Int’l Bytes: Telstra, Interoute, Epsilon, Orange, Telxius, RETN

Still catching up on some of the news from out in Chicago at ITW last week, here are a few news bytes from around the world:

Interoute has invested in some new connectivity between the UK and the rest of Europe. They have announced new 100G routes between the Midlands region to the continent that bypass the London metro area. The move will add resiliency, and will probably fit well with the plans of Interoute’s awaiting buyer GTT.

RETN made three expansion announcements last week. In North America, the UK-based network added two new PoPs, hooking up 151 Front in Toronto and Equinix DC2 in Ashburn. In the APAC region, they added a new PoP in Singapore, hooking the key southeast asian hub to both Marseille and Hong Kong via the SEA-ME-WE 5 and SJC cable systems. And RETN also upgraded the TRANSKZ terrestrial link between Europe and the Far East to 100G. All three moves add to RETN’s reach outside Europe, suggesting significant plans to grow its international depth further.

Epsilon has announced plans to deploy 100G Ethernet technology across the company’s footprint.  They are looking to better target hyper-scale opportunities with the company’s growing Infiny interconnection platform.  In phase 1 they will deploy 100G on their north american footprint, and by mid-summer 2018 they expect to start on Phase 2 between some 50 European markets.  After that will come APAC markets in 2019.

The French incumbent Orange has unveiled plans for a new Wholesale and International Networks division, which will take over all wholesale activities of the company whether in France or internationally.  They have appointed Jérôme Barré as CEO, while Pierre-Louis de Guillebon will continue to run the international connectivity and transmission services business within the new division.

Telxius says its BRUSA cable system is on course to go live this summer.  The new cable will hook up Virginia Beach with Rio de Janeiro with branches to Puerto Rico and Fortaleza.  It will complement the MAREA cable connecting Virginia Beach to Spain which opened recently as well, offering a new alternative route between South America and continental Europe that passes through neither New York nor London, and bypasses Miami as well.

And Telstra has also been busy augmenting its presence in Asia. The Australian-based operator has expanded its ‘Always On’ service with sub-10G options on subsea routes between Hong Kong and both Singapore and Japan. They also announced lower latencies of 28.8ms between SGX and HKEX, 177.8ms for ASX-CME, 178.2 for ASX/EQCH, 41.9ms between Singapore and Taiwan, and 13.9ms between Hong Kong and Taiwan.

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Categories: Fiber Networks · Interconnection · Internet Backbones