Tuesday Bytes: Huawei, CenturyLink, DFS, Integra

September 1st, 2015 by · Leave a Comment

Here’s a quick look at some interesting items from the past few days, as August gives way to September at last:

Africa has yet another new submarine cable system, albeit not a very long one in the grand scheme of things. Huawei says it has completed the installation of the Nigeria-Cameroon Submarine Cable System, which will formally come online in Q4. The 12.8Tbps system spans 1,100km between Kribi and Lagos with future branching units to hook up Escravos and Qua Iboe later on. If you’re wondering just why a dedicated submarine cable is needed between two countries that share a 1,975km border and just what they need 12.8Tbps of theoretical capacity for, then I suggest you ask someone who knows the answer because I don’t. Not that I’m not happy to celebrate the bandwidth!

CenturyLink has had a few announcements in the past few days, two of which are especially interesting. First, they’ve decided to accept some $500M per year for six years in CAF II funds to bring broadband to another 1.2M rural households. For CAF I, they only took $75M for 114K rural connections, but I guess that went well.  Meanwhile, CenturyLink also picked up a key contract with the State of Texas. Texas’s Health and Human Services Commission has picked them for managed IP-based voice services. The contract spans 400 locations statewide with some 48,000 users, which is not a minor contract, especially since Texas is more AT&T’s incumbent turf.

Northeast Florida’s DFS is rebranding itself as DFS. That’s from Dedicated Fiber Systems to Dark Fiber Systems, which of course keeps the acronym intact. DFS is one of the lesser known metro fiber operators in Florida, one of the few parts of the country where consolidation hasnt thinned out the independent competition as much as you might think.

And out west, Integra has appointed yet another new CEO. Marc Willency is taking the helm as of September 8, allowing interim CEO Robert E. Guth to move back to the board of directors where he will be Vice Chairman. Guth replaced Kevin Ohara, who began the company’s pivot from a CLEC stance to a fiber focus. Integra revived the Electric Lightwave brand earlier this year.  Willency was previously with Level 3, and tw telecom before that and seems likely to continue on a fiber-centric path.

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Categories: Fiber Networks · Jobs · Metro fiber · Undersea cables · VoIP

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