Author: Desmond Dallen

  Nokia and Angola Cables trial the first direct optical connection between USA and Africa with PSE-3 chipset   The South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) provides direct, low-latency trans-Atlantic routing to better serve rapidly growing data consumption markets in Africa Nokia’s PSE-3 chipset maximizes capacity and performance to meet surging video, cloud and eventual 5G traffic demands   17 January 2020 Espoo, Finland – Nokia has announced that Angola Cables is trialling Nokia’s Photonic Service Engine 3 (PSE-3) chipset for the first direct optical connection between the USA and Africa. The route provides direct, low-latency trans-Atlantic routing and greatly simplifies the turn-up of services to better serve rapidly growing data consumption markets in Africa. Subsea fiber-optic cables form the backbone of the global internet, connecting countries and continents across vast trans-oceanic distances. The new services leverage the interconnection of two existing subsea cable systems – SACS (South Atlantic Cable System) and MONET. SACS, owned and managed by Angola Cables, operates between Fortaleza, Brazil and Luanda, Angola and is connected to AngoNAP Datacenter. The consortium-owned MONET connects Santos/Fortaleza with Florida/USA. Combining SACS and MONET subsea systems in this joint trial allows for the first time 300 Gbps of traffic between Miami and Luanda. The test adds more capacity to an already low latency network. Lower-latency network connections improve performance and user experience in applications such as cloud computing and content...

Inmarsat launches Fleet LTE service in the North Sea   New solution means vessel operators can access high speed triple-band service in a single, fully managed hybrid package  04 December 2019: Inmarsat, the world leader in global mobile satellite communications, will extend its service portfolio for customers with the launch of Fleet LTE, following an agreement with subsea fibre and offshore LTE network operator, Tampnet. The new service which is primarily aimed at offshore support vessel operators, but could also be used by fishing and ferry operators operating in the area,  leverages low-latency, high data speed communications available via a dedicated Access Point Name (APN) on the Tampnet North Sea LTE network and could be extended to other regions such as the Gulf of Mexico if successful. Inmarsat’s new Fleet LTE service means customers can access high speed 4G, Fleet Xpress maritime VSAT Ka-band and continuous L-band connectivity within a single, fully managed hybrid package. “Inmarsat is a leader in a market that has significant untapped potential for Tampnet’s premium LTE services, and we are really pleased to add such a great company to our list of partners,” said Tampnet CEO, Per Helge Svensson. “Inmarsat provide services to large fleets of offshore vessels that fall in our LTE network footprint. The North Sea is a natural starting point, but we are also keen to explore how we can work...

VODAFONE BUSINESS AND AMAZON WEB SERVICES TO BRING EDGE COMPUTING CLOSER TO CUSTOMERS AWS Wavelength supports ultra-low latency by enabling compute and storage services at the edge of Vodafone’s network   Vodafone Business is collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to make AWS Wavelength available in Europe. AWS Wavelength provides developers with the ability to build applications that serve end users with single-digit millisecond latencies over the 5G network. AWS Wavelength embeds AWS compute and storage services at the edge of telecommunications providers’ 5G networks, enabling developers to serve use cases that require ultra-low latency.   Enabling AWS Wavelength at the edge of Vodafone’s 5G network is designed to provide multi-access edge computing capabilities to developers, Internet of Things (IoT), devices and end users. Responsiveness matters when it comes to artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, video analytics, autonomous vehicles, robotics and drone control. These applications require latencies that are 5-10 times lower to deliver business impact. Vodafone Business and AWS are bringing the AWS cloud closer to the devices that need it by running AWS Wavelength in strategic locations within Vodafone’s 5G network.   “With Europe’s largest 5G network across 58 cities and as a global leader in IoT with over 90 million connections, Vodafone is pleased to be the first telco to introduce AWS Wavelength in Europe,” said Vinod Kumar, CEO of Vodafone Business. “Faster speeds and...

Vox enhances its core network with Angola Cables 4 December 2019, Johannesburg: Integrated ICT and infrastructure provider, Vox has announced that it has entered into a partnership with Angola Cables that will give it remote peering access to the undersea South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) that links Africa with the Americas. “Vox currently makes use of three cable systems to provide international connectivity between South Africa and London in the UK – the South Atlantic 3 (SAT3), the West Africa Cable System (WACS) and the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy),” says Christopher Burrell, Head of Network at Vox, “adding additional capacity through this fourth cable will significantly enhance our core network.”  SACS is the first undersea cable connection to provide a direct link between Africa and South America. The 6165km-long cable with a design capacity of 40Tbps connects Luanda, Angola with Fortaleza, Brazil and provides the lowest latency routing option between the two continents. In South Africa, Angola Cables has Points of Presence (PoPs) in both Cape Town and Johannesburg. “In addition, SACS offers connections to other cable systems such as WACS, and MONET, which links Brazil with the United States helping to reduce latency between Africa and North America by up to 60% when compared to existing routing options via Europe. As an example, latency between Cape Town and New York drops from 236ms via existing connections to...

Nokia to transform Finland’s nationwide smart grid for better support of renewable energy Nokia is installing a mission-critical IP/MPLS network to enable Fingrid to digitalize and automate the management of its national power grid. The new smart grid will be better able to seamlessly integrate variable renewables such as solar, wind and micro-generation from bioenergy. The Nokia network will also support all current and legacy grid control applications including SCADA, teleprotection and current differential protection.   3 December 2019   Espoo, Finland – Nokia today announced that it has been selected by Fingrid, Finland’s national transmission system operator, to build an IP/MPLS network to support the digital transformation of its national electrical grid. Fingrid will use the network to operate 120 high-voltage substations and control 14,600km of power transmission across the country. The new smart grid is needed to manage the growing adoption of variable distributed energy resources, such as wind, solar and micro-generation using bioenergy.   As one of Europe’s leading users of renewable energy, Finland’s power transmission network is constantly being upgraded in order to meet the changing character of energy generation. Solar and wind generation, for example, require a much more agile and automated grid to manage the variable, two-way power flows by automatically ramping and balancing inputs and outputs. This calls for new distributed energy resource management systems, which need a highly reliable, secure communications...