Equinix, Inc. (NASDAQ:EQIX) is trumpeting its success in attracting submarine cable operators to link into the company's International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers. With the most recent announcement that the Monet undersea cable system will use Equinix facilities in the U.S., the global interconnection and data center company says it is or will supply connection facilities to 12 current and planned submarine networks.
The deal with Monet will see the fiber-optic cable system, which will link the U.S. and Brazil, connect its Florida landing station directly into Equinix's Miami-area MI3 IBX facility. Scheduled for completion in 2017, the six-fiber-pair cable network will feature an initial design capacity of greater than or equal to 60 Tbps (100 Gbps x 100 wavelengths x 6 fiber-pairs). Monet's backers include Algar Telecom (a Brazilian telecom company and ISP), Angola Cables (an Angolan telecom company operating in the wholesale market), Antel (the Uruguayan telecom company) and Google. Google will act as the U.S. landing party and will partner with Angola Cables as landing parties in Brazil. Angola Cable will be the responsible landing party in Fortaleza and Google will play the same role in Praia Grande. Both locations are near São Paulo.
In addition to Monet, Equinix has announced agreements with the following submarine cable networks:
- Southern Cross Cable Network (California - Sydney)
- Aqua Comms (New York - London)
- Hibernia Express (New York - London); Equinix recently unveiled a partnership with Hibernia Networks to expand the Equinix Media Cloud Ecosystem for Entertainment (EMCEE) into Equinix data centers in Asia, Europe and North America.
- Cinia (Germany - Finland)
- Trident (Australia - Indonesia - Singapore)
- Globenet (Florida - Brazil)
- Asia Pacific Gateway (China - Hong Kong - Japan - South Korea - Malaysia - Taiwan - Thailand - Vietnam - Singapore)
- Hawaiki Cable Ltd. (U.S. – Australia – New Zealand)
- Gulf Bridge International (Middle East - Europe)
- FASTER (U.S. West Coast - Japan)
- Seaborn Networks (New York - Sao Paulo).
Equinix says its success with submarine cable operators derives from its ability to provide "one-stop shop" access to cable landing station, backhaul, and interconnection needs. The company also has adapted its support model to better meet the needs of submarine cable systems oprators, creating a turnkey package of cable landing station, power, colocation, and interconnection.
"As data traffic continues to grow, from Facebook videos and Instagram selfies to Office 365 sessions and IoT connected devices, there is an unprecedented surge in construction of new submarine cables that currently carry 99 percent of this and all Internet traffic between continents," said Ihab Tarazi, CTO of Equinix. "The investors in these new submarine cable systems, which now include large cloud service providers and content companies, are finding that when these submarine cables terminate on land, Equinix data centers are the optimal location to immediately connect these point to point submarine cables into a single location that directly connects to thousands of networks."
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