Gulf Gateway-IX powered by DE-CIX, a revolutionary dual-hub topology bridges northern and southern Omani corridors, eliminating fragmented city-level peering while establishing Oman as a resilient, multi-landing digital hub gateway for the Gulf, Asia and Africa, to go live in early 2027
Muscat (Oman) / Frankfurt am Main (Germany)
Businesses and network operators in Oman will gain a new Internet Exchange after Ooredoo and DE-CIX today signed an agreement to launch Gulf Gateway-IX.
The agreement was signed at the GCC Middle East 2026 and SIS summit at The St. Regis Al Mouj, Muscat, where carriers and digital infrastructure operators from across the region convene.
Gulf Gateway-IX, the Sultanate’s carrier-neutral Internet Exchange, will be a unified, nationwide interconnection architecture seamlessly connecting Muscat and Salalah under a single, synchronized national exchange fabric.
Gulf Gateway-IX operates as a single virtual exchange across the Sultanate. A network operator, enterprise, or content provider peering in Muscat can exchange traffic directly and frictionlessly with peers connected in Salalah, and vice versa, via a single port and a unified peering policy.
Gulf Gateway-IX capitalises on Oman’s dual subsea corridors where Muscat serves as the primary northern gateway with major subsea cables landing from the GCC and Asia, while Salalah stands as the strategic southern subsea landing powerhouse connecting directly to East Africa, Europe, and India. Unifying both hubs allows networks to route around regional subsea disruptions seamlessly without needing international transit workarounds.
Aligned with Oman Vision 2040, this unified architecture establishes the Sultanate as the Middle East’s most resilient, integrated digital transit gateway.
With one port and national reach, operators and enterprises connect once in either Muscat or Salalah to gain immediate peering access to all networks connected across both hubs.
Gulf Gateway-IX will complement national enterprise digital requirements by democratizing enterprise digital performance nationwide, enabling enterprises, free zones, and public sector entities outside Muscat to gain the exact same low-latency, deterministic access to Tier-1 hyperscalers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud) and CDNs as organisations based in the capital area.
By transforming the entire Sultanate into one unified digital crossroad, Gulf Gateway-IX removes geographic disparities in connectivity, driving inward investment for hyperscale data centers, edge computing, and AI infrastructure across the whole of the Sultanate.
By seamlessly bridging Salalah and Muscat as one, Gulf Gateway-IX delivers the deterministic low latency, sovereign data protection, and massive bandwidth required to power Oman’s AI growth, edge inference, and sovereign models. This unified national fabric optimises industrial logistics, attracts high-value foreign direct investment, and empowers local enterprises to accelerate non-oil productivity across every governorate, catalysing the Sultanate’s AI-driven economic transformation in direct alignment with Oman Vision 2040.
By creating a synchronized unified northern and southern digital corridor, Oman shifts from being a passive subsea transit stop into an active, multi-continental aggregation hub bridging the GCC, the Indian subcontinent, and East Africa. Leveraging Salalah’s geographic proximity to the Horn of Africa and its subsea landings, paired with Muscat’s northern gateways into the Gulf and Asia, this unified platform eliminates costly detours through Europe and provides a terrestrial alternative to vulnerable Red Sea bottlenecks. Operators across East Africa and the wider region can now connect via a single port to directly peer with global hyperscalers, content delivery networks, and enterprise cloud applications, unlocking cost efficiencies and accelerating digital commerce across continents.
The new exchange will be housed in the Ooredoo data centres in Barka and in Salalah. The two sites, located approximately 1,000 kilometres apart, will be directly interconnected with optimised latency, acting as a super express corridor between the north and south of the country. In addition, the IX will be accessible through the Equinix data centres MC1 in Muscat and SN1 in Salalah.
Gulf Gateway-IX will connect directly with national, regional and international exchanges, linking Oman into a growing regional and global interconnection fabric.
Saoud Al Riyami, Chief Executive Officer of Ooredoo Oman, said: “We are redefining Oman’s role in the global digital economy. For our domestic enterprises, this fabric guarantees sovereign, ultra-low-latency connectivity essential to scale artificial intelligence, cloud workloads, and industrial automation across all governorates. Regionally, it provides GCC and East African operators with a direct, high-capacity alternative to vulnerable maritime choke points. Globally, it cements the Sultanate as the premier, carrier-neutral transit nexus bridging Asia, Africa, and Europe, unlocking high-value foreign digital investment and accelerating our non-oil economic diversification under Oman Vision 2040.”
Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX, said: “Gulf Gateway-IX powered by DE-CIX establishes a resilient interconnection platform in Oman at one of the most strategically important infrastructure locations on the Arabian Peninsula. Together with Ooredoo Oman, we are laying the foundations for direct, secure and sovereign data exchange, locally within the Sultanate, regionally across the Gulf and, in the future, with key international interconnection hubs.”
DE-CIX will manage the technical operations of Gulf Gateway-IX through its DE-CIX as a Service programme, bringing its platform technology and global interconnection expertise together with Ooredoo Oman’s local infrastructure and connectivity footprint.
Gulf Gateway-IX is scheduled to go live in early 2027.
