Around the World 1/16: Atrato, KDDI, C&W, Arctic Fibre, Level 3

Here’s a quick look at some of the internationally-oriented news of today and late last week:

Netherlands-based Atrato IP Networks is bulking up its infrastructure, and has selected Hibernia Atlantic to help them do it. Hibernia’s connectivity will add capacity and diversity between their major US and European hubs, including Ashburn-Chicago, Chicago-NYC, NYC-London, NYC-Ashburn, and London-Amsterdam. Note only one of those was transatlantic, the rest come via Hibernia’s terrestrial footprint. Atrato says it needs the additional capacity to handle a rapid increase in business – always a good thing to hear.

KDDI and Rostelecom have launched their low-latency terrestrial Asia-Europe link. They have now launched 10G wavelength service between Japan and Europe, claiming the shortest path on the market – 70-100ms shorter than via the Indian Ocean, and 45-60ms shorter than via the US and the Atlantic. KDDI and Rostelecom have been working together on this upgrade since last May.

Cable & Wireless says that it is collaborating with Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) to strengthen its data center portfolio and especially their cloud and managed offerings. They have been offering a Flexible Computing product in the UK, and will be going global with the effort by using Equinix’s global platform. Sounds familiar to other large international network operators targeting to the multinational space with the cloud, but perhaps with some catchup yet to do.

And Arctic Fibre added another ally, appointing AP Telecom as pre-sales manager. They join WFN Strategies, which was brought on last month to help design and implement the planned submarine cable effort linking Asia and Europe via the Northwest Passage. If the cable gets built, it will span 15,600 miles and connect Tokyo with London at just 168ms. The backers of the cable seem to have some high powered support in Canada, and the first link is supposed to be built in the third quarter of 2013. It should be interesting to watch how things unfold as they get all their ducks in a row this year.

Finally, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) picked up a contract in the southern hemisphere.  Brazil’s Avianca will be using the company’s IP and data center services to help with a spike in growth, especially in Sao Paolo between the company’s headquarters and its operations and maintenance sites at the airport.  Obviously, this deal comes via the GC Impsat assets acquired in the Global Crossing deal.

 

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Categories: Cloud Computing · Internet Backbones · Undersea cables