New gateway: 10,000 km undersea Oman – Australia cable to come into service next month
BUSINESS REPORTER
MUSCAT, JUNE 12
Omantel and Australian-based submarine cable development specialist SUBCO have recently entered into a large capacity agreement for connectivity between the Sultanate of Oman and various key telecom hubs in Europe through Omantel’s extensive subsea network. Through this arrangement, Omantel will be providing ultra-high capacity connectivity from Muscat to SUBCO’s new PoP’s in London, Milan and Marseille effectively extending the Oman Australia Cable (OAC), due to be RFS in Q3, 2022, from Australia to Oman and all the way to Europe.
The Oman Australia Cable (OAC) a 10,000km undersea cable between Muscat, Oman and Perth, Australia built and operated by SUBCO. OAC is the first fully diverse cable between EMEA and Asia that avoids the Malacca Strait, a narrow stretch of water between Indonesia and Malaysia that has a high level of seismic and marine activity causing regular outages on submarine cables and a single point of geographical risk. OAC is due to be ready for service in July 2022.
Talal bin Said al Maamari – Omantel CEO said: “We are proud to have been the landing partner for the successfully landed OAC, achieving another key addition in our vision for Oman to be the leading gateway to the region and beyond. Our motto in Omantel’s Wholesale is Reach Further which is something we truly live, and today we see yet another demonstration of fulfilling this mission by enabling our partners in SUBCO to reach further through Omantel’s extensive network.”
“OAC is going to contribute in changing the landscape of the Wholesale industry and take our collaboration to the next level. Omantel was the Wholesale partner of choice for OAC and has attracted more and more international partners like SUBCO to work and collaborate with us”, Al Maamari further added.
Bevan Slattery, SUBCO’s Founder commented, “I am so excited to see our vision of the first truly diverse route between Asia and the Middle East and now Europe coming to fruition and our relationship with Omantel has been pivotal in helping us to reach further. With the OAC only a few months away from RFS, having this capacity in place to extend our reach into Europe is important to further enable our capability and addressable market.
Omantel and SUBCO are in the process of completing provisioning and handover of the capacity in readiness for OAC service commencement. The parties are also exploring further options to expand their collaboration and to include other upcoming systems to provide further capability and diversity for OAC. The system also leverages on being extended into the Equinix MC1 facility in Oman, which is the first carrier-neutral data centre in MENA which successfully positioned Oman as the natural hosting location for major hyperscalers and tier 1 service providers in the region. This ensures open access to the OAC system and hence further increases the potential of the project. Future phases of OAC include a possible extension to the newly announced Equinix SN1 data centre in Salalah and even beyond.
