Industry Thought Leadership

PCCW Global, the leading telecommunications service provider, in collaboration with Naitel*, a licensed telecommunications service provider in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, have enhanced Middle Eastern international connectivity and expanded the region’s network reach via a new IP node that has been strategically located in the Jordanian coastal port city of Aqaba.

The new point of presence, which is located in a carrier-neutral facility, provides the Middle East with a new level of connectivity using PCCW Global’s advanced, resilient and automated Tier 1 network, and caters to the increasing demand of global wholesale and enterprise customers in the region. The node in Aqaba is PCCW Global’s latest addition to the carrier’s extensive global network of over 120 on-net Points of Presence (PoPs) in 52 countries and 81 cities.

Furthermore, the new network node extends PCCW Global’s growing global Tier 1 network coverage and ensures that the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) region has access to high-speed connectivity and state of the art network automation via Console Connect, the world’s first platform for Software-Defined Interconnection®.

The Console Connect platform offers business a much simpler and quicker way to make layer 2 connections on-demand - using PCCW Global’s Tier 1 MPLS network. The result is that customers provisioning bandwidth on the Console Connect platform can experience improved network performance, such as lower latency and higher availability of guaranteed throughput over a trusted and secure network that provides extensive global reach.

In addition, the Middle East is one of the fastest-growing regions when it comes to consuming cloud services. In the last year, major cloud providers, such as Microsoft Azure, AWS and Oracle, have all launched data centres in the region. The Console Connect platform is directly connected to all major cloud platforms, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and IBM Cloud, enabling businesses to quickly and easily connect to the cloud in the Middle East.

Console Connect is continuing to grow its ecosystem of data centre, cloud, SaaS, carrier and enterprise partners in the Middle East, and the platform is now enabled in key data centres in Dubai, Doha, Fujairah, Jeddah and Cairo. Carriers on the platform can make direct connections to these locations and more than 400 other data centres worldwide.

Carrier customers can easily interconnect to the automated fabric using one of the Console Connect NNI ports. Once the port is configured, customers can begin making instant connections between the NNI port and any other port on the Console Connect fabric – and they can do this either through the Console Connect online portal or through an open API.

Development of the new node in Jordan is strategically aligned with other PCCW Global network expansion and connectivity projects in the EMEA region, including the innovative Pakistan & East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) cable project.

The PEACE cable system is a 15,000km-long, 200G and 16T/FP privately owned cable system connecting three of the largest and most populous continents in the world – Asia, Africa and Europe. Once complete, the PEACE subsea cable system will provide the shortest and most direct data route from Asia to Europe, ensuring exceptionally low latency, which is vitally important for people and organizations to leverage the innovative use of advanced ICT services.

PEACE will connect countries on both sides of the Mediterranean and provide connectivity for the Middle East en route between Europe and Asia.

Sameh Sobhy, Managing Director, Middle East, Turkey, Africa, PCCW Global, says: “Our goal is to bring the latest, most innovative, fast and robust services to customers in the GCC region and consequently, Aqaba is an important strategic location for development. In addition, the new node enables network automation in the region - making it possible for users to manage and control their own data resources by accessing a wide variety of cloud services and content on top of our state-of-the-art data network.”

*Naitel provides services in Jordan for PCCW Global’s customers outside Jordan; PCCW Global is not licensed in Jordan and does not provide services to customers in Jordan.