Int'l Roundup: Liquid, NTT, GTT, BICS, Pacnet

Rob Powell/Telecom Ramblings
20 Oct 2014
00:00

Some interesting international network deals worth a quick look:

Liquid Telecom is starting to extend its reach beyond Africa. The nascent Pan-African fiber backbone has picked Japan’s NTT Communications for IP transit services.

All the new submarine connectivity to Africa has helped stimulate demand, which is now growing at a greater-than-50% annual clip albeit from a low base. Liquid Telecom’s terrestrial fiber expansion has taken it deeper into Rwanda lately.

For its part, NTT’s IP backbone is one of the world’s largest but Africa isn’t territory it has dabbled in too frequently.

GTT is meanwhile upgrading its European capacity with some help from the Belgian-based network operator BICS. BICS operates some 9,000 route kilometers of fiber in western Europe, including connectivity to the Marseilles landing stations where EIG and SEA-ME-WE-4 come ashore.

The upgrade will give GTT more raw European capacity to supplement its IP and Ethernet backbone, including that of the 100GbE variety. GTT recently moved to purchase UNSi in the US, but I wonder if they might show up in European consolidation at some point too.

Finally, Pacnet has turned to BTI Systems to upgrade its metro networks for better cloud connectivity. They’re deploying the Canadian vendor’s gear in their Hong Kong and Tokyo data centers, giving them 200G per slot now and expansion room to 400G and 1Tb down the road.

Pacnet’s business model has shifted toward cloud networking and data centers in recent years, and this is just one more step along that path.

This article was authored by Rob Powell and was originally posted on Telecomramblings.com

Rob Powell is founder & editor of Telecom Ramblings, which was set up in 2008. The website is dedicated to discussing trends and developments in the telecom industry.

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