Friday Network News: October 26

Dutch cable operator Ziggo is conducting trials with equipment vendor Alcatel-Lucent to turn private homes into public Wifi hotspots in a bid to provide wireless broadband access to Ziggo’s customers. The trial, taking place in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands, is Europe’s largest for cable-based Wifi hotspots. Alcatel claims that its Wifi technology is giving multiple Ziggo subscribers simultaneous access to high-quality wireless internet without impairing existing home broadband service quality or the security of the existing home Wifi networks. Following a successful first phase in four districts of the city the service is being opened up to 18,000 homes in November.

France Telecom-Orange is claiming to have the launched the world’s first direct HD voice interconnection between Romania and Moldova. From today, the carrier is offering HD voice calls between the two countries having interconnected the mobile networks of its two operators. The HD voice interconnection was carried out by an international project team, bringing together France Telecom Group, Moldovan and Romanian staff.

Russia’s Yota Networks has launched what is claimed to be the world’s first LTE-Advanced commercial network in partnership with Huawei. For the deployment, Yota’s Radio Access Network (RAN) was upgraded using Huawei’s LTE/EPC solution for LTE-Advanced. The solution provides downlink peak rates of up to 300Mbps depending on the capacity of the radio channel. Yota is looking to retain its position as an industry leader through the deployment, according to Huawei. 

Indonesian operator Indosat has selected Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) to provide infrastructure for the country’s first 3G network in Central and East Java, Sumatra and Kalimantan. The GSM and 3G infrastructure will support Indosat’s deployment using the 900MHz band with services initially available in Bukit Tinggi and Padang in West Sumatra with the other regions to follow. NSN will be Indosat’s exclusive vendor for radio access network modernisation in the Central and East Java, Kalimantan and Sumatra regions and enable Indosat to run GSM and 3G services concurrently on the 900MHz band.

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s connection to the West African Cable System (WACS) is expected to be deployed within 20 days, according to local sources. The director general of the Societe Congolaise des Postes et Telecommunications (SCPT), Placide Mbatika, said that the installation of transmission equipment at the landing station in Muanda began on October 15, according to Agence Ecofin. When the WACS cable was originally due to be landed and tested in May 2011, the DRC was completely unprepared, with the company hired to build the landing station yet to start construction. This was because of intervention from the SCPT, which awarded the contract to a local company rather than the one recommended by cable supplier Alcatel-Lucent.

Deutsche Telekom has announced plans to construct what is claimed to be Germany’s largest data centre. The site in Biere, Saxony-Anhalt, will occupy a surface area the size of 30 soccer fields at 150,000 metres square. Together with a data centre already running in Magdeburg, which is the largest site in East Germany, it will form a twin core that is designed to cater to the country’s high demand for cloud services, beginning operations in 2014. The final expansion stage at both locations will see an area of almost eight soccer fields exclusively dedicated to computing technology, according to Deutsche.

Mexico’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources has approved América Móvil’s AMX-1 cable project, which will interconnect with seven countries over 17,800km, according to El Economista. AMX-1 will connect the US, Mexico, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Colombia and Brazil. The project is designed to cater for the growth of internet traffic and will be constructed in five stages, beginning with the connection of Fortaleza, Brazil with Jacksonville in the US.

BT has announced an expansion to its Global IP Exchange (GIPX) with the launch of a hub in Singapore. The GIPX PoP has been launched to meet demand for growing traffic over its IP exchange platform for VoIP to VoIP and VoIP to TDM voice calls, according to BT. By deploying the Singapore hub the carrier will be able to provide a lower switch function in the Asia-Pac region, bringing the exchange service closer to customer’s networks and helping to reduce the cost of voice and data transport. BT said it is also planning to introduce additional GIPX nodes elsewhere in the near future and is developing the service to support 4G and video interoperability between different devices and networks. 

Carrier interconnection specialist Peerless Network has opened a $5 million data centre in downtown Chicago. The facility, located at 840 South Canal Street, has 8,000 square foot of co-location space and house Peerless’ Network Operations Centre (NOC). It will support the company’s ongoing expansion plans and is designed to alleviate the shortage of premium co-location space in downtown Chicago. Peerless says that it has received letters of intent representing nearly 50% of the available space.

Mobile Virtual Network Aggregator (MVNA) Telesis Tanzania is to offer LTE services in the east African country using Alcatel-Lucent’s mobile broadband technology. Telesis supports services for several MVNOs in the country, including mobile operators, ISPs, governments, banks and business partners. The 4G network will be launched using digital dividend spectrum and is expected to aid the development of the mobile consumer, healthcare, transportation, energy, security, agriculture, sales and payments industries in Tanzania.