Why UAE is a global connectivity hub

dubai — The UAE has positioned itself as a leading global business and connectivity hub, and this was affirmed recently when both etisalat and du announced upgrades to their broadband speeds bringing a focus yet again on Dubai’s 5G ambition.

Almost all of intercontinental traffic — whether it is basic Web browsing and e-commerce to streaming video and artificial intelligence — crosses a subsea cable with less than 1 per cent of the remaining traffic carried through satellite systems. The recent Capacity Middle East 2019 event in Dubai highlighted the developments in subsea segment.

Farid Faraidooni, deputy CEO for enterprise solutions at EITC, said: “Capacity ME provided an ideal platform to showcase datamena and present the full suite of innovative solutions available to prospective clients. We pride our- selves on delivering a world class environment enabling customers to benefit from the advantages of seamless end-to-end connectivity and datamena’s position as the region’s richest global partner ecosystem of 150-plus enterprises, carriers, cloud and content providers. The premier event helped to project the UAE as a leading global business and connectivity hub.”

The ongoing and massive surge in global data traffic is a well-documented trend, and it is feeding a boom in new subsea cable construction.

The level of global data traffic is expected to reach 3.3 zettabytes by 2021, and almost every byte touches a subsea cable as cloud service providers, network service providers, content providers and enterprises push to move data globally in real time.

Etisalat presented a full suite of carrier services from the SmartHub ecosystem at the event, including Internetwork Packet Exchange, SmartHub IPX, SmartHub IX and ethernet services.

Nasdaq-listed Equinix also participated at this year’s Capacity Middle East to demonstrate how interconnection between service providers is powering global digital business over land and undersea. “Subsea cables are key to the internet and global connectivity, as 99 per cent of intercontinental traffic crosses a subsea cable,” said Jeroen Schlosser, managing director at Equinix Mena.

Equinix International Business Exchange data centres have subsea cables connecting to 34 metros around the world, including in the Mena region, across three locations — Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Muscat.

“Service providers and enterprises will need to look at distributed IT and network infrastructures that place 5G at the digital edge — close to commerce, population centers and digital ecosystems of network and cloud service providers. Proximity to a variety of 5G network service providers in regional metros gives small-to-medium service providers and enterprises the ability to lease 5G networks as a service,” added Jeroen.

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We pride ourselves on delivering a world class environment enabling customers to benefit from end-to-end connectivity

Farid Faraidooni,

Deputy CEO for enterprise solutions at EITC