Thursday Bytes: Midgard Infra, Lumen, Arelion, Nokia, DE-CIX, TOWARDEX

Some fiber, some AI, some nextgen gear, and some interconnection:

Midgard Infra is looking to extend its recently announced Oslo-Stockholm route further to the east. They’ll be adding a diverse subsea crossing over to Finland, with olanding stations northeast of Stockholm and in southwestern Finland. The cable will span 200km with 144 fiber pairs, and could be ready for service in 2029. The full route from Oslo to Finland will share no common point of failure with existing systems. Midgard Infra was until relatively recently called Altibox Carrier.

Lumen has announced a new AI partner. They will be helping deliver Eminence Grey’s sovereign AI infrastructure over Lumen’s extensive programmable network across the US. The result will be a secure foundation for distributed AI environments across the country that also maintains auditable control over where data is and where it travels.

Arelion and Nokia have been busy testing new optical technology. In a live network trial on Arelion’s route between London and Amsterdam they have increased capacity and cost efficiency using Nokia’s Super C and Super L band technology. The result was 21% more usable optical spectrum. The trial leveraged Nokia’s 1830 GX gear, CHMQ6 thin transponder modules, and ICE-X 400G and 800G ZR+ coherent pluggable optics.

And DE-CIX has an interesting new partner in the northeastern US. They are teaming up with TOWARDEX to interconnect the Hub Express System with DE-CIX New York. That’s TOWARDEX’s “Meet-Me Street”, which brings together a dense concentration of infrastructure operators in New England via underground fiber across the city. Connectivity back to DE-CIX New York will enable easier and lower latency connectivity to the broader ecosystem.

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