HDC X Ocean Connect Maldives Signs To Establish First Submarine Cable Landing Station in Maldives

On Tuesday, Housing Development Corporation (HDC) and Ocean Connect Maldives (OCM) signed the land allocation agreement to establish and operate the first-ever submarine cable landing system in the Maldives. The agreement was signed at HDC by the Managing Director of the Corporation, Ahmed Athif while the Managing Director of OCM, Hussain Shihab represented the government-owned subsidiary of Maldives Fund Management Corporation.

As per the signing, land would be allocated for OCM in Hulhumale’ Phase II for the development of the landing station. Earlier in the year on February 21^st, the OCM entered a contract with Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (JIO) to land the next generation multi-terabit India-Asia-Xpress (IAX) undersea cable system in Hulhumale. As such, the high capacity and high-speed IAX system will connect Maldives directly with prominent internet hubs in the world including India and Singapore. JIO is India’s largest 4G provider owned by Indian billionaire, Mukesh Ambani.

The Government stated that the decision to land the submarine cable in the Maldives was to provide high-speed internet services for the citizens at affordable prices. This strongly aligns with the Government’s initiatives as well.

Once the IAX system is completed in 2023, it will connect from Mumbai to Singapore directly with additional branches landing in India, Malaysia and Thailand. With the capacity to provide more than 200TB/s at speeds of 100GB/s the systems utilize the open system technology and the latest wavelength-switched RoADM branching units.