The North Route connects the Gulf to Europe through Iraq and will now leverage a wider range of terrestrial networks established by GBI and its partners.
The company says that by circumventing the Arab peninsula completely, it shortens latency – with latency between Europe and the Gulf data centres reduces by 40ms.
Adding diversification to existing North Route paths through Iran provides redundancy meaning users will remain connected in the case of an outage.
Brendan Press, CCO of GBI said: “It’s an adage old as time: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Companies must shift away from overreliance on the same cable routes as that can produce bottlenecks and potential outages. They must work with providers that can provide diversification and, therefore, assurance that connectivity will always be available whatever the situation.
“By diversifying our North Route so that it now also passes through Iraq, we are providing that assurance.
“When you consider that we also have our South Route that runs through Egypt, we can confidently say our Smart Network is playing a critical role in keeping the world connected and is helping to propel the region into a global connectivity hub.”
GBI says the move is a welcome development for telecommunications, cloud, gaming and internet services providers in the region as data demands on cables reach an all-time high.
It will also help the region prepare to meet the surge in traffic anticipated around the World Cup 2022 which kicks off later this month.
GBI adds that the enhancement of the North Route increases overall resilience of GBI’s Smart Network.
This also includes the South Route, which connects the Gulf to Europe via the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean.
