Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), a subsidiary of Reliance Communications (RCOM), on Wednesday announced its “Cloud and Fiber Initiative” which includes the construction of the new EAGLE submarine cable system which will deliver latest subsea cable technology to meet growing Cloud infrastructure and capacity demands from global enterprises and OTTs.

“Nearly half the world’s population is reachable within a short distance from India’s borders, giving India a strategic edge in the new digital era. The ‘Cloud and Fiber Initiative’ levels the playing field for India's tech companies to compete in the new digital order and to play a pivotal role in the anticipated hyper growth of technology expansion across the Emerging Markets Corridor,” said Bill Barney, CEO, RCOM and Chairman & CEO, GCX.

Plans are underway with key telco and OTT partners from across major growth markets to ensure that the “Cloud and Fiber Initiative” delivers infrastructure and bandwidth required to support the next wave of economic growth driven by the Cloud revolution.

"Digital transformation of industries are driving accelerated growth of Cloud services in the Asia Pacific region. China along with the emerging economies of India, Indonesia and Thailand are the front runners of this growth," said Manoj Menon, Managing Director, Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific.

Tapping on India’s prime geographic location, the “Cloud and Fiber Initiative” will deliver a strategic edge to businesses with high speed transit from India West into Europe and East into the exponentially growing markets across Asia Pacific.

The new EAGLE express cable system will be the fastest Mumbai to Hong Kong route, avoiding the outage-prone Malacca Strait. In addition, EAGLE will also be the fastest submarine route between India and key technology centers across the Middle East and Europe.

“India has a key strategic location in the global submarine cable network. New cables extending to the East and West from India will help to accommodate surging capacity demand and enhance network resiliency,” said Alan Mauldin, Research Director, TeleGeography.

“Demand for international bandwidth connected to Asian countries is expected to increase over 10-fold between 2017 and 2023 and bandwidth linking Europe to Middle East and Asian countries is forecasted to increase 7-fold during the same period,” added Alan Mauldin.

The new EAGLE cable system will deliver flexible landing station technology, and will allow companies to rent and own subsea capacity from speeds of 10 Gbps to several 100s of Gbps between India and key technology centers across Asia, Middle East and Europe.

“With flexible access speeds and open co-location, the system will also enable growing number of OTT start-ups, new generation carriers and smaller Cloud operators to buy and rent fiber affordably in a scalable model,” said Wilfred Kwan, Chief Operating Officer, RCOM Enterprise & GCX.

Based on state-of-the-art 100G technology, the new cable network will be four/six fiber pair systems with initial design capacity of 12-24Tbps per fiber pair, using next generation Coherent Submarine Fiber.

The EAGLE subsea cable will land in the fastest growing key markets of Asia, Middle East and Europe. EAGLE will go east from Mumbai via Thailand to Hong Kong, running approximately 7,750 kms with landing points in Singapore and other branching units delivering high speed capacity to and from its India hub. EAGLE going west will route from Mumbai via the Middle East to Italy with almost 8,900 kms of diverse routing and landing points within the Mediterranean and low latency subsea routing from Europe to India and beyond.

The EAGLE cable system will create a next generation IP and Cloud environment across the Emerging Markets Corridor into GCX’s Cloud ecosystem, connecting data centers and economies along the route to its India hub.

Key partnerships are being finalized and vendor selection discussions are underway with cables targeted to be ready-for-service by the end of 2020.