Level 3 Communications has expanded and upgraded its Latin American network in four of the region’s largest countries – Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela – to support what it says is a growing desire from carrier and business customers for higher speed integrated IP solutions. Focusing on Buenos Aires, the service provider expanded its Argentina metro Ethernet network, including upgrades to a number of its optical rings in the Macro/Microcenter. In Brazil, Level 3 expanded its national backbone network by deploying a new metro network route in Porto Alegre and enhancing the capacity in Rio de Janeiro to meet increasing demands in the Botafogo and Barra neighbourhoods. Finally, in Colombia and Venezuela the service provider extended network coverage, adding Chuao and La Salle to its Metro plan in Venezuela by deploying new fibre solutions and expanding the capacity of Gateway La Urbina, the main site in Caracas.
TeliaSonera International Carrier (TSIC) has announced the completion of a major North American network expansion, with the addition of 18,400km of fibre to its global backbone. By doing so, the company will extend its reach to 44 US cities by 31 December 2014. Going forward, the network expansion will enable TSIC to provide diverse connectivity into South America, where it is experiencing rapid growth.
China Unicom Americas (CUA), the North American subsidiary of China Unicom, has established a new point of presence (PoP) in Seattle in order to extend its data services to customers in the US and Canada. With this new PoP, CUA said it will be able to extend its product and service lines closer to its customers, including access to low latency routes to major financial hubs such as New York and Chicago.
Deutsche Telekom’s International Carrier Sales & Solutions (ICSS) unit and Beeline Russia, the domestic subsidiary of international player Vimpelcom Group, have jointly announced the establishment of seamless interconnection between their IPX networks. Vimpelcom said that it selected ICSS because of its ‘high expertise in this field and the large number of partner contracts and mobile operators’ interconnections including, but not limited to, T-Mobile’.
A new partnership between Telecom Namibia, NewTelco SA and Germany’s Deutscher Commercial Internet Exchange (DE-CIX) has confirmed that it will establish international access points in South Africa and Namibia connecting to the German internet exchange. Last year Telecom Namibia and NewTelco SA worked together to establish points of presence (PoP) in South Africa and various European communication hubs.
Optical transport equipment vendor Coriant says it has partnered with Polish alternative service provider Netia to trial 400Gbps DWDM technology. The contract represents Coriant’s second reported trial of 400Gbps technology, following a similar endeavour with A1 Telekom Austria.
Hawaiki Cable Limited, the New Zealand-based owner and developer of the Hawaiki submarine cable system, has announced that it will land its proposed 14,000km trans-Pacific cable in Oregon, in the United States. As such, the company has signed turnkey contracts with US providers Tillamook Lightwave and CoastCom for key infrastructure and connectivity, including a cable landing station, terrestrial infrastructure and a new fibre backhaul network that will connect the cable landing station to the city of Hillsboro, near Portland.
South African IT services provider Dimension Data has confirmed that it will launch four new global datacentres in the coming months, in order to address demand for enterprise-class cloud facilities. Services will become available at the following managed cloud platform (MCP) locations: Ashburn, Virginia, US; Melbourne, Australia (November 2013); London, UK and Sao Paulo, Brazil (both January 2014). The new facilities bring the company’s total number of MCP locations to eleven.
Colonel Le Dang Dzung, deputy general director of Viettel Group, has confirmed that the military-backed telco will invest around USD200 million next year to build what it claims will be ‘the biggest telecom network infrastructure’ in the landlocked west African country of Burkina Faso. The deal will also see Viettel overseeing a project designed to extend broadband connectivity to schools. The deal was agreed on 5 November.