Colt Technology Services announced that it has opened a point of presence (PoP) in Marseille – an increasingly important hub location for carriers and organisations looking for a high bandwidth connectivity gateway connecting Europe with Asia, Africa and the Middle East, due to the landing of several important subsea cables from these regions in the city.
With IP traffic in the Middle East and Africa set to grow six-fold from 2015 to 2020 to 10.9 Exabytes per month, and IP traffic in Asia Pacific set to grow three-fold to 67.8 Exabytes per month over the same period, Colt is directly addressing customer demand for both point-to-point and geographically diverse high bandwidth transit between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.
Most recently, two new cables, the Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5 (Sea-Me-We-5) and Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE1), connecting Asia with Europe, terminated in Marseille. Organisations with bandwidth on these cables are already buying backhaul capacity from Marseille to cities across Europe – in particular Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris – presenting a significant opportunity for Colt.
Tim Passingham
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 has connected its second POP in Marseille to its IQ Network using the existing Colt-owned metro fibre network. It enables simple and quick interconnection from the submarine cables to the Colt 10/100G optical network and immediate access to 90 top European data centres in the first phase. In addition, customers will also have access to the extensive Colt IQ Network, giving access to over 700 key data centres and more than 24,500 buildings worldwide, as well as the long distance network (LDN) connecting Europe to key hubs in Asia, including Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.