Bahrain-based Kalaam Telecom Group, a leading managed solutions provider, has launched a new fiber-optic terrestrial international cable system that enhances regional and international connectivity in the Mena region.
The Kalaam Network Optical Transit (KNOT) cable system will span over 1,400 km, providing capacity of 12.8 terabytes (tbps) and beyond with lowest latency connectivity to the Mena region.
Given the cable is carried over an optical ground wire associated with a regional high-tension electricity network (GCCIA), it reduces the risk of cable cuts significantly, as is evident from the very high availability of the GCCIA network over the past 5 years.
Veer Passi, Group CEO of Kalaam and Tawasul Telecom said: “Kalaam chose to invest in this multi-million-dollar network expansion project to sustain the ever-growing demand for data connectivity and business applications to and from the Mena region. This new state-of-the-art, upgradeable optical transport network is fully owned and operated by Kalaam Telecom Group.”
“With the launch of KNOT, an open cable system, Kalaam will continue its legacy of being an innovative & disruptive solution provider, which aims to make connectivity in the Mena region more competitive. This will provide a highly scalable alternative to carriers, CDNs, OTTs, Cloud Providers, Data centers and Enterprises to benefit from innovative solutions and enhanced communications experience,” he added.
The KNOT cable system is powered by Ciena’s 6500 packet-optical platform equipped with WaveLogic coherent technology, to offer flexible bandwidth capacities. The whole infrastructure is managed by the state-of-the-art micro based Network Management System (NMS)with open APIs and embedded SDN controllers, to provide 10G, 100G, 200G services and beyond over an Optical Transport Network (OTN).
The new cable system provides route diversity across the Middle East by connecting our meshed transmission network across 12 countries, homing 16 Points of Presence (PoP) and further connecting the Mena region as a gateway through our POPs in Europe and Asia.
The cable will go live in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2020, a company statement said.