International network operator glbc has unveiled plans to upgrade its MAC, PAC, and SAC submarine cable systems. These systems work together to link the Caribbean, Central America, and South America to both the east and west coasts of North America and the new capacity will come online during Q2 and Q3. Global Crossing isn’t the only increasing capacity to and from Latin America, just a few days ago Globenet announced the completion of an upgrade of its own. However, I was somewhat surprised to see this upgrade, considering it was just 9 months ago that the company that the company announced a significant upgrade across all three systems, and less than 6 months since they finished implementing them. The new capacity being added in the next few months isn’t as much as last years, but is a solid chunk nonetheless.
According to Omar Altaji, Managing Director of Worldwide Carrier Services at Global Crossing, traffic growth in the region has been exceeding forecasts and shows no signs of slowing down. That growth as well as trends and events on the horizon have led to an acceleration of the usual upgrade cycle. After all, we can’t run out of bandwidth in and out of Brazil during the World Cup this summer now can we.
There are also rumbles of additional raw capacity upgrades on the way on other parts of the Global Crossing network, both submarine and terrestrial. I am hearing similar stories from other network operators, which will please the equipment providers who really need a good stretch coming out of 2009.
I can’t complain about traffic growth of course, the more the better. Now we just need to see revenues surge similarly across the sector.
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Categories: Internet Traffic · Undersea cables
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Does anyone know who Global Crossing’s terrestrial partners are? Wondering whose routes they’re using when not under the ocean.
In the US, they have IRUs for some 24 fibers on the Qwest network. In the UK, they bought the old Racal footprint more than a decade ago. In continental Europe I’m not sure, though in Germany at least I believe they pulled their own fiber through leased conduit. And in South America they use whatever Impsat came with of course, they were partners before the merger as well.
In London, they do operate a metro network that I believe is their own cable.