Google's Equiano subsea cable lands in Togo

Google's Equiano subsea cable, which will connect Lisbon, Portugal and Cape Town, South Africa with branching units along the west coast of Africa, will make Togo its first landing spot.

Representing the State, Société d’Infrastructures Numériques (SIN), a public telecommunications asset company, has strategically partnered with CSquared, an open access wholesale broadband infrastructure company, to create a joint venture – CSquared Woezon, which will be in charge of maintaining and operating the Equiano submarine cable as well as the existing e-Government and Communauté Electrique du Bénin (CEB) terrestrial optic fiber network located on the Togolese territory. Regarding the sale of international capacity, CSquared Woezon will provide open access to all national and regional operators on an objective, transparent and non-discriminatory commercial basis.

Nitin Gajria, Managing Director of Google Sub-Saharan Africa commented, “The landing of Equiano affirms Google’s commitment to the African continent, to support Africa’s digital transformation. We are thrilled that Togo will be Equiano’s first landing on the African continent, as it aligns with the country’s continuing efforts to promote digital inclusion for Africa. We look forward to working closely with the Togolese Government and The Ministry of Digital Economy and Transformation as they continue to build their digital infrastructure.”

https://www.csquared.com/togo-welcomes-googles-historic-equiano-subsea-cable-in-a-partnership-with-csquared-that-will-transform-the-countrys-broadband-landscape/

First subsea fiber cable to be landed on St Helena island

Monday, August 19, 2019  Google, Subsea  

The first fiber optic cable is expected to be landed on St. Helena, an island in the South Atlantic ocean that is a British Overseas Territory.

The fiber connection will be a spur from the main trunk of the Equiano cable, a new private subsea cable backed by Google that will connect Africa with Europe. The spur will be 1,140km long.

St. Helena is located 4,000 kilometres (2,500 mi) east of Rio de Janeiro and 1,950 kilometres (1,210 mi) west of the nearest point in Africa (the mouth of the Cunene River on the border between Namibia and Angola). The island has a population of 4,500.

http://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/subsea-cable-to-be-landed-on-st-helena/?highlight=equiano

Google announces Equiano cable from Portugal to South Africa

Sunday, June 30, 2019  Africa, Cable, Google, Subsea  

Google unveiled plans for new private subsea cable connecting Lisbon, Portugal and Cape Town, South Africa with branching units along the west coast of Africa.

The Equiano subsea cable, which is named for Olaudah Equiano, a Nigerian-born writer and abolitionist who was enslaved as a boy, will include a branching unit to Nigeria.

Google plans to use state-of-the-art space-division multiplexing (SDM) technology to achieve approximately 20 times more network capacity than the last cable built to serve this region.

The cable will be the first to incorporate optical switching at the fiber-pair level, rather than the traditional approach of wavelength-level switching. Google says this design will greatly simplify the allocation of cable capacity.

Equiano is fully funded by Google. Alcatel Submarine Networks was awarded a contract in Q4 2018.

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What's hot at OFC22? 2022 Ethernet Roadmap

Users fully expect Ethernet to work -- just to work -- even as it increases in speeds and as it enters new application areas, says Orshi Abraham, Marketing Chair, Ethernet Alliance. Multivendor interoperability is key to continued success.

The 2022 Ethernet Roadmap was released at OFC22.

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Equinix acquires 4 data centers from Chile's Entel

Equinix agreed to acquire four data centers from Chile's  Empresa Nacional De Telecomunicaciones (Entel) for an enterprise value of approximately US$705 million. The deal includes three data centers in Santiago, Chile and one in Lima, Peru.

Charles Meyers, President and CEO, Equinix: "Latin America holds enormous potential, and our commitment to the region has exponentially grown since we entered back in 2011," said Charles Meyers, President and CEO, Equinix. "Chilean, Peruvian and multinational companies are thirsting for the digital infrastructure required to thrive in today's economy; with today's expansion, we're broadening digital access and accelerating digital transformation across Latin America, while supporting growth in a responsible and sustainable manner." 

Some highlights: 

• The four facilities generate approximately US$53 million of annualized revenue and represent a purchase multiple of approximately 23x EV / 2021 adjusted EBITDA including Equinix SG&A expenses. The acquisition is expected to be AFFO per share accretive upon close, excluding integration costs. 
• Approximately 120 Entel employees and contractors are expected to become Equinix employees or contractors under the terms of the agreement.
• The more than 100 Entel customers currently operating in the four data centers will become Equinix customers, with more than 75 of these representing net-new customers.
• The three data centers in Chile are located in the metropolitan area of Santiago and have different strategic characteristics. The Ciudad de los Valles location is the largest multitenant data center in Santiago, with ample expansion opportunities. The downtown Santiago site is a network-dense facility, adjacent to the Entel Tower, a key IX facility in the market, and close to the city government center, within a heightened security environment. The facility in Longovilo is strategically located away from the city center to meet the backup and disaster recovery needs from financial institutions.
• The Peruvian data center is a well-established Tier III site located in Lima, the capital of Peru.

Telxius activates Mistral along Latin America's Pacific coast

Tuesday, August 10, 2021  Chile, Subsea, Telxius  

Telxius' new Mistral submarine cable, which runs along the Latin American Pacific coast, is now ready for service between Puerto San Jose (Guatemala) with Valparaiso (Chile) with additional landing points in Salinas (Ecuador), Lurin (Peru) and Arica (Chile).Mistral spans approximately 7,300 km, and features six fibre pairs, 132 Tbps of potential capacity, and the lowest latency from Guatemala to Chile. It is the first subsea cable in the last 20...

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NTT demos orchestration based on ETSI's ZTM spec

NTT DOCOMO, in collaboration with NTT Com, NTT Network Service Systems Laboratories (NS Labs) and NTT Network Innovation Center (NIC), has demonstrated end-to-end orchestration (E2EO) technology based on the Zero Touch Network and Service Management (ZSM) specification of ETSI, the European standardization organization. 

E2EO technology automates 5G network slicing to enable multiple networks to operate on common infrastructure. In the recent demonstration, which is being conducted from November 2021 to March 2022, a 5G mobile network built on a testbed incorporating NTT Com, NS Labs and NIC technologies has been automatically sliced with E2EO technology into multiple networks suitable for each application.

Once fully established, interface specifications for transport-network, core-network and data-network control domains will enable the automatic creation and deletion of 5G network slices. This will also enable service quality to be monitored so that processing capacity can be expanded whenever degraded quality is detected in any slice.

https://www.docomo.ne.jp/english/info/media_center/pr/2022/0311_00.html

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SpaceX launches 53 more Starlink satellites

On March 19, SpaceX launched 53 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

This Falcon 9 first stage booster previously launched Dragon’s first crew demonstration mission, the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, SXM-7, and nine Starlink missions.

In a tweet,  Elon Musk noted that the launch was the heaviest Falcon 9 payload ever launched, at 16.25 metric tons.

The mission was the 11th SpaceX launch and 8th Starlink launch of 2022.

http://www.spacex.com

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Dell'Oro: Double-digit growth for Service Provider router and switching in '21

The worldwide Service Provider Router and Switch market rebounded in 2021 and surpassed pre-pandemic revenue levels, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. The North America region led the worldwide market expansion with solid double-digit growth.

“Demand for IP routers, especially in North America, surged last year as network operators pumped up investments across a wide range of network infrastructures,” said Shin Umeda, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group. “Our research found that North American network expansion projects for Internet and cloud backbones, mobile transport, and broadband aggregation all contributed to the region’s first annual increase since 2015,” added Umeda.

Additional highlights from the 4Q 2021 Service Provider Router and Switch Report:

• Strong growth in North America for 2021 combined with modest gains in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region offset a drop for the Asia Pacific region that reflected a decline in China.
• The Service Provider Core Router market expanded for the first time since 2018 as network operators increasingly deployed 400 Gbps technologies to expand network capacity.
• Cisco was the top-ranked vendor for the 2021 worldwide Service Provider Router and Switch market, regaining leadership that Huawei held for the prior year. Nokia, Juniper, and ZTE, in ranked order, rounded out the top five market share spots.

https://www.delloro.com/news/service-provider-router-and-switch-market-surpassed-pre-pandemic-levels-in-2021/

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Dell'Oro: Campus switch sales reach record levels in 2021

The worldwide Campus Switch market revenue reached a record level in the fourth quarter and the full year 2021, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. Digital transformation initiatives, combined with government stimulus, propelled most of the growth in 2021. Arista, Extreme, H3C, HPE Aruba, Juniper were able to gain revenue share in 2021.

“What was remarkable is that the 2021 revenue growth was broad-based across all regions, all customer sizes; and all vertical segments, including those that have been hit hard by the pandemic, ” said Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Director at Dell’Oro Group. “However, despite the robust sales performance in 2021, demand continues to outpace supply. Supply challenges continue to limit vendors’ ability to fulfill orders, resulting in wide quarter-to-quarter variations in vendors’ performance. These variations are causing share shifts in the market, which are not necessarily reflective of competitive displacements, but rather the timing of order fulfillment,” added Boujelbene.

Additional highlights from the 4Q 2021 Ethernet Switch – Campus Report:

• Huawei regained the revenue leading position in China in 4Q 2021, after briefly ceding its place to H3C in the prior quarter.
• 2.5/5.0 Gbps ports were up 16 percent in 2021 but comprised only 1 percent of the total ports as the price premium over 1 Gbps is still hindering its mass adoption. We expect, however, that the 2.5/5.0 Gbps adoption will accelerate with the ramp of Wi-Fi 6 and the anticipated introduction of Wi-Fi 7 WLAN Access Points.
• Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) ports up strong double-digits and comprised 30 percent of the total ports in 2021.

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Brazil's Raízen picks Juniper + NEC for campus Wi-Fi

Raízen, a global leader in bio-energy solutions, has selected Juniper Networks and NEC to design and deploy anew Wi-Fi network for its headquarters in São Paulo and offices in Piracicaba, Brazil. 

The new network uses the Juniper Mist AI solution to dramatically streamline the IT helpdesk function for Raízen, which is one of Brazil’s largest private business groups.

NEC is providing consultancy and implementation services. 

The new platform provides automated and real-time data insights into exactly what Raízen’s users, devices and sites are experiencing on the network. In addition, by using actionable data from individual users, Mist AI provides tailored feedback and proactive support, as well as correlated, AI-driven insights into the network’s overall ongoing health and performance.

Raízen is assessing further projects based on the capabilities of the Juniper Mist cloud, including Wired Assurance, warehouses becoming Wi-Fi enabled and newly-acquired companies making the move to the Juniper solution.

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