e& UAE Upgrades EMIX Network to 400G to Support Surging Data Demand
The move to 400G significantly boosts network capacity while reducing end-to-end latency, ensuring improved performance and efficiency as data consumption and AI-driven traffic continue to rise.
e& UAE has announced a major upgrade of its EMIX network, deploying 400G links across its core infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates to support sustained traffic growth exceeding 20% annually. EMIX is one of the region’s leading IP transit platforms, serving carriers, internet service providers, and mobile operators across the Middle East and North Africa.
The move to 400G significantly boosts network capacity while reducing end-to-end latency, ensuring improved performance and efficiency as data consumption and AI-driven traffic continue to rise. e& UAE also confirmed that the upgrade will be extended to EMIX’s international points of presence (PoPs), strengthening connectivity and cost efficiency for regional and global partners.
The multi-year upgrade program is being delivered in collaboration with Cisco and introduces advanced AI and machine learning-driven network automation. This enables intent-based, closed-loop operations that accelerate service provisioning, minimize human error, and enhance overall network reliability as demand scales.
Commenting on the deployment, Khalid Al Khaja, Vice President, Business & IP Core at e& UAE, said the transition to 400G is aimed at providing wholesale and operator customers with greater capacity headroom, lower latency, and improved unit economics. He added that Cisco was selected for its leadership in silicon, software, and automation, with a clear roadmap to extend these benefits to EMIX’s international PoPs.
The upgrade leverages Cisco’s ASR9000 Aggregation Services Routers, which are designed with modular and future-ready architectures. This allows e& UAE to adopt 400G-enabled Ethernet line cards through a relatively seamless upgrade path, ensuring scalability for future growth.
Zayan Sadek, Managing Director for Service Providers MEA at Cisco, noted that as AI adoption and digital transformation accelerate across the Middle East, resilient and high-capacity network infrastructure is becoming increasingly vital. He said EMIX’s shift to 400G underscores e& UAE’s commitment to world-class connectivity and marks a new phase of intelligent, high-performance networking in the region.
