How have recent disruptions shaped the Middle East market?
The market is moving from capacity-led decisions to strategy-led decisions. Recent regional disruption has not changed our strategy; it has validated the customer need behind it. Customers still need coverage and bandwidth, of course, but the bigger questions now are about resilience, route diversity, operational accountability, AI readiness, and how quickly they can scale across markets. The market has moved from capacity buying to risk removal.
“Disruption does not limit the opportunity in the Middle East. It makes the opportunity clearer; it shows why customers need flexible infrastructure and partners who understand how to operate across the region.”
That also makes partner selection more important. Whether the discussion is about resilient corridors, distributed hubs, consolidated roaming, signaling, voice and messaging, digital platforms, or trust controls, the common theme is the same: remove risk for the customer.
For ZOI, that is a positive shift. The region is ready for a different model for hyperscale networking.
How have disruptions changed customer behavior?
Disruption has changed the conversation in a fundamental way. Resilience is now a board-level question, not only a network-engineering question.
The reality is that there will always be something happening somewhere: cable cuts, geopolitical issues, congestion points, and regulatory changes. The Red Sea cable cuts made that clear. Resilience is not a cable-counting exercise. Even several systems can be fragile if they share the same geography, landing constraints, or repair exposure. The question is not whether disruption exists. The question is whether your network strategy is flexible enough to adapt.
We’ve seen a move away from simply buying capacity towards building resilient architecture. Customers want diversity. They want partners who can help them plan, reroute quickly, and make practical decisions under pressure. Increasingly, customers also need to show their regulators, boards, and own customers how they will maintain uptime and their fallback options if conditions change.
That’s where ZOI adds real value.
Our teams worked around the clock to reroute our customers’ traffic around the Strait of Hormuz and add additional resilience to customer networks. It wasn’t just about providing another circuit; it was about helping customers maintain continuity across their networks. That is the difference between selling capacity and selling operational assurance.
That’s why we always say hyperscale networking is about outcomes, not just infrastructure.
How should customers think about resilience in this environment?
The Middle East has always been strategically important geography, so naturally there are key routes and corridors that matter globally.
The recent escalation around the Arabian Gulf has increased the risk. Subsea cables, landing stations, terrestrial routes, cloud regions, and data centers are now part of one continuity architecture. The requirement is no longer simply more cables; it is a subsea-terrestrial mesh with named alternatives and clear recovery logic.
ZOI is developing alternative corridors, including routes connecting the Gulf towards Europe through Iraq and Jordan, while continuing to strengthen our subsea ecosystem through Oman and across the wider region. That means westbound options towards Europe, eastbound options towards Asia, and a new very important additional redundancy layer: Australia.
“Our role is to give customers neutral and operationally reliable choices. That is exactly why customers need partners who can engineer risk out of the architecture rather than simply adding another link.”
When ZOI says “built different,” what does that mean?
It means we were purpose-built around customer requirements, rather than legacy operating models.
ZOI is purely focused on wholesale. Our entire organization is designed around enabling carriers, hyperscalers, neoclouds, OTTs, and partners.
Operationally, we also work very differently.
Customers don’t want a stitched-together experience with multiple vendors, multiple escalations, and inconsistent accountability between countries. They want simplicity. One partner, one network, one commercial framework.
“Customers get a consistent experience, unified SLAs, and direct operational engagement through our iNOC.”
Our teams are also empowered to act quickly. Customers can pick up the phone and get decisions made. Increasingly, trust has to be evidenced through governance, security, ESG, operational maturity, and proof of recovery, not just claimed in a proposal.
ZOI is increasingly in data center conversations. How does that fit into its wider strategy?
It’s a natural progression for us, but we are not trying to copy the mega-campus model. Mega-campus builds will still have a role, but we believe the center of gravity is shifting from the facility itself to the network between facilities.
We are developing smaller, hyper-connected digital hubs across the region. These are not isolated real estate assets. They sit inside ZOI’s wider subsea and terrestrial network, so connectivity, interconnection, cloud access, and data center capacity are designed together from the start.
That gives customers agility. They can deploy locally, shift workloads between markets, interconnect between hubs, and optimize around latency, sovereignty, policy, cost, and performance.
It also reduces concentration risk and supports content localization as more regional traffic and interconnection demand moves closer to end users and global platforms.
What advice would you give to North American hyperscalers, neoscalers, and carriers looking for partners in the Middle East?
Choose a partner that helps you understand the region, not just sells you capacity. The right partner removes uncertainty as much as it provides infrastructure.
“The Middle East is not a single market. Success here depends on experience, relationships, operational control, and the ability to work across markets with consistency.”
That is what we have built ZOI to do.
In a market where uptime is a board-level risk, confidence is the real product. We simplify access through one partner, one network, and one commercial framework, while continuing to invest in the next phase of digital infrastructure globally.
That’s what we mean when we say ZOI is built different.
Read the article from Telecom Review here: https://www.telecomreviewamericas.com/articles/exclusive-interviews/built-different-for-a-market-where-adaptability-is-essential/