron, President of Alcatel Submarine Networks said: “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.”

The IOX Cable System will integrate ASN’s latest innovations in subsea communications, including the 1620 SOFTNODE and ROADM branching unit offering dynamic features for enhanced system resilience as well as utilizing ASN’s highly reliable submarine repeaters, all managed by its end-to-end submarine network management system. As part of the contract, ASN will also be in charge of project management, system design, marine operations and system commissioning supported by IOX’s own team of industry experienced personnel.