Int’l Bytes: Juniper, Telefonica, Vodafone

I’ll be traveling to/from Metro Connect for the first half of the week.  But before I go, here’s a quick rundown on some early news from this week from around the world:

Juniper Networks helping the Tokyo Stock Exchange with an extensive upgrade of its trading platform.  Juniper’s MX480 router will be powering the TSE’s ‘arrowhead’ platform, boosting connectivity to other Japanese financial trading sites, including the Tokyo Financial Exchange, the Japan Securities Depository Center, and the Tokyo Commedity Exchange as well as improving speed, reliability, security, and scalability generally.  The TSE already had various Juniper gear and software in the existing network of course.

Telefonica has announced plans to take much of its 4G network footprint virtual.  They are working with Huawei to build a large-scale virtual evolved packet core across the company’s networks in 11 Latin American countries plus Germany and Spain over in Europe.  The upgrade project, which Telefonica is calling Unica, will help them create mobile virtual networks and private LTE networks as well as help them meet the needs of the coming “Internet of Things”.

And the merger talk of the day comes from the Indian subcontinent.  Vodafone has apparently confirmed that it is in talks to merge its Indian subsidiary with rival operator Idea Cellular.  The supposedly all-share deal that could be in the works would perhaps help relieve some of the pricing pressure that India has been seeing.  The arrival of Reliance Jio as a competitive threat has shaken things up to say the least, and Vodafone wrote off about $5B of the unit’s value last year as a result.

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Categories: Mergers and Acquisitions · Telecom Equipment · Wireless