Tuesday Bytes: PEACE, NEC, Fortinet, Lumen, Brightspeed

A subsea cable splice, a new global partnership, and a key M&A regulatory hurdle cleared:

The PEACE cable system’s eastern half has completed its final splice. PEACE and its landing partner Cybernet in Pakistan announced the achievement yesterday, bringing PEACE ashore in Karachi, Pakistan. PEACE connects Karachi with the French port of Marseille via Zafarana, Egypt. Initial capacity on the Pakistan-Egypt segment is 96Tbps, with double that on the Mediterranean side, while atency between Pakistan and France will be reduced to 92ms. Construction is underway for an extension to Singapore as well.

NEC and Fortinet are teaming up for 5G security. The Japan-based systems integrator and the cybersecurity expert will jointly build secure 5G networks for service providers leveraging the former’s professional services and the latter’s solutions portfolio. The two will focus on network security use cases such as RAN, mobile roaming, Gi-LAN/N6, and edge cloud security.

Lumen’s sale assets across 20 states crossed a major regulatory hurdle yesterday. The FCC has cleared the $7.5B transaction with the Apollo funds, which means the transfer of ILEC assets across 20 states is expected to close in ‘early Q4’. Lumen keeps its ILEC footprint in 16 states of course. Both companies plan to invest substantial resources into fiber broadband buildouts in their respective territories.

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Categories: ILECs, PTTs · Mergers and Acquisitions · Security · Wireless