Speaking at Capacity Balkans, Simon Waller, head of EMEA sales at NTT Europe, revealed the company’s Milan PoP will go live at the end of this month, which will be followed by another in Munich. NTT is also at the “very early stages” of planning a PoP in Vienna to support customers in CEE and the Balkans.
In addition, Waller said that Turkey was on NTT’s radar: “We are working with some providers to try and find ways to get into the Turkish market directly, but it’s still at the very early stages.” Although no time-frame was given, Waller insisted that as soon as the carrier is able to expand there it will do so.
Having launched PoPs in Bucharest, Budapest and Sofia on the back of the Balkans event last year, NTT has deployed 150G of capacity on the three sites alone, driven by customer uptake.”It’s been more than we ever could have dreamed of in terms of demand in this region,” said Waller.
The three Balkans PoPs are a scaled down version of a much more aggressive NTT expansion plan which was limited by the difficult European economic environment, particularly in Greece.
One big announcement which came around the time of the Balkan’s event last year was the merger of some of NTT’s largest competitors; Level 3 and Global Crossing. Waller said that the merger had been a “good opportunity” for NTT as both carriers had a strong Balkans presence. This meant that now some of their combined customers wanted to sign agreements with NTT for additional diversity and redundancy.
