Int’l Bytes: e&, 2Africa, Equinix, Epsilon, Sparkle

Four interesting bits of infrastructure news from around the globe:

E& Carrier and Wholesale says it will anchor the 2Africa cable’s landing in the UAE. The 45,000km system will land at Kalba in the northeast of the UAE, connecting into e&’s SmartHub Data Centre there. That will be complementary to the Fujairah landing station, improving the country’s infrastructure diversity. 2Africa is being built by a consortium including Bayobab, centre3, China Mobile International, Meta, Orange, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone Group and WIOCC.

Equinix has lined up a whole bunch of power in France in a deal facilitated by Schneider Electric. They have signed seven 20-year power purchase agreements with wpd, the renewabe energy developer. The deal gives them as much as 100MW of capacity and as much as 300GWh per year of green energy from four wind projects in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, two in Hauts-de-France and one wind farm in Pays de la Loire.

Epsilon Telecommunications now has new leadership. Damon Lee has been named to the CEO role, shifting over from KT Corp where he had spent 27 years with his most recent role as VP in the company’s enterprise business. KT bought Singapore-based Epsilon two years ago, and this move likely indicates an effort to better integrate the international platform with KT’s depth and breadth in South Korea.

And the drama over TIM’s possible sale of Sparkle took a sharp turn toward the public sector late last week. TIM said that it received a new offer, but this time from Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance directly. The alternative to KKR’s earlier €600M offer will be the subject of a board meeting this Wednesday.   TIM had felt the earlier deal, which included a stake for MEF, was too low, and an updated bid from KKR had been expected as well.

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Categories: Datacenter · Energy · Interconnection · Internet Backbones · Jobs · Undersea cables