Wednesday Bytes: Sparkle, Econet, Ericsson, Colt, Equinix, Vocus

Two subsea projects, a 5G vendor win, and an expanded SDN partnership:

Sparkle says that the laying of the BlueMed cable is now well underway. The BlueMed cable will connect points in Italy, France, Greece, and Israel, and has already arrived at its landing platform in the city of Genoa. Branches to Sardinia and Roam alre already in place, and Palermo is up next. BlueMed is one piece of the Blue Submarine Cable System project, which is backed by Google and others.

Econet has tapped Ericsson for an upgrade of its wireless infrastructure in Zimbabwe. Ericsson’s tech will go toward upgrades of Econet’s mobile core and RAN as the company prepares to move to 5G. It’s an expansion of an existing relationship, now leveraging cloud infrastructure and other capabilities. The upgrades will be felt first in Harare.

Colt says it will be working yet more closely with Equinix. They have deployed software-driven connectivity in Spain, Italy, and Sweden by interconnecting with Equinix Fabric, moving beyond the initial deployments in the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Colt says it has been seeing high double digit revenue growth from enterprise customers who self provision, and expects that to continue in 2023.

And Vocus has begun rolling out the last piece of its DJSC cable system. DJSC stands for Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable, which pretty much tells you what it will connect. The last leg will span 1000km between Port Hedland and Christmas Island, connecting up the Australia Singapore Cable with the North-West Cable System. At Port Hedland it will also connect to Vocus’ planned terrestrial connection to Perth. Alcatel Submarine Networks is doing the heavy lifting on the subsea cable deployment, which is expected to be live later this year. 

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Categories: SDN · Telecom Equipment · Undersea cables · Wireless