Global Roundup 1/11: BT, PCCW, GBI, TE Subcom, Perseus, Vaioni

Let’s take a quick look at some news on the international front:

British Telecom (NYSE:BT, news, filings) has been making some international news of late, today announcing a contract with office products retailer Staples. The four year deal will see BT supply a secure, resilient European network spanning seven countries and 325 locations. BT’s international services division also recently won a contract renewal with Bristol-Myers Squibb and added several additional nodes to its network in North America.

PCCW Global is taking the 100Gbps plunge with gear from Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings).  They will be upgrading their RNAL submarine cable ring in the North Pacific, which hooks up the usual suspects of South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan with 9,800km of fiber.  Ciena’s coherent technology as well as enhanced monitoring capabilities will help them keep up with bandwidth demand in the quickly growing region.

India’s Sify says that its cable landing station in Mumbai is now operational, and Gulf Bridge International (news) is the first tenant, landing the eastern leg of its brand new submarine cable there. GBI should be fully open for business in a few weeks, last I heard. We interviewed GBI’s CEO Ahmed Mekky here a couple months back, where he suggested that the company may consider further eastward expansion from Mumbai.

TE Subcom says it has completed the first 40Gbps upgrade on a submarine cable system spanning more than 9,500km.  The transpacific system in question was not mentioned, but the overall theoretical capacity was increased by 42%.  Hmmm, that’s actually not all that much for wavelengths that carry four times as much data, I guess the spacing remains wide for now.  But it’s a major step forward nonetheless.

Perseus Telecom (news) says it has moved into 60 Hudson Street in New York City, acquiring a key new data hub. The expansion enables the company to bring its ultra-low latency service to more trading firms and other financial companies. Back in August, they added a node down in Sao Paolo, riding Globenet’s network down from New York.  No doubt there are many other trading hubs that are beckoning these days.

And finally, vaioni is leveraging Carrier Ethernet gear from [comany id=”cien”] to power its UK Ethernet aggregation network. Just last week they launched a 35mb EFM leased line product via a partnership with the incumbent provider BT, which is no doubt related.  Vaioni is new to me, but they’ve been making some noise lately.

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: Ethernet · ILECs, PTTs · Low Latency · Undersea cables