Harman Patil (Editor)

Gulf Bridge International

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Type
  
Private

Founded
  
2008

Website
  
www.gbiinc.com

Gulf Bridge International httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediaen552Gul

Gulf bridge international short


Gulf Bridge International (GBI) is the Middle East’s first privately owned submarine cable system linking the countries bordering the Persian Gulf on a self-healing ring to each other and onwards to Europe, Africa and Asia. It is deploying state of the art submarine technology which provides the region with greatly enhanced connectivity.

Contents

History

Incorporated in December 2008, GBI started production and deployment of the ‘Gulf Ring’ – a "high speed, subsea cable system" connecting the countries overlooking on Persian Gulf together and integrated into the larger GBI Cable System (GBICS) which has onward East and West links to Europe, Africa and Asia. The high capacity demand from the Middle East and lack of diversity/resilience (as witnessed by the cable outages of 2008.) were large driving factors for the establishment of GBI.

Market Growth

Between 2005 and 2010 the Middle East was the fastest growing region globally in terms of demand for bandwidth and capacity usage. This demand is forecast to double every three years over the course of the next decade, being driven by several factors:

  • Opening up of the regional telecom markets to competition which has stimulated an unprecedented increase in the use of mobile and broadband internet services.
  • Government initiatives around the Persian Gulf to lessen dependence on carbon based industries and diversify their investments to include other sectors, have increased the demand for superior levels of international connectivity from sectors such as Finance and Media.

    • Present

    Since its establishment, the business has been validated, both by the participation of new regional investors and telecom operators looking for a new business model; and the infrastructure to enable them to provide new applications and services.

    It currently has landing stations (agreed/built) in:

  • Qatar
  • UAE
  • Iran
  • Iraq - This was a major first by GBI, as it placed the first ever submarine cable connecting Iraq to the world.
  • Kuwait
  • Bahrain
  • Oman
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Italy
  • India

    • Products

    GBI products include a full suite of wholesale transmission capacity options including:

    Synchronous Digital Hierarchy capacities:

  • STM-1
  • STM-4
  • STM-16
  • STM-64

    • Wavelength-division multiplexing product line:

  • Unprotected and protected wavelengths at 10 Gbps

    • Ethernet:

  • 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps

    • Awards

  • 2012 Best Niche/New Player - Capacity Europe
  • 2012 Best Technology Investment - CommsMEA

    • References

    Gulf Bridge International Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA