Tuesday Bytes: Ciena, GTT, T-Mobile, India’s DoT

February 18th, 2020 by · Leave a Comment

Here’s a few quick takes, one submarine cable upgrade, an SD-WAN win, and a couple regulatory stories:

The Europe-India Gateway cable system has been upgraded with some help from Ciena. EIG spans 15,000km between Mumbai and multiple European destinations, hooking up many Middle East ports along the way. Using Ciena’s GeoMesh solution, the cable can now utilize optical bypass features to reduce costs and improve reliability. The upgrade also adds another 24.3Tbps of potential capacity to the system.

GTT has picked up a new customer for its SD-WAN capabilities in North America.  Captivate has picked the global backbone operator’s SD-WAN service for security, uptime, and real-time video content to 1,700 locations around the continent.  The deal also covers additional locations as Captivate continues to expand its reach.  That reach, of course, refers to the company’s 12K elevator and lobby displays in office buildings.

T-Mobile’s pending acquisition of Sprint is getting closer and closer now. Yesterday New York’s attorney general decided not to appeal last week’s decision by a federal judge to approve the merger over the objections of multiple states. New York was one of the leaders of the 14 objecting states along with California, but now hopes to work with the carriers to protect consumers and promote investment. 

And over in India, the industry is watching another object lesson in why the country is such a difficult market to do business in. Major operators are now paying a piece of the giant dues bills that regulators have decided they owe, and refusing to pay more. Bharti Airtel has paid $1.4B, Tata Teleservices paid $307M, and Vodafone Idea shelled out $349M with some more on the way. Meanwhile, it seems non-telecoms utilities are also caught in the same dues net. Now, spectrum dues and fees are a part of doing business anywhere, but how anyone can be expected to build businesses and continue to invest *before* knowing what regulators will say those dues are or if they apply to a particular business is beyond me. 

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