Jio launches Bay of Bengal Gateway with design capacity of 55 Tbps

Reliance Jio announced the launch of a 8,100 km cable system, called the Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG). BBG will provide direct connectivity to South East Asia and the Middle East, then onward to Europe, Africa and Far East Asia through interconnection with existing cable systems. Reliance Jio owns and operates the undersea cable landing facility in Chennai, providing low latency route connecting India to the rest of the world. BBG is said to have deployed the latest submarine cable 100Gbps transmission technology, utilising wavelength add/drop branching units along the route, with an initial equipped capacity of 9 terabits per second. In addition to Reliance Jio, the BBG partners include Dialog Axiata, Etisalat, Omantel, Telecom Malaysia and Vodafone. BBG is also one of the new cable systems in the region in which Reliance Jio has invested as part of its broadband plans. BBG uses the most advanced high-speed broadband fibre optic technology; dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) which allows the capacity to be increased at will without any additional submarine intervention. The initial equipped capacity of the system is a mammoth 9Tb/s and a staggering design capacity of 55Tb/s. “We are excited about the launch of BBG as it offers not just direct connectivity in and out of India through Chennai and Mumbai but also acts as a state-of-the-art 100 Gbps extension of Jio’s 100 Gbps core network,” said Mathew Oommen, President Reliance Jio. “This global connectivity brings key international content hubs closer to our customers, delivering a much richer experience as an important part of driving India’s broadband adoption, enabling consumers to shift away from the current high-cost low value propositions.” Disclaimer: Reliance Jio is owned by Reliance Industries, who also own Network18, the publisher of Firstpost and tech2