Friday Network News: November 2
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Friday Network News: November 2

Capacity brings you the latest network news. If you have network developments you'd like us to share, please tweet us @capacitymag or email robert.anderson@capacitymedia.com.



 

Mobile operator VimpelCom Lao is to expand its international IP capacity using the DiViCloud virtual network. The DiViCloud utilises smart nodes located at major internet junctions combined with optimisation technology to expand existing capacity. The virtual capacity added by the solution is delivered from PoPs in Hong Kong and will be added on top of the web caching mechanism already employed by VimpelCom Lao. "We have invested in expanding our virtual network to Asia and Russia, and now have the infrastructure to equip ISPs in the region with affordable virtual capacity,” said Eli Lifshits, director of sales at DiViNetworks.



 

 

eFive Telecoms has selected TE SubCom as cable supplier for the South Atlantic Express (SAEx) route between South Africa and Brazil. SAEx consists of two 80x100Gbps fibre pairs over 9,900km of cable. The route will connect Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Mtunzini with a spur to St Helena Island, before connecting on to Fortaleza, Brazil. There will also be a branching unit to enable further connectivity to west Africa. The cable will provide a wet link between submarine systems running down southern Africa’s east and west coasts and enhance South Africa’s connectivity by offering a clear differentiation from existing cables, according to eFive.


 

 

Hibernia Atlantic has been named as an Accredited Connectivity Partner (ACP) to the London Stock Exchange Group. The partnership is part of the group’s new connectivity service which allows customers direct access to its markets through ACPs. Hibernia will offer access to market data from the London Stock Exchange’s core markets including London Stock Exchange, Borsa Italiana, Oslo Bors and its multilateral trading facility Turquoise. It will allow member, non-member firms and independent software vendors increased flexibility when ordering connectivity services and market data access. 


 

 

Telstra’s global arm has expanded its global footprint with nine PoPs in London, Marseille, Stockholm, Osaka, Tokyo, Sydney, Hong Kong and Chicago. The expansion is being undertaken to satisfy increasing connectivity demands between key global markets, allowing customers to take advantage of growth opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the carrier. Telstra’s Chicago PoP is targeted at enterprise and wholesale customers looking for low latency connectivity into Asia-Pacific. The London site is Telstra’s second in the city, and will provide low latency routes from the financial district.



 

 

Cooperative telephone company Arthur Mutual, which serves rural northwest Ohio in the US, has selected Adtran to modernise its network. The FTTH network was funded by a loan from the US Department of Agriculture and is designed to offer triple play services. Adtran said the upgrade will allow Arthur to accommodate current and future bandwidth challenges by providing the flexibility to deploy fibre from either central office or remote terminals. The platforms central office equipment and remote terminals will be interconnected through a 10Gbps Ethernet ring protection switching system.


 

 

Etisalat Group is to offer international roaming Wifi services to enterprise and consumer customers through the iPass Open Mobile Exchange platform. The service will allow customer’s smartphones and tablets to connect to over one million Wifi hotspots in the iPass global network. Etisalat will initially roll out the service to customers in the UAE, Egypt and Nigeria in 2012, with other countries on the carrier’s footprint to follow.


 

 

UK operator Everything Everywhere (EE) has launched the country’s first LTE network with service in 11 cities. The network initially covers Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Sheffield and Southampton, and EE expects to expand coverage by 2,000 square miles each month. Five more cities are expected to be covered by the service by the end of 2012 followed by other cities and rural locations in 2013. EE is investing £1.5 billion in the network with coverage eventually planned to reach 98% of the population. EE also launched fibre broadband services offering downlink speeds of up to 76Mbps to approximately 11 million premises. As part of the launch EE, which is a JV between Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile and France Telecom’s Orange, has rebranded over 700 retail stores under the EE banner.



 

 

Philippine carrier Globe Telecom has announced the completion of the Boracay Submarine Cable System a two kilometre fibre-optic cable between Caticlan in the town of Malay, Antique to Boracay. The DWDM system has a capacity of 80 wavelengths at 40Gbps per wavelength and is expandable to 100Gbps. The project was managed by Chinese vendor Huawei and is part of a wider network modernisation programme due to be completed by the first quarter of 2013.


 

 

Pacnet has expanded its IP VPN footprint further into mainland China, after its Chinese joint venture, Pacnet Business Solutions (PBS), received an enhanced service licence from the Chinese government. The move expands PBS’s IP VPN coverage from 20 cities to 23 provinces, and the licence is the first of its kind to be awarded by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to a Sino-foreign telecoms joint venture. PBS presently operates data centres in five Chinese cities and provides internet access in 10. It now plans to connect its IP VPN service to its existing data centres, providing a platform to offer managed services and cloud-based services.



 

 

Chinese vendor Huawei has unveiled a carrier SDN prototype series designed to offer end-to-end SDN architecture for carrier networks. These include a generic SDN controller for hybrid SDN networking, an optical line terminal, a broadband network gateway and an SDN controller for transport networks. The vendor also demonstrated applications for carrier SDN technology in access networks, metro networks, transport networks and data centres. Huawei said it believes SDN will bring unique value in the access domain allowing operators to simplify operation of a large number of nodes. While for transport networks SDN will enable more flexible and fine grained provisioning and control of bandwidth resources.


KDDI’s data centre subsidiary Telehouse has launched its first Russian data centre in central Moscow. Telehouse Moscow is the company’s 45th global data centre and forms part of a global expansion strategy to accommodate the needs of its growing client base. The site was launched in partnership with local colocation operator Dataspace and is located within the company’s 6,200 square metre site. Telehouse Moscow will be managed by Telehouse’s European headquarters in London docklands and KDDI’s Russian operations will manage on-site connectivity. 



 

Richard Branson’s Virgin Group is in talks with Russian mobile operators as possible partners for the launch of a Virgin branded MVNO in the country. Virgin is looking to invest up to $1 billion in Russian-focussed businesses if plans for the MVNO and a flight route to Moscow go ahead, Branson told Reuters at a conference in Moscow. Potential partners for Virgin, include: MTS, which led the market in June 2012 with 27.1% market share; second ranked MegaFon with 24.2%; and VimpelCom with 21.7% during the same period. Rostelecom and Tele2 could also be other options. 



  

Turk Telekom is deploying Alcatel-Lucent’s VDSL2 technology to delivery broadband services including HDTV, video on demand and existing copper infrastructure. The deployment is part of Turk Telekom’s strategy to provide Turkish households with high-speed broadband by bringing fibre closer to homes and utilising existing copper wire infrastructure for last mile connectivity in a FTTB solution. This will allow Turk Telekom to deliver high-speed broadband in the shortest possible time frame, according to Alcatel. 



  



 


































































 









































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