Int’l Roundup: Level 3, NTT, Huawei Marine, Vodacom

Here’s a quick rundown of four items from three other continents that has come out in the last 24 hours or so:

Level 3 picked up yet another enterprise deal down in Latin America. The media group Editora Globo has tapped the network operator for 300Mbps of secure internet access, 2Gbps of Ethernet LAN connectivity, and data center services as well. They’ll be moving into Level 3’s Cotia data center in São Paulo, which you may recall just got a substantial power boost after Thanksgiving.

NTT has expanded its footprint in southeast Asia. They have opened a new data center in the suburbs of Bangkok, Thailand, adding some 3,800 square meters of colo space to their inventory. The $32M facility is located in the Amata Nakorn Industria Estate in an area of low flood risk. NTT has further plans to expand in Thailand over the next few years.

Another key submarine cable has been upgraded to 100G. Huawei Marine and the WACS Consortium today finished up the upgrade of the West African Cable System, which spans 14,530km between London and South Africa. The solution also uses Huawe’s SD-FEC and bit interleaved technology to increase the design capacity to 14.5Tbps, almost tripling the original number.

And speaking of South Africa, Vodacom and Neotel are taking another swing at getting their merger past regulatory hurdles. The South African units of Vodafone and Tata have agreed to a modified deal that would exclude spectrum and licenses, and which offers a roaming agreement to all mobile network operators. The deal was originally announced more than 18 months ago, but ran into opposition even after getting provisional approval from regulators.

If you haven't already, please take our Reader Survey! Just 3 questions to help us better understand who is reading Telecom Ramblings so we can serve you better!

Categories: Datacenter · Internet Backbones · Mergers and Acquisitions · Telecom Equipment · Undersea cables