Friday Roundup: Birch, Subcom, SEAX

Some UC and two submarine cable items:

Birch Communications took aim at unified communications & collaboration this week with an upgrade to its cloud-based PBX offerings. They have upgraded their TotalCloud PBX Platform and added a Hub app to it that includes collaboration features. Birch has been relatively quiet since completing the acquisition of Primus’s Canadian assets, focusing on its integration projects, organic growth, and product enhancements like this one. But I’ll bet we see them return to the acquisition trail again over the winter.

TE Subcom has had a busy month. Along with news from the PLCN and Hawaiki cable systems in the Pacific, they were also named the system supply partner for the MAREA cable system in the Atlantic. Backed by Microsoft, Facebook, and Telefonica, MAREA will connect Virginia Beach with Bilbao in northern Spain and is expected to be done next year this time if all goes well. As long as the project doesn’t get hung up somewhere along the way, it will be the third transatlantic cable to be built since the dot com crash. Hibernia Networks’ Express cable system came online last year and Aqua Comms’ AEConnect earlier this year. For MAREA, the surveys are complete and Subcom’s ships will be on the job starting next year.

And, also under the waves, Super Sea Cable has officially launched its efforts to build the SEAX system. Over a 5 year span, SEAX plans to start out small by connecting Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, stretch east toward the US via Guam, and then hook up Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, and other regional markets. The first phase will be 250km and 24 fiber pairs between and will be built by Huawei Marine.

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Categories: Undersea cables · Unified Communications