Colt Upgrades Network, Expands Enterprise Voice

Colt has been busy upgrading its pan-European and global network capabilities, making two interesting announcements yesterday.

Colt and Cisco have been working for some time on a system-wide upgrade to Colt’s IQ Network. The two have now added a combination of end-to-end segment routing and Ethernet VPN to the mix, improving automation, simplifying the network, and reducing operating costs. Network availability, resiliancy, and utilization were also improved. They have been building the upgraded network using the Cisco NCS 5500 and ASR 9000 platforms.

Meanwhile, Colt is also taking on the enterprise voice market in a bigger way. The company has expanded its Inbound Voice Services footprint to 10 new markets on three continents: the USA, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, Norway, Finland, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, and Luxembourg.  The footprint had until now been a western European thing, but can now support Colt’s ambitions to serve the global enterprise market.

Colt has been raising its game over the last few years, taking aim at new markets and leveraging new technologies. It has been a largely organic effort, though I can’t help but wonder if they will eventually look to use the platform they’ve developed for some consolidation.  With Level 3 now part of CenturyLink and Interoute soon to be part of GTT, might Colt at some point take a swing at someone like Cogent or Tata Communications?

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: Metro fiber · Telecom Equipment · VoIP