Gulf Bridge International, the Middle East's first privately owned submarine cable operator, has reportedly signed a new contract with David Ross Group Inc and has also appointed DRG as the Overall Program Manager for its undersea cable network project, which is under construction.

Once completed, Gulf Bridge International’s new undersea cable network will connect all of the Gulf States to one another, and to the rest of the world. The network will connect the Gulf region states in a "Gulf Ring" system, in addition to an onward connectivity to Far East via India and Europe via Italy. It is expected that this service will be launched by 2011.

David Ross Group Inc is a company dealing with the development of undersea fiber networks. DRG will be serving as overall Program Manager for the effort and will lead the GBI development team during the development of the new undersea cable network.

According to officials at David Ross Group, the company provides broad range of technical, commercial, as well as managerial skills that are necessary to transform needs for international connectivity into operational networks.

DRG will offering GBI with specialists in the various technical and commercial aspects of system design, procurement, implementation, operation, and maintenance of the network - as part of the overall program management. 

Ahmed Mekky, CEO of Gulf Bridge, said: "To succeed in a venture such as this requires that the development team have a broad range of specialized skills, and the practical experience to efficiently manage through the myriad issues that will arise. DRG brings all of this to the GBI Team."

Officials at GBI said that the GBI network will be developed and owned by GCC strategic investors who are building strategic infrastructure to serve the entire Gulf region. This GBI network will be configured as a self-healing ring network within the Gulf, thereby ensuring protection from cable cuts and maximum quality of service with minimum disruption.

The undersea cable network will be providing a capacity of 2.56 Tbps along with the option to upgrade to a true 64x40-Gbps per-fiber-pair, 5.18-terabit system, thereby facilitating real-time communications for telecom operators and other major industries, while advancing service offerings in the Gulf area.

Recently, GBI signed a supply and construction contract with Tyco Telecommunications, a business unit of Tyco Electronics (News - Alert). Tyco Telecommunications will be handling design, manufacturing, permitting, deployment, and testing of GBI's undersea cable network, and also the onward connectivity to Europe and India.