Teleglobe International Holdings Ltd has announced that Teleglobe and Saudi Telecom Company (STC) have established the Middle East IP Exchange (ME-IEX) in Saudi Arabia to serve Middle Eastern and Arabian Gulf ISPs and carriers. The new ME-IEX currently carries traffic for six customers from Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Yemen and supports peering arrangements between ISPs. The exchange is the first true IP exchange node in this region with diversified international connectivity.
The ME-IEX supports direct regional traffic interchange amongst its local customers and provides them with reliable, high performance international traffic exchange via Teleglobe's network for direct connections to leading American and European carriers and ISPs and direct and transit connections to ISPs and carriers across Asia, Australia, Africa, and Latin America.
The exchange combines STC's established regional and international infrastructure with the global reach of Teleglobe's Tier 1 IP network and is backed by the support services of both companies. This enables a host of flexible, innovative services to help customers, particularly enterprises, cut overhead, streamline operations and provide unparalleled connectivity. The ME-IEX ensures high availability for customers' services via a number of fail-safe and redundant mechanisms that guarantee stable, reliable connectivity.
"The Middle East IP Exchange offers our customers secure access, faster connections, direct regional connectivity to each other, and worldwide connectivity," said Mr. Sa'ad Demyati , STCs Vice President for the International Telecom Sector. "It also offers a number of data and other value-added services, making it a comprehensive solution for all of our customers' connectivity needs. Teleglobe's global network expertise combines with STC's regional leadership to provide exceptional network performance."
Mr. Demyati added, "STC with its self-healing national backhaul network and border-crossing terrestrial fiber optics links that extend to all the neighboring countries, represents the most resilient, reliable and cost effective connectivity in the region for both carriers and ISPs. In addition, our ME-IEX will play a significant role in continuing to promote the collective cooperation within the GCC community and the region via their integration with the global broadband networks."
"As the Internet grows, it becomes more local. The Middle East Internet Exchange (ME-IEX) supports the region's rapidly growing needs for direct exchange of regional traffic and also provides efficient, high quality transit for international traffic," said Michel Guyot, Vice President of International Markets at Teleglobe. "This deepened relationship with STC builds upon Teleglobe's Canadian heritage and our long tradition in providing advanced international telecommunications services to carriers and ISPs across the Middle East."
