Global Roundup 5-19: TAT-14, KDDI, Pacnet, and Global Crossing

There were several items of interest in the international arena lately.

TAT-14, the consortium-owned transatlantic cable, is finally going to get a big upgrade.  Mitsubishi Electric announced that it signed a contract to add 40Gbps DWDM capability, which according to the PR will increase the cable’s total capacity by a factor of 7.  I *think* TAT-14 had been at 640Gbps, so if my memory is correct this would take it up to 4-5Tbps.  Consortium members include Abovenet, AT&T, DT, FT, KPN, TeliaSonera, and Verizon.

KDDI announced that it has signed an agreement to with Rostelecom to upgrade their mutual cable route that runs between Japan and Europe via the Russia-Japan Cable Network and the Transit Europe-Asia cable.  The upgrade will bring RJCN up to 640Gbps and is expected to be finished in the first quarter of 2012.  The overland routes across Russia and China have been changing the way traffic to and from Asia is routed, especially in the case of low latency requirements.  In fact, during the aftermath of the March earthquake in Japan, KDDI routed a bunch of its traffic through Vladivostok.

In India, Asia-Pacific operator Pacnet officially opened its new international gateway facility in Chennai.  The new presence helps them increase their foothold in India, which has long been a goal.  It should be viewed alongside their recent announcement of a direct Chennai-Los Angeles link in partnership with Bharti, which itself replaced plans for West Asia Crossing.

And Global Crossing took a deeper plunge into managed services for large enterprises with an expansion of its security portfolio.  They are integrating customer premises equipment from Fortinet along with management software from HP’s ArcSight into their offerings.  In the past, Global Crossing had utilized partners and maintained less of this capability in-house.

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Categories: Internet Backbones · Undersea cables