US telecoms company NII Holdings, which is present in Latam countries under the Nextel brand, is preparing to launch its 3G network in Mexico. Bloomberg reports that Nextel will initially offer HSPA+ services in 34 cities, including; Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla and Cancun, offering maximum download speeds of up to 21Mbps. The operator will compete with América Móvil’s Telcel, which dominates the market with 71.2% wireless subscriber share, Telefónica with 20% and Iusacell with 4.8%, according to TeleGeography. Nextel previously offered services via its iDEN-based network.
Ireland’s eircom Group has announced the third phase of its fibre roll-out plan as part of an initiative to deliver fibre broadband to one million premises over the next four years. Phase three of the project includes 13 communities in eight counties across Ireland, and will pass 125,000 homes and businesses.These include Churchfield, Waterford City, Kilkenny City, Sligo Town, Mullingar, Tralee Westport, Crown Alley, Dolphin’s Barn, Nutley and Beggars Bush, Coolock and Balbriggan. This latest phase brings the number of locations announced to date to 40. eircom said that it expects 350,000 premises to have access to fibre services of 40Mbps and over when the network launches in 2013.
Vivendi-owned SFR is planning to launch LTE services in France on November 28, ahead of its original schedule of early 2013. The carrier is thought to be looking to exploit the Christmas shopping season and will initial introduce services in Lyon, before rolling out to other cities. SFR also announced that is has achieved 98.6% population coverage on its HSPA+ network and plans 60% coverage on its DC HSPA+ network by the end of the year.
Chinese vendor ZTE has announced that the deployment of China Mobile Hong Kong’s multi-carrier TD LTE network has been completed, covering more than 70% of the territory. The deployment is claimed to be the first dual mode network in the Asia-Pacific region and the first commercial TD LTE network in Hong Kong. ZTE partnered with CMHK and Ericsson for the deal.
Cisco has been selected to provide Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) on routers and firewalls for Australia’s National Broadband Network project. The deal on the NBN National Connectivity Network (NCN) is estimated to be worth up to $38 million over five years. The technology will be deployed in NBN Co’s depot, aggregation nodes and other locations, supporting operations support system and business support system platforms, as well as signalling and timing.
Chile’s regulator Subtel has said that penetration for internet services had increased from 13% in December 2009 to 34% by the end of June 2012, reaching its target for penetration for 2014 more than a year ahead of schedule. The regulator said that the explosive growth of the internet in homes and schools, as well as strong use of mobile devices were the main instigators of the increase. Chile leads Latin America in terms of average connection speed at 3.4Mbps.
International provider Hibernia Atlantic has been selected by UK student fibre-optic provider ASK4 to provide resilient connectivity between Manchester and Amsterdam. Through the agreement ASK4’s domestic customers will be able to expand over Hibernia’s international network, allowing them to reach new geographies. The route, which avoids London, is claimed to utilise distinctive networks assets avoiding congested paths.
German exchange DE-CIX has selected ADVA Optical Networking’s 100Gbps metro solution to connect its core Frankfurt data centres. The upgrade allows DE-CIX to migrate its 10Gbps services to 100Gbps with service disruption and is in response to rapidly increasing data traffic. The exchange expects the 2Tbps of peak internet traffic it transports to increase dramatically in the future. ADVA’s FSP 3000 solution was selected for the deployment. The solution is claimed to be more efficient in terms of cost, space and power.
América Móvil subsidiary Claro Chile is reportedly planning a $500 million investment in infrastructure development in the country next year. Gerardo Munoz, general manager of Claro Chile, is quoted by newspaper La Tercera as saying that the investment will be similar to the one the company made in 2012. It will be used to rollout LTE, as well as maintaining existing 2G and 3G networks while also making investments in cable an digital TV. Claro Chile had 5.73 million wireless subscribers at the end of June 2012, equating to 22.7% market share. This positions it in third place behind Telefónica with 38.1% share and Entel PCS with 38.8%, according to TeleGeography.
Three carriers have established what is claimed to be the shortest transmission route between Russia and Europe, the Baltic Highway. Russia’s MegaFon, Latvian carrier Lattelecom and Germany’s Deutsche Telkom have partnered for the route which links to the Frankfurt-am-Main exchange. Baltic Highway is considered an alternative to existing transit routes through Russia, Finland and Sweden to Germany from the north and through the Ukraine to Germany from the south. It will allow transmission of data from Russia and Asia through the Baltic States, Poland and Germany using DWDM technology with 10Gbps rates.
BT subsidiary Openreach is to expand fibre broadband to an additional 163 UK exchanges as part of a £2.5 billion commercial roll-out. The exchanges that are scheduled to be enabled across the UK through 2013 will span from Torquay, Devon to Kilbirnie, Scotland, adding more than one million homes and businesses to Openreach’s fibre footprint. The subsidiary plans to provide two thirds of UK premises with fibre broadband by 2014 and will further extend this footprint through broadband development money from the government. To date, more than 11 million premises have access to Openreach’s fibre.
