Canada’s Bell Mobility has announced the completion of the first phase of its DC-HSPA+ broadband network expansion in Manitoba with wireless services now available to approximately 70% of residents. The carrier is offering Manitobans wireless data speeds of up to 42Mbps with an expected average of 7-14Mbps. For the next phase of the deployment, Bell will extend its HSPA+ network from Portage La Prairie to Brandon later in 2012.
Swisscom’s Italian operation FASTWEB has signed a seven-year managed services contract with vendor Ericsson, which will see FASTWEB’s two data centres consolidated. The contract includes systems integration, management and maintenance of FASTWEB’s data centres and managed operations of IT infrastructure. Ericsson claims that FASTWEB will benefit from advanced IT architecture, increased automation, a lower environmental impact and more flexibility and capacity.
Level 3 Communications has expanded its global fibre network backbone to the US cities of East Wenatchee and Quincy, Washington. The expansion involves more than 200 miles of advanced fibre cable and connection to five customer data centres. It is claimed to offer customers network diversity from regional incumbent local exchange carriers and access to a scalable fibre-optic backbone. Services available on the network include gigabit Ethernet, 40Gbps Ethernet, with future capabilities for 100Gbps.
BT has reached its goal of providing 500,000 Wifi hotspots in London, UK, for the Olympic and Paralympic Games by launching additional hotspots along a 44km stretch of the River Thames. Users will now be able to access services in more than 100 places along the river including the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, the London Eye, Waterloo Pier and London Bridge Pier. BT committed to the half a million hotspot target in September 2011 and provides access across high street, hotels, business, home and outdoor sites as well as the Olympic park.
TeliaSonera has deployed a new fibre-optic network to deliver 100G speeds to handle future IP traffic growth. The new overlay network has been implemented across Europe to address the amount of growth in data traffic. TeliaSonera has partnered with Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for the new network – the company’s existing optical network was also provided by the same vendor. Mikko Lavanti, head of optical networks sales and support at NSN, said the new network has the potential to be upgraded to 400G and beyond.
South Korean operator KT has selected equipment vendor Cavium’s OCTEON Fusion platform for the first stage of a commercial LTE small cell deployment. KT is deploying small cells to deliver data bandwidth to its mobile subscriber base and is brought on by increasing consumer demand. The solution aimed at easing spectrum and capacity limitations and is claimed to offer support of WLAN, QoS, interference mitigation and self-optimising networks.
Dutch telecoms provider KPN has announced a major upgrade of its mobile networks in country. Almost all of KPN’s 3,900 base stations will be upgraded according to a statement from the company. The upgrade is driven by the need to cope with future demand for bandwidth intensive services by 2014. KPN’s announcement follows a similar one from Vodafone last week, which said that it would increase its investment in the Netherlands having suffered from a major fire at its Rotterdam network centre in April 2012.
Telefónica has deployed performance solutions company ariesoGEO in an attempt to ensure its subscribers are not affected by coverage issues during the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The solution means Telefónica’s O2 network can rapidly respond to dynamic network conditions; in addition to ensuring O2 has greater visibility for existing customers and those visiting the games. O2 said that given the influx of over one million visitors in the country, there has been a greater need for effective network management during the games. It says it has rolled out new infrastructure to those areas encountering the highest levels of voice and data traffic.
France Telecom-owned, Telkom Kenya, has launched DC-HSPA+ services in the capital Nairobi providing download speeds of up to 42Mbps. The launch comes almost a year after the company launched 3G services in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu in a $42.6 million deployment.
Pacific Fibre, the New Zealand consortium behind a 13,000km submarine cable project linking New Zealand and Australia to California, US, has decided to cease operations after failing to raise the NZ$400 million funding required. The project, which would have challenged the dominance of Telecom New Zealand and SingTel-owned Southern Cross Cable, received backing from Vodafone after launching in March 2010. One of the main goals of the cable was to reduce the cost of bandwidth from New Zealand to the US, which according to research firm Market Clarity, is 5.8 times higher than the price paid by Australians.
Data centre provider CoreSite has announced a relationship with Holland’s AMS-IX which will enable access to the AMS-IX peering exchange from CoreSite locations across the US. The relationship with AMS-IX is part of CoreSite’s open internet exchange hub plan, which aims to aggregate the interconnection capabilities of internet exchanges worldwide. CoreSite customers will have access to a larger array of potential peering partners in facilities including: Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Denver, Washington, Northern Virginia and the San Francisco Bay Area.
