Several interesting items today under the waves that don’t involve oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
Pacnet and Gulf Bridge International have sealed a partnership agreement, whereby both network operators will be able to extend their footprints. Pacnet will have extra connectivity with the Persian Gulf and on to Europe, and GBI will have access to the new West Asia Crossing cable and on to North America via Pacnet’s share of the Unity cable. Seems like a smart move by both companies.
The Main One cable between Portugal and Nigeria will be coming online this summer, and before it does there was the small matter of who would maintain it. That maintenance contract went to Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings), which is actually a bit of a surprise given that TE SubCom (formerly Tyco Telecommunications) laid the cable on the seabed and was listed as its maintainer as well. Apparently something changed there.
Telecom Egypt is planning to connect Jordan to its new TE North undersea cable. My first impression was that this would be rather difficult since Jordan is a landlocked country, but of course all they have to do is run it across a few hundred miles of desert somewhere. Telecom Egypt is upgrading its license in Jordan in order to allow it to offer such services. TE North connects Marseilles to Alexandria, and is supposed to be operational this summer.
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Categories: Undersea cables
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If West Asia Crossing – or GBI for that matter – actually gets built. It’s easy for GBI to get operators to sign up as long as participation on the cable is “free.”
Is WAC physically under construction yet, or is it still vaporware?
Vaporware.