Int’l Bytes: Infinera, Dark Fibre Africa, Omantel, ECCAS

A few bits of news from around the world worth noting before everyone heads out this Friday.

As promised, Infinera trotted out its new technology at OFC this week. They announced a successful demonstration of 600Gbps wavelengths over a distance of 250km on a production network of an unnamed ‘leading European service provider’. If I had to guess, Infinera had a lot of gear deployed at Interoute, which is now GTT of course. They also demonstrated 500G over a distance of 500km.

Dark Fibre Africa has made good on its plans to expand northward out of South Africa and into Zimbabwe. The infrastructure provider has officially opened an office in Harare, from which it will build out its open-access infrastructure. Zimbabwe’s evolving political situation certainly could be an opportunity to get some fiber built.  The Zimbabwe operations will be led by industry veteran Simon Chimutsotso.

Omantel is also planning a larger international presence. The Middle-Eastern provider has created a new international wholesale company, with the rather unoriginal name Omantel International. OTI will run their international voice business, growing the ecosystem of voice agreements and adding other services to the portfolio over time.

And also in Africa, eleven countries in central Africa have fiber on their minds. The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) has decided to work together to build out some regional connectivity. Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Rwanda hope to connect each of their 11 capitals to two other capitals.

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Categories: Fiber Networks · Telecom Equipment · VoIP