WCA November 2015

Telecom news

per circuit and beyond. Hibernia Networks also announced that it had launched an Ultra Low Latency service between New York and London which improves the lowest latency route between the two cities by five milliseconds. Ø Russian operator Rostelecom said it had completed the first phase of a new cable designed to connect the Kamchatka, Sakhalin and Magadan regions by way of the Okhotsk Sea. The cable will stretch 1,242 miles and have a total capacity of 400Gbps, with optional future expansion to 8Tbps. The first stage of the construction work – handled by Chinese equipment vendor Huawei – involved the deployment of 577 miles of fibre optic cable between Magadan and Okha (Sakhalin). The operator was then to commence work on the Okha-Ust-Bolsheretsk stretch, set for completion by December this year. The full system is scheduled to enter commercial operation in June 2016. Ø TeliaSonera has announced plans to withdraw from its seven Eurasian markets to concentrate its resources on operations in Sweden and Europe. The Swedish telecom attributed the shift in focus to difficulties across the Eurasian region, where it has struggled to find partners. Covering Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Nepal, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, TeliaSonera has recently also been hit by currency volatility as well as the entry into those markets of aggressive new competitors. Iain Morris of Light Reading reported (17 th September) that the operator is one of several in Europe alert to the potential of new IP technologies and opportunities in areas, including the Internet of Things, seen as complementary to their core businesses. TeliaSonera’s plans to withdraw westward were disclosed only days after the company said it had abandoned efforts to merge its Danish business with that of Norway’s Telenor in the face of opposition from European Union regulatory authorities. TeliaSonera’s European operations cover the markets of Spain, Estonia, Latvia, Norway and Finland, as well as Sweden and Denmark.

Janeiro-based TIM Participações SA, the second-largest Brazilian wireless carrier, with a market value of about $5.1 billion. In February, Telecom Italia said it planned to invest $3.6 billion in Brazil over three years to extend fourth-generation mobile coverage to more than 15,000 sites, and 3G coverage to over 14,000 sites by 2017. Ø IHS in September reiterated its projection that spending on macro LTE infrastructure would peak in 2015 at $23.3 billion as operators approach the end of their network deployments. The Englewood, Colorado-based research firm found that spending on macro network equipment reached $11.4 billion in the three months through to 30 th June, up two per cent year-on-year. The growth was driven by 3G deployments in EMEA and unabated LTE rollouts in China. Ericsson and Huawei were tied in the mobile infrastructure race at the end of the second quarter, with each vendor claiming a market share of just over 20 per cent. Ø BT has pledged to be answering more than 80 per cent of its customers’ calls in the UK, rather than from overseas contact centres, by the end of 2016. To meet this commitment the com- munications company said it has created over 1,000 new call-centre jobs in the UK and plans to go further. BT will continue to out- source back office functions and work. Ø These submarine fibre optic cable developments were announced in September: Ø Hibernia Networks said that its 2,858-mile Hibernia Express route connecting Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada, to the Irish port of Cork is ready for service. As reported by TeleGeography , the first trans- Atlantic submarine cable to be built in over 12 years comprises six fibre pairs, with a portion of the fibre optimised for the lowest latency and a portion optimised for 100Gbpsx100Gbps capacity. Total cross-sectional design capacity of the cable is more than 53Tbps. Leveraging a DWDM platform, Hibernia Express is engineered to potentially scale up to 400Gbps

is, ‘I’m throwing the proverbial ball into the Cuban court.’” On 18 th September, he reached for another example from the world of competitive sports. The occasion was the release, by the US Treasury and Commerce departments, of 27 more pages of new regulations authorising American entrepreneurs to engage with Cuban government-owned companies as well as the more than 200 categories of independently licensed businesses on the island. “This isn’t end-run around the embargo,” said Mr Kavulich. “It’s a full frontal assault.” Ø Other US telecoms trying for a Cuban toehold include IDT Corp, which in March reached an agreement with ETECSA to provide direct international long-distance service. Previously phone communication between the two countries had to pass through third countries. And Boost Mobile, a unit of Sprint Corp, in April launched a prepaid plan for American consumers calling and texting Cuba. Elsewhere in telecom . . . Ø Telecom service to tens of thousands of people in a brush- fire-threatened area of California was interrupted on 3 rd September by vandalism to a fibre optic line. An AT&T repair worker told the Ukiah Daily Journal that a rock slide had exposed the line and that those who cut the cable likely mistook it for saleable copper wiring. On realising their mistake they dropped it and fled. Full restoration of service took 24 hours. AT&T offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the phone and Internet outages, which spread across several counties. Tampering with telecom networks in the USA is a violation of federal law. Ø CEO Marco Patuano of Telecom Italia SpA told reporters in Rome on 20 th September that the company would review its strategy in Brazil in light of the economic recession in a country that generates almost 30 per cent of the firm’s revenue. Telecom Italia owns about two-thirds of Rio De

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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2015