Thursday Roundup: RETN, Nokia, Southern Cross, Ciena

A new PoP, some vendor activity, a subsea cable, and some M&A:

RETN is expanding its Italian reach. The global network services provider has launched a point of presence in Bologna. More specifically they are taking of up residence at BOIX, a data center operated by Lepida S.c.p.A. That’s on a fiber route up through Padua to Vienna, offering diversity from Milan.

Nokia made two interesting announcements this week. They have teamed up with Boldyn Networks to deploy a private 5G at the Callio FutureMINE site in Pyhäjärvi, Finland, which is test environment set in a former copper mine. Meanwhile, Telin has picked Nokia’s technology to connect its data centers in Singapore. More specifically, they’ll be using Nokia’s 1630 GX platform and pluggable coherent optic.

Southern Cross has made progress on its Tasman Express subsea cable plans. The cable’s 16 fiber pairs will stretch 2,200km of the Tasman Sea between Sydney and Auckland. The detailed system design has been finalized, supply contracts have been executed upon, landing party and terrestrial backhaul relationships are in place, and financing is arranged. Now they just have to build it, with an RFS date of 2028.

And Ciena made an interesting inorganic move this week. The optical vendor has announced an agreement to acquire Nubis Communications. New Jersey-based Nubis specializes in data center interconnect technologies designed for AI workloads. Ciena brings those capabilities in-house, along with more than 50 engineers.

If you haven't already, please take our Reader Survey! Just 3 questions to help us better understand who is reading Telecom Ramblings so we can serve you better!

Categories: Internet Backbones · Mergers and Acquisitions · Telecom Equipment · Undersea cables · Wireless