Around the Globe: Juniper, Interoute, Pacnet, NTT Docomo

With it being the Friday after Thanksgiving, the only news we’re going to get today out of the USA will be of the ‘I hope they don’t notice’ variety.  But the rest of the world goes on, and there have been several interesting items this week:

Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) added a rather non-standard type of client in Yunnan Copper.  Yep, that’s a gigantic Chinese mining company with a data center that needs an upgrade, which Juniper will be powering.  Just what kind of bits they need to push in the mining vertical, I’m not quite sure – but a sale’s a sale.  Incidentally, Yunnan means ‘south of the clouds’ and is the name of a mountainous province in southwestern China to the southeast of Tibet that claims to hold the mythical Shangri-La.  Hope they haven’t strip mined that bit yet.

Interoute (news) and the Milan Internet Exchange partnered up in the interests of boosting growth in the Mediterranean bandwidth marketplace.  The MIX will have a PoP in Interoute’s facility in Bari, which lies on the Adriatic Sea.  That’s no big news, but while checking it out I saw that Interoute has added a real network map to its website, whereas in the past it only had that informative but unsatisfying non-geographical tube map thingy.  I have added it to my European Network Maps page.

Pacific operator Pacnet (news) unveiled yet another of its rather curious Data Landing Stations, this time in Singapore.  The 3300 square foot Tier 3 data center brings Pacnet’s total to 96,200 square feet globally.  With the similar facility in HK unveiled last month, they are now touting the low latency connectivity between the two – which is a natural result of both being directly connected to the same EAC-C2C cable system.  Of course, the key is low latency connectivity between key financial exchanges rather than between landing stations, but first things first I guess. 

And NTT Docomo, faced with rival Softbank now armed with the iPhone, has turned to the forces of evil to help it hold the balance.  Helping them sell a Samsung smartphone instead will be none other than new spokesman Darth Vader, who will muster the power of the dark side.  Or at least that’s what I thought until I watched the very puzzling commercial, which left me feeling sorry for the man in black – he looks so sad. 

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Categories: Datacenter · Internet Backbones · Telecom Equipment · Wireless