Reliance Globalcom partners with Ciena to upgrade FLAG Europe-Asia submarine cable network

KOLKATA: Reliance Globalcom, the undersea cable unit of Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications, is buying transmission gear based on dense wave division multiplexing ( DWDM) technology from US-based Ciena Corp to upgrade its FLAG Europe Asia (FEA) submarine cable network.

"Globalcom's decision to buy optical networking solutions from Ciena will help it ramp up capacity on the subsea cable route between Egypt and Jordan," said the US company in a media statement, adding that this would enable Reliance Globalcom to deliver high-bandwidth services to customers.

"The network upgrade with Ciena's 100G DWDM system allows Reliance Globalcom to increase submarine bandwidth on this segment by 10 times and enables the launch of 10GE and OTU-2 services," Ciena added, but declined to reveal the deal size. Ciena is one of Reliance Globalcom's empanelled vendors.

"Ciena's proven optical technology gives us the ability to upgrade our existing submarine networks from 10G to 40G and 100G rates and beyond, so that we can keep pace with our customers' changing bandwidth requirements while leveraging our investments in fibre assets," said Reliance Globalcom president & CEO Punit Garg.

Reliance Globalcom is already using Ciena's 100G solutions to power its European network.