Comment (3)It's been a busy week in the world of 100 Gbit/s. Numerous deployments and services launches have been announced in the last several days, including two traversing the Amazon rainforest.
The heightened activity could have something to do with growing acknowledgment that 100G economics have greatly improved. Or, maybe it's all just one-upsmanship. Either way, here's a taste of what's been happening in the last week in 100G:
- TIM Brasil and vendor Xtera Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: XCOM) teamed up for an 100G longhaul deployment across the Amazon region -- a deployment that, because of the obvious landscape hurdles, required several spans of more than 200km. (See TIM Brasil, Xtera String 100G Across Amazon.)
Meanwhile, TIM Brasil's larger competitor, Telefônica Brasil , which operates under the Vivo brand, has deployed its own WDM link across the Amazon to support 100G. Both deployments look timed to battle for traffic related to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, although there's also an interesting business development coloring these deployments: Spain's Telefonica, owner of Telefonica Brasil, is reportedly looking to increase a minority investment it holds in TIM Brasil, a move which has raised the hackles of Brazilian regulators. (See Vivo Deploys 100G Network Across Amazon.)
- CenturyLink Inc. (NYSE: CTL) inaugurated its first 100G connection to a business customer. This announcement comes about 10 months after CenturyLink started choosing vendors for its 100G deployment, and after making it known that it saw demand among its enterprise customers and its own datacenters. (See CenturyLink Delivers First Dedicated 100G Link and Infinera Officially Lands CenturyLink.)
- ZTE Corp. (Shenzhen: 000063; Hong Kong: 0763) claims to have won more than 60 percent of China Mobile Communications Corp. 's 100G tenders for this year. That announcement comes after China Mobile announced Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. , FiberHome Technologies Group , ZTE, and Alcatel Shanghai Bell Co. Ltd. last spring as vendors for what has been called the world's biggest 100G deployment. (See China Mobile Awards 100G Deals.)
- Zain KSA (Zain Saudi Arabia) completed testing with vendor Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) on a 100G network aimed at metro needs, and embarked on a 400G trial with the vendor. Alcatel-Lucent has been engaging with a number of carriers on 400G tests of late, including SaskTel just last month (See SaskTel Trials 400G With Alcatel-Lucent).
- At the Optical Internetworking Forum's OIF Interoperability 2013 event, semiconductor firm MoSys demonstrated 100G connectivity support for CFP2 and CPAK modules, as well as for the OIF long reach standard (CEI-25G-LR), across backplanes from multiple vendors.
— Dan O'Shea, Managing Editor, Light Reading
