Ooredoo Oman and DE-CIX to launch nationwide internet exchange in early 2027

Ooredoo Oman and DE-CIX have signed an agreement to launch Gulf Gateway-IX, a carrier-neutral nationwide internet exchange in Oman, during the GCC Middle East 2026 and SIS summit held at The St. Regis Al Mouj in Muscat. The platform will operate as a unified virtual exchange connecting the northern and southern hubs of Muscat and Salalah under a single synchronised fabric.

The infrastructure will be hosted in Ooredoo data centres located in Barka and Salalah, which sit approximately 1,000 kilometres apart and are directly interconnected to link the north and south of the country. The exchange will also be accessible through the Equinix MC1 facility in Muscat and the SN1 facility in Salalah. DE-CIX will oversee technical operations through its DE-CIX as a Service programme, combining its platform technology with Ooredoo Oman's local infrastructure.

Under the unified architecture, network operators, enterprises, and content providers connected in either hub can exchange traffic across both locations using a single port and a common peering policy. According to the partners, the setup will allow organisations and free zones outside Muscat to access Tier-1 hyperscalers—including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud—as well as content delivery networks with the same low latency as entities in the capital.

For the wider region, the platform capitalises on subsea cable landings linking Muscat to the Gulf and Asia, and Salalah to East Africa, Europe, and India. The partners stated this dual-hub corridor provides carriers in the GCC and East Africa with a terrestrial alternative to maritime choke points and Red Sea bottlenecks, allowing networks to route around regional subsea disruptions without international transit detours. Gulf Gateway-IX is scheduled to go live in early 2027.

Sources: DE-CIX

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