euNetworks (news) said this morning that it has deployed an intercity fiber link between London and Dublin capable of 8.8Tbps, completing the meshing of its 13 metro markets into a single optical domain. The independent European metro operator has long been in Dublin of course, but had connected the city to the rest of its fiber via leased capacity. The additional intercity fiber will let them complete their service set across all markets.
euNetworks is doing this by partnering with that new 131km CeltixConnect cable across the Irish sea from Sea Fibre Networks, which has shifted the economics of connectivity to Dublin since launching earlier this year. They added that to terrestrial segments from FibreSpeed across Wales and from the UK dark fiber provider Geo through Bristol, Birmingham, and Manchester. With all that UK fiber outside of the central London hub, perhaps they will also find start to see demand for services nationally in the UK like they have in Germany.
Dublin used to get no attention at all from the bandwidth world, but in the past few years has become a key node in the European market. Colt also recently bought fiber on this route, and others are probably considering it as well. Sea Fibre Networks raised $15M last year to help build the 144 count fiber cable. I wonder what their next project might be.
As for euNetworks, several people have asked me if they could be Zayo’s next target. Yes, I suppose they could since the assets would be quite complementary and the management teams obviously know each other quite well already. But on the other hand, Zayo may be busy for a few quarters and in the meantime it could be euNetworks does some buying of its own now that it has had the Lambdanet assets under its belt for a full year.
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Categories: Fiber Networks · Metro fiber · Undersea cables
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Do you know which fiber assets Eunetworks uses in Germany today?
Lambdanet had a contract with the german dark fiber provider Gasline, but I don´t know if they are still using this network.
Some years ago, Eunetworks bought several Viatel assets in Germany (e.g. the circe 3-network which Viatel had built together with Metromedia and Carrier1) – but seams not to be clear if it still belongs to Eunetworks.