The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has today handed out £28m to three universities (York, Bristol and Surrey) to help them team-up with major telecoms companies, including Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung, to both design and build future 6G based mobile broadband networks. The 6G standard is currently still in the early R&D […]

The Welsh Government (WG) has released the Q3 2022 progress update on their £52.5m Phase 2 Superfast Cymru contract with Openreach (BT), which reveals that a total of 34,122 extra premises (up from 32,949 in Q2) have now gained access to their 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network. The original deal consisted of two […]

PRESS RELEASE

Nick joins connectivity infrastructure-as-a-service provider Freshwave from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport where he was Engagement Lead. Nick was instrumental in the work of the Digital Connectivity Infrastructure Accelerator, an innovative programme that is dedicated to supporting the rollout of digital connectivity using public sector assets.

Guy Matthews, Freshwave’s Public Sector Sales Director, said: “I’m delighted to welcome Nick to our team. Nick has been leading the charge in driving digital connectivity across the UK. He’ll be a big asset to us in leading the strategic relations with forward-thinking regional and local authorities, and the mobile network operators, to enhance digital connectivity.

“Freshwave was the first provider to sign an open access agreement with a local authority and I know Nick will build upon our successes in this area and beyond.”

Nick Wiggin, Partnerships Lead at Freshwave, said: “I’m a big believer in the power of partnerships in advancing connectivity so I’m excited to join Freshwave, as they’re all about collaborating in new ways to achieve great results. I’m looking forward to helping Freshwave scale up engagement with the public sector by cooperating closely with the mobile network operators and regional authorities to help speed up the process by which local authorities can improve their digital infrastructure.”

Nick has previously spoken at Connected Britain, it returns to London on the 20 – 21 September 2023 – find out more

Press release

Medusa Submarine Cable System chooses the new Orange infrastructure in Marseille to land a new strategic route connecting Southern Europe and North Africa.

Medusa will be the longest submarine cable system in the Mediterranean Sea and will connect nine countries in North Africa and Southern Europe by 2024 and 2025.
Orange will give users of the Medusa subsea cable the ability to access all the Data Centers in Marseille simply and securely, which it will interconnect by setting up brand new fully redundant infrastructure.

Orange, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators, and Medusa Submarine Cable System, the Mediterranean subsea neutral and independent infrastructure operator, are joining forces to offer an open and high-performance interconnection solution to all partner operators of the Medusa cable.

Medusa will arrive in Marseille in 2024

8,760 km long, Medusa will be the first and longest submarine cable to connect the main Mediterranean countries. The system will connect the two shores of the Mediterranean and provide access to telecommunication infrastructure that is crucial for developing the digital ecosystem of populations in North African countries, as well as six EU member states (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, and Cyprus). The investment is expected to have positive impacts on the economy of these countries, which will lead to inclusive and sustainable economic growth.

Medusa is an open system that includes 16 landing points around the Mediterranean Sea. The cable will have segments withup to 24 fiber pairs with a capacity of 20 Tbps per fiber pair. Its festoon architecture gives it a unique design. It is expected Medusa cable reaches Marseille during the last quarter of 2024. The system will be ready for service end of 2024 for the West Med region and first half of 2025 for the East Med region.

Orange invests in new submarine cable landing infrastructure in Marseille to make France more attractive as a digital gateway for global exchanges.

Orange, the leading submarine cable landing party in Marseille, is the only operator to have scalable infrastructure in the area of Marseille and to have all the technical expertise required to land and maintain intercontinental submarine cable systems.

Orange is now strengthening its submarine cable access strategy in Marseille with brand new urban infrastructure which route and meshing will increase the resilience and diversity of access and landing points in Marseille, by connecting all the city’s data centers.

Through its sustained work in close collaboration with state and regional services, as well as all local players, Orange offers a unique turnkey solution. Orange will handle all the technical, regulatory, security, and environmental aspects, enabling its partners to enjoy a prime position in Marseille and strengthening France’s attractiveness

By doing this, Orange is enhancing its value proposition to offer every operator around the world access to the capillary connectivity of its international network.

“We are particularly pleased to welcome the Medusa cable to Orange’s infrastructure in the heart of the Mediterranean hub of Marseille, as part of a strategic and ambitious project. By combining our submarine cable landing stations with our new urban infrastructure, we are strengthening Marseille’s attractiveness as a digital gateway to Europe, and beyond that, France’s sovereignty,” explains Michaël Trabbia, interim CEO of Orange Wholesale & International Networks.

Norman Albi, CEO of Medusa, stresses the importance of this agreement: “Marseille has always been a strategic Mediterranean interconnection point and joining forces with Orange means we can offer a cutting-edge service, against a background of growing needs in the digital economy. With this agreement, all Medusa landings in the western Mediterranean are totally secure and ready to be implemented.”

Orange is a major player in global connectivity and submarine cable markets and continues to invest heavily in international connectivity projects. To guarantee and continue to improve the quality of its international networks, Orange invests in over 40 submarine cables worldwide, representing almost 450,000 km.

To view the full press release, click here.

To keep up to date with the latest developments from across the EMEA submarine cable market, join us in London at Submarine Networks EMEA 2023 on 31st May and 1st June. Head to the event website for more details on how to get involved.

NEWS

Microsoft has acquired UK-based start-up, Lumenisity which was spun out from the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton.

Lumenisity, makes hollow core fibre products mainly for data centres and ISPs. The claim their CoreSmart® solution allows the data to travel 50% faster than in traditional solid core fibre and gives a 30% reduction in latency.

Microsoft say Lumenisity technology benefits industries including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, retail and government with benefits including improved security and intrusion detection, accelerated medical image retrieval and speeding fast, secure transactions across a broad geographies.

Lumenisity said “We are proud to be acquired by a company with a shared vision that will accelerate our progress in the hollowcore space. This is the end of the beginning, and we are excited to start our new chapter as part of Microsoft to fulfil this technology’s full potential and continue our pursuit of unlocking new capabilities in communication networks.”

In September this year, Lumenisity announced a deal with euNetworks with 14km of Lumenisity® CoreSmart® hollowcore fibre cable as part of a new 45km ultra low latency route to Basildon.

Paula Cogan, President of euNetworks flagged the “successfully blending hollowcore fibre with regular single mode fibre on this latest route.” And said they looked forward “to deploying longer routes with Lumenisity in the coming quarters.”

Lumenisity have also worked with Comcast in the USA deploying what is believed to be the first-ever end-to-end deployment of advanced “hollowcore” fiber optics in the world by an Internet provider.

For more on connectivity in the United States join Total Telecom on the 28-29 March 2023 at the Irving Convention Center, Dallas for Connected America. Find out more

Cityfibre has announced that they’ve begun construction work on their £30m project to cover the large Greater Manchester (England) town of Wigan with their new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network, which aims to “reach … almost every home and business“. Construction work on the new full fibre network in Wigan is being […]

News

Jim Fagan will join Aqua Comms as CEO effective from 1 May 2023.

Dublin-based Aqua Comms is a subsea connectivity provider who currently offers services on seven subsea fibre cables connecting North America to Ireland, the UK and northern Europe. The company will also soon open a new route from southern Europe to India.

Jim will join Aqua Comms from GCX where he has been working as Chief Strategy and Revenue Officer since 2020. He has previously held senior roles at Telstra, Pacnet and Rackspace and has been based in Asia, EMEA and the USA.

Current CEO, Nigel Bayliff, will leave the business on 30 April 2023. Nigel joined Aqua Comms in 2016 and key achievements include having led the company through its acquisition by D9 Infrastructure in 2021.

In a statement announcing the changes to the company’s leadership, Alan Harper, Chairman of Aqua Comms said: “Nigel has achieved great success turning AC into a customer focused and profitable business with an enviable industry reputation. I thank Nigel for his enormous contribution to the success of Aqua Comms and wish him well on his next move in the industry.”

To keep up to date with the latest developments from across the EMEA submarine cable market, join us in London at Submarine Networks EMEA 2023 on 31st May and 1st June. Head to the event website for more details on how to get involved.

Mobile operator Vodafone UK has this morning announced that their ultrafast 5G (mobile broadband) network is now being deployed to cover a further five airports, such as the George Best Airport in Belfast and Newcastle International Airport. All were installed by Exchange Communications. The two deployments mentioned above have already been completed, but Vodafone and […]

VIEWPOINT

At the Global Telecom Awards (GLOTEL Awards) ceremony held in London, United Kingdom on 1 December 2022, China Mobile, China Mobile Zhejiang and Huawei won the “Automation Initiative of the Year” award for their innovation and practice in autonomous core networks.

This is a remarkable achievement for China Mobile Zhejiang being the first operator in China to receive this award, as GLOTEL Awards, instituted by the ICT research group Informa, recognize innovation and excellence in companies involved in advancing and transforming the telecoms industry. China Mobile’s cloud-based core network O&M transformation and Huawei’s autonomous driving network (ADN) solution for core networks have received good reviews from across the industry and significantly contributed to automated and intelligent O&M for core networks.

China Mobile Zhejiang features China Mobile’s regional cloud-based core networks with wide coverage, large network management capacity, and complex network architecture. It faced great challenges in O&M of its regional cloud-based core networks. It became difficult to ensure the running of a secure network just by increasing manpower or by using expert experience.

Guided by China Mobile’s autonomous network policies, China Mobile Zhejiang and Huawei’s cloud core network ADN team jointly carried out a series of innovative practices for autonomous core networks. These practices built an intelligent end-to-end fault defense system for core networks, covering fault prediction, detection, demarcation, and recovery, and realized three key O&M transformations for the regional cloud-based core networks.

Risk prevention and fault detection: The O&M mode changed from passive response to proactive risk prevention. Capabilities such as intelligent KPI anomaly detection and multi-dimensional incident aggregation were developed to realize sub-health detection and prevent issues from escalating.

Fault diagnosis: Manual analysis transformed into automatic machine diagnosis. By using intelligent clustering and reasoning algorithms, HTTP link and KPI deterioration faults are accurately demarcated within 10 minutes, greatly improving troubleshooting efficiency, user experience, and network stability.

Fault recovery: Manual switchover based on expert experience replaced by real-time visualized intelligent DR based on automatic simulation. Based on the HEBO algorithm used by intelligent DR evaluation, optimal flow control policies for the entire network are generated quickly, ensuring 100% success of DR fault recovery. In addition, a large screen clearly displays the DR service processes, facilitating control over the switchover. Currently, four cross-region DR switchover drills involving millions of users have been successfully conducted.

China Mobile Zhejiang’s O&M transformation project for regional cloud-based core networks sets a good example for joint industry innovation, provides valuable technical and practical experience for the industry, and will effectively drive the transformation towards digital and intelligent O&M of global telecom networks. In the future, China Mobile Zhejiang and Huawei will carry out extensive and in-depth cooperation, continue to build top autonomous core networks, and work with global operators and industry organizations to evolve towards higher-level autonomous core networks.

Openreach (BT) has today issued an update to their £15bn rollout of a new 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network, which “reformats the existing exchange areas already announced” and adds another 12 new locations (towns and villages) to their deployment plan – covering an additional 184,806 homes and businesses. So far the rollout, which has […]