NTT Communications has expanded its presence in the Nordics by opening a PoP in Stockholm, Sweden. Based in TeleCity’s data centre, the PoP is designed to offer NTT customers access to Sweden and the wider Nordic region, including Russia and the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. [read more]
Swisscom has chosen Chinese vendor Huawei to support its FTTS expansion. With the help of Huawei, Swisscom has said that it wants 80% of all households in Switzerland to have access to high-speed internet services by 2020. In order to meet this target, the Swiss telco plans to roll out fibre-optic cable directly to homes and businesses in large towns, while also deploying FTTS (Fibre-to-the-Street) in rural areas. [read more]
Armenian carrier ArmenTel has connected to TeliaSonera’s new backbone network. The move will increase ArmenTel’s total international bandwidth frequency by 10%. Anush Beghloyan, head of public relations at Armentel, said the link was established to cater to the carrier’s growing subscriber base and tariff packages. [read more]
Russian carrier VimpelCom has signed a 5-year managed services contract with Ericsson covering its operations in the Siberia and Urals regions. Under the deal Ericcson will manage network operations for VimpelCom across more than 10,000 sites , oversee more than 10,000km of fibre-optic cable and manage the carrier’s fixed network across Siberia and the Urals in Russia. [read more]
MTN Uganda has reportedly commissioned a fibre network at the Katuna border to connect the country to an additional subsea cable.The link will complement two existing cables between Kabala and Mombasa providing Uganda with redundancy and reliable connectivity, according to Engineering News. MTN Uganda CEO, Mazen Mrou, said the fibre system would substantially improve connectivity between Uganda and its neighbouring countries. [read more]
Global Caribbean Fiber is to upgrade its Antilles Crossing submarine network, linking St Croix, St Lucia and Barbados with 40Gbps coherent technology. Ciena’s coherent optical platform has been selected for the deployment, which is designed to satisfy customer demand for high bandwidth services and growing internet traffic. The Antilles Crossing network is a 1,100km section of GCF’s 3,000km subsea cable system, which provides 1.2Tbps of capacity across 14 Eastern Caribbean countries. [read more]
UK mobile operator Everything Everywhere has announced that its LTE network will be expanded to a further 27 towns across the country by June 2013. This will bring the total number of towns and cities across EE’s LTE footprint to 65 and expand network coverage from 45% of the UK population to more than 55% by the summer. [read more]
Chorus New Zealand has selected Alcatel-Lucent and Comptel to provide a solution for its high-speed broadband network. The fibre fulfillment and inventory solution is expected to support retail service providers in New Zealand as they utilise and develop new services on the network. Alcatel-Lucent will serve as the systems integrator for Comptel, providing professional project management services as well as deploying the operational support system (OSS) for the network. [read more]
Hibernia Networks has halted all work on its flagship $300 million transatlantic cable, the Hibernian Express, after becoming embroiled in mounting tensions between the US and China over cyber security. The company was forced to suspend all work on the project, the first attempt to lay a cable across the Atlantic in more than a decade, after key US carriers gave warning that they would not be able to use the proposed network for fear of risking the loss of lucrative contracts with US federal government agencies. [read more]
Middle East Telecommunications Company (METCO) has partnered with Aviat Networks to upgrade Zain Kuwait’s microwave backhaul network. The upgrade will support Zain’s recently launched LTE offering in the country. Aviat claims the upgrade will allow Zain to vastly increase its backhaul link capacity as it begins to consolidate mobile technologies at each cell site. [read more]
