GCX targets small cloud players with new cable

Global Cloud Xchange – formerly Reliance Globalcomm – has announced plans for a new submarine cable joining Tokyo to Silicon Valley.

Along the way, the outfit also says it hopes to create a new model for access to submarine assets, by attaching its own meet-me rooms to the cable, rather than restricting access to large players.

Due to go into service in 2015, the four-fibre cable will have a maximum design capacity of 100 channels per fibre pair, at 100 Gbps per channel. However, the company has announced that services will start as low as 10 Mbps.

CEO Bill Barney has told Australian telco newsletter Communications Day that the company “will be selling Ethernet and IP transit services out of the cable landing stations”, something he believes hasn't happened before on a global basis.

In its announcement, GCX says it will offer “a next generation IP and Cloud environment held together with a single AS number and connecting into Tier III+ data center facilities on the ground”.

Its 10 Mbps to 1 Tbps service offerings are designed to help startups and small cloud operators get international services in their own right, rather than having to rely on an upstream telco, the company says.

Those startups, Barney told Comms Day, need nurturing: “they need networks to … build their applications out on a global basis,” he said, adding that South China and Silicon Valley are the hot locations that GCX wants to target.

Build partners Pacific Cloud Xchange cable are expected to be announced by June. ®