MAY 6, 2008 -- Verizon Business has joined a consortium of 16 companies building an undersea optical cable system connecting Europe, the Middle East, and India.
The new system, named the Europe India Gateway (EIG), is the third major submarine cable project Verizon Business has helped launch in the last four years. The 15,000-km cable network system, expected to be completed in 2010, will cost more than $700 million, the carrier estimates. It will have a design capacity of up to 3.84 Tbits/sec.
"This new cable system will provide not only a second, diverse route from India to Europe, but also direct access to our network in Europe," said Ihab Tarazi, Verizon Business vice president of global network planning. "Combined with our other network capabilities, we will offer our customers reduced latency (the time it takes data sent from its entry point in the network to reach its destination), reduced provisioning time, and increased reliability."
The EIG will give Verizon Business customers a second, diverse landing in France. As with SEA-ME-WE-4, Verizon Business will operate a landing station in Marseilles that will connect directly with the company's recently expanded ultra-long-haul network in Europe.
With the addition of the EIG, Verizon Business also plans to extend its global mesh architecture to the Middle East and India. Currently, the company operates a seven-way diverse mesh network between the U.S. and Europe and five-way diversity between the U.S. and Japan, with expansion to seven-way diversity to Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan planned for the second half of 2008.
Verizon Business owns and operates a global fiber-optic network that spans six continents and has more than 485,000 route miles delivering services to customers in more than 150 countries and 2,700 cities throughout the world. The company is involved in more than 67 submarine cables worldwide.
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