IP traffic in Africa and the Middle East is set to boom over the next few years, growing sixfold between 2015 and 2020 to 10.9 Exabytes per month. Traffic in Asia will hit 67.8Eb per month by the same year.
Marseille is increasingly becoming a key hub for the region, offering connectivity through a number of subsea cables which land there, including the recently completed Asia Africa Europe-1 (AAE-1), and the Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5 (Sea-Me-We-5).
The newest PoP will allow Colt to address customer demand for both point-to-point and geographically diverse high bandwidth transit between Europe and those growing regions.
Colt is looking to leverage the opportunity presented by companies using those subsea routes who need backhaul capacity across cities in Europe –including Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, and Paris.
It is the second PoP in Marseille connected to the carrier’s IQ Network using Colt’s own metro fibre network. This allows users a quick interconnection between the subsea routes and Colt’s 10/100G optical network, which gives access to 90 European data centres in the first phase.
“Our second Marseille PoP delivers on our customers’ diverse and growing need for connectivity to an unparalleled selection of connected data centres and buildings,” said Tim Passingham, vice president, wholesale at Colt.
“Marseille is an important landing station for a large number of key subsea cables, making it a gateway to and from Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific. With the recent landing of two new cables in the Marseille facility and the strong projected growth for internet traffic in the African, Middle East and Asian regions, Marseille will be an increasingly important strategic hub for our wholesale customers.”
Colt’s IQ network is connected to over 700 data centres and more than 24,500 buildings across the globe. It recently unveiled plans to expand its IQ network to Hong Kong by July 2017, launching high speed bandwidth up to 100Gbps.
