Int’l Bytes: Level 3, Sparkle, XConnect, NTT, China Mobile

It’s time for a quick roundup of news from around the globe:

Level 3 picked up a disaster recovery deal down in Brazil. Caixa Segueros Group has picked their data center in São Paulo as a new contingency site. Level 3 will be managing the site, backing up the insurance group’s primary site in Brasilia. Should be an interesting month ahead for all internet infrastructure down in Brazil with the World Cup getting started in a few days.

Across the South Atlantic, TI Sparkle is making a move deeper into West Africa. They’ve partnered with Dolphin Telecom for a new PoP in Accra, the capital of Ghana. The Dubai-based Dolphin is the 2nd largest investor in the ACE (African Coast to Europe) cable system, which brought brought big bandwidth to the ports all along the west coast of Africa when it came online a year and a half ago.

In Europe, there was a bit of M&A worth noting in the VoIP and IP interconnection space. London-based XConnect has acquired eSolutions GMBH, which provides number portability services over in Germany. The combination of interconnection, telephone number registry, and number portability services seems to make a lot of sense as the industry shifts to the new paradigm.

NTT communications is building itself a new data center back in its home turf. The new facility will be built in Osaka, with the unoriginal name of Osaka 5, and will add 3,700 square meters or 1,600 racks to their footprint. As NTT’s cloud services catch on, they will be building out lots of new nextgen space like this around the world.

And the world’s largest mobile carrier is finally making another inorganic move outside its home in China. China Mobile is buying an 18% stake in Thailand’s True Corp for $881M. The deal gives True a foreign partner with deep pockets, and gives China Mobile a foothold in Southeast Asia that probably has underlying geo-political implications given everything else that has been going on around there lately.

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Categories: Datacenter · Internet Backbones · Mergers and Acquisitions · VoIP · Wireless