Google's Topaz cable to link Canada and Japan

Google unveiled plans for Topaz, the first-ever fiber cable to connect Canada and Asia. 

The Topaz cable will house 16 fiber pairs, for a total capacity of 240 Terabits per second, and will feature Wavelength Selective Switch (WSS) technology for flexibility in routing and advanced resilience. 

Notably, the eastern-end of Topaz will use the original cable landing station in Vancouver employed by the 1960s era Commonwealth Pacific Cable System (COMPAC), a copper undersea cable linking Vancouver with Honolulu (United States), Sydney (Australia), and Auckland (New Zealand).

In a blog post, Bikash Koley,VP and Head of Google Global Networking and Head of Technology and Strategy, also notes that the Google consulted and partnered with First Nations communities in Canada on the project.

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/topaz-subsea-cable-connects-canada-and-asia

Pacific Light subsea cable gets U.S. green light

Tuesday, December 21, 2021  Subsea  

Google and Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook) reached an agreement with Team Telecom (U.S. Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security) on how to protect data on the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) system, an undersea fiber optic cable system that will connect the United States, Taiwan and the Philippines. “These agreements enable Google and Meta to take advantage of critical, additional cable capacity while protecting U.S....

READ MORE

Google and Facebook Team Up for Pacific Light Cable Network

Wednesday, October 12, 2016  Facebook, Google, Submarine Cable, Undersea  

Facebook and Google are teaming up to build the highest capacity, trans-Pacific cable system to date. The Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), which will stretch 12,800 km between Los Angeles and Hong Kong, will have an estimated cable capacity of 120 Tbps.  The cable is expected to enter service in the summer of 2018. The project is organized by Pacific Light Data Communication Co. Ltd., a new company based in Hong Kong. TE SubCom has been...

READ MORE

Transpacific FASTER Cable Enters Service with 60 Tbps Capacity

Wednesday, June 29, 2016  Google, Submarine Cable, Undersea  

The world's highest capacity undersea cable system has entered commercial service -- six fiber pairs capable of delivering 60 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth across the Pacific. FASTER is a 9,000km trans-Pacific cable connecting Oregon and two landing sites in Japan (Chiba and Mie prefectures). The system has extended connections to major hubs on the West Coast of the U.S. covering Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland and Seattle....

READ MORE

Read More

Rogers launch Canada’s first commercial 5G standalone network

Rogers Communications a has launched the first commercial 5G standalone (SA) network in Canada, turning on the next-generation service after completing the rollout of Canada’s first national standalone 5G core and the country’s first 5G standalone device certification. 

Rogers said its 5G SA Core network has been built from the ground up based on the latest cloud native technologies, enabling more advanced wireless capabilities like ultra-low latency, network slicing and mobile edge computing and expanding Rogers 5G footprint. 

“We are thrilled to be the first in Canada to launch a commercial 5G standalone service,” said Jorge Fernandes, Chief Technology Officer at Rogers Communications. “This milestone underscores our ongoing leadership in 5G and will bring immediate benefits to customers by increasing coverage, scalability and availability, and improving network response times, enabling a world of new use cases and applications.”

“Today’s launch delivers exciting new opportunities and capabilities to industries, businesses and consumers across Canada,” said Yasir Hussain, Chief Technology Officer, Ericsson Canada. “Ericsson is collaborating with our partners at Rogers to deliver 5G advanced services and innovative network solutions to meet the growing demand from Canadian companies and consumers.”

Read More

China Mobile exits Canada

 China Mobile will cease operations in Canada effective January 5, 2022.

The decision follows an order from the Canadian federal government to CMLink, China Mobile's local subsidiary, to cease operations due to national security concerns. The order reportedly was issued in August.

https://www.cmlink.com/ca/zh/

Read More

Zayo to build more fiber routes in Toronto

Zayo announced plans to build more than 140 kilometers of new fiber routes in the Greater Toronto Area by the end of 2022. Additional network expansion projects are expected in Toronto in the coming years.

Zayo’s dense fiber footprint in the Toronto area currently connects more than 100 data centers and 1,400 buildings. With over 14,000 Toronto buildings near its network, Zayo expects to connect many more buildings in the coming quarters.

Zayo is also now rolling out a new product offer to new and existing customers in the Toronto region. The offer, called Shielded Internet Access, includes Dedicated Internet Access, DDoS Protection and CloudLink, all within a single offer that will be competitively positioned against current market benchmarks.

“Toronto continues to lead and support key business sectors both nationally and globally, accelerating the need for reliable connectivity solutions,” said Roger Brulotte, Principal, Senior Sales Manager at Zayo Group. “Zayo is committed to supporting the fast-paced growth of Toronto’s diverse industries and the connectivity essential to our clients’ growth and success.”

“Zayo is helping usher in a new era for Canada’s fastest growing business and technology community,” said Toronto Mayor, John Tory. “The Toronto Region relies on accessible, high-quality connectivity infrastructure to support our key sector needs. We appreciate our partnership with Zayo and look forward to the opportunities that these network expansion projects will bring to the Greater Toronto Area.”

Read More

Bell Canada tests Nokia's 25G PON

Bell Canada has tested Nokia's  25G PON fiber broadband technology at Bell’s Advanced Technical Lab in Montréal, Québec. The trial validated that current GPON and XGS-PON broadband technology and future 25G PON can work seamlessly together on the same fiber hardware, which is being deployed.

Stephen Howe, EVP & Chief Technology Officer, Bell, said: “As part of Bell’s purpose to advance how Canadians connect with each other and the world, we embrace next-generation technologies such as 25G PON to ensure we remain at the forefront of broadband innovation. Our successful work with Nokia to deliver the first 25G PON trial in North America will help ensure we maximize the Bell fiber advantage for our customers in the years to come.”

https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2021/11/16/nokia-and-bell-canada-test-25g-pon-fiber-broadband-technology/

Read More

Xanadu and imec target photonic qubits in silicon nitride waveguides

Xanadu, a start-up based in Toronto, announced a partnership with imec to develop photonic qubits based on ultra-low loss silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides.

imec is a leading research and innovation center in nanoelectronics and digital technologies based in Belgium. 

Xanadu is developing a unique type of quantum computer powered by photonic qubits based on squeezed states - a special type of light generated by chip-integrated silicon photonic devices. Such an approach uses particles of light to carry information through photonic chips, rather than electrons or ions used by other approaches. 

Xanadu said its photonic approach offers the benefits of scalability to one million qubits via optical networking, room temperature computation, and the natural ability to leverage fabrication R&D centers such as imec. Xanadu is using silicon nitride to enable the generation of squeezed states, which replace single photons as the basic resource for synthesizing qubits. Squeezed states are deterministically generated, and can be used to distill error-resistant qubits called 'GKP states'. When multiplexed and implemented in Xanadu's architecture, these offer a more promising path to fault-tolerant quantum computing. 

Amin Abbasi, business development manager at imec: "We are pleased to see that imec's wafer-scale low loss SiN photonics platform, initially developed for communication, is finding its way towards other advanced applications, like quantum computing. We look forward to working with Xanadu to drive further development of this platform for their particular needs."

"We are pleased to partner with Xanadu, one of the most exciting companies working in the quantum computing space." said Philippe Helin, specialty components program manager at imec. "Xanadu's mission to build photonic quantum computers matches perfectly with imec's track record of and commitment to pushing the leading edge of integrated technologies," adds Haris Osman, VP R&D and head of department.

"One of the most critical challenges in building a photonic quantum computer is finding the right fabrication partner that can simultaneously deliver cutting-edge process development and volume production of high performing photonic chips," said Zachary Vernon, who heads up Xanadu's Hardware team. "Imec is one of the few semiconductor R&D centers that does advanced technology R&D on advanced 200mm and 300mm lines, as well as volume manufacturing on their 200mm line, capable of delivering up to a thousand wafers per year per customer on a few platforms including ultralow-loss photonic platforms. The seamless transfer offered by imec of new processes to production is especially critical for rapid scaling of our technology."

http://www.xanadu.ai 

Read More

Canada completes 3500 MHz band auction

The government of Canada raised a record C$8.9 billion (US$7.2 billion) through the auction of 1,504 licenses of 3500 MHz spectrum. The following provisional results were announced.

https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/sf11722.html

Read More

Untether AI raises $125 million for high-performance silicon

Untether AI, a start-up based in Toronto, announced an oversubscribed $125 million funding round for its at-memory computation and AI inference acceleration silicon.

The latest funding was led by an affiliate of Tracker Capital Management and by Intel Capital, with participation from new investor Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (“CPP Investments”) and existing investor Radical Ventures.

As part of the funding round, Tracker Capital Senior Advisor Dr. Shaygan Kheradpir will join Untether AI’s Board of Directors. Previously, Dr. Kheradpir served as Verizon’s Group CIO, Barclays Bank Group COO, and CEO of Coriant and Juniper Networks.

“I am pleased to add Tracker Capital to our prestigious group of investors and welcome Shaygan to our Board,” said Arun Iyengar, CEO, Untether AI. “Tracker Capital’s unmatched experience and relationships across sectors will help speed our engagements in multiple high-value markets, including telecom, technology, financial services, retail, and defense. I am also thrilled to welcome CPP Investments to the Untether AI family. With the new funding round and partnerships, we will be able to expand our current product reach and accelerate the development of our next generation products."

Saf Yeboah-Amankwah, Intel Chief Strategy Officer added: “We have been an investor in Untether AI since the seed round. During that time Untether AI has assembled a world-class management team, developed and launched an exceptional product, and is now poised for growth in the burgeoning AI inference acceleration space.”

The dramatic increase in the usage of AI, along with its heavy computational requirements, is overwhelming traditional compute architectures, and drastically increasing power consumption in datacenters. 

Untether AI said its at-memory compute architecture and tsunAImi accelerator cards can achieve record-breaking energy efficiency and compute density for inference acceleration. 

www.untether.ai

Read More

Xanadu raises $100 million for its photonic quantum computing

Xanadu, a start-up based in Toronto, announced US$100 million in Series B venture funding for its photonic quantum computing.

Xanadu was founded in 2016 to use particles of light for quantum computing to perform extremely fast and previously impossible computations at room temperature. The company says this round of funding positions it to achieve its next major milestone: the building of a fault-tolerant quantum computing module.

"The strong interest from VC firms to fund this Series B financing demonstrates significant market confidence in Xanadu's photonic approach and our world-class team," said Christian Weedbrook, founder and CEO. "We believe this confidence is grounded in the significant advantages offered by photonics: The ability to leverage preexisting foundries and off-the-shelf optical components, and the capability to naturally network photonic chips together to form a larger quantum computer with one million qubits".

"This fault-tolerant module is the size of a few conventional server racks and will be the key building block to reaching one millions qubits and to solving meaningful problems, leading to the opening up of a new global market," said Weedbrook. "Photonics has the advantage that networking these modules together is achieved using light, which is already the medium of choice for our quantum computer".

Bessemer Venture Partners led the round with participation from Capricorn, Tiger Global, BDC Capital, In-Q-Tel, along with returning investors Georgian, OMERS, and Tim Draper. The round brings Xanadu's total investment to date to US$145 million.

https://xanadu.ai

Read More

Zayo upgrades its fiber network in Vancouver

Zayo announced a significant expansion to its infrastructure in Vancouver, British Columbia with two key projects: a network upgrade to 100G and an increase in the fiber capacity to its existing terrestrial route between Vancouver and Seattle, scheduled for completion by mid-year of 2022.

The upgraded network in the Vancouver area will enable Zayo to support 100G services, including IP Transit and Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) services. 

The increased fiber capacity Vancouver - Seattle route will better support the region’s growing commercial marketplace, meeting demands for higher speed and increasing volume. 

“Our delivery of 100G enabled service capabilities to the Vancouver market and increased capacity for the Vancouver-Seattle technology corridor reflects Zayo’s commitment to building our network based on customer needs,” stated Dennis Kyle, SVP of Zayo Networks, Mountain Region. “We look forward to collaborating with innovative businesses and organizations in the region, helping them drive transformative changes that disrupt the way we live and work.”

Read More

Rogers + Shaw merger to reshape Canadian market

Rogers Communications agreed to acquire Shaw Communications in a $26 billion deal that could reshape the Canadian communications market. Under the transaction, Rogers will acquire all of Shaw’s Class A and Class B shares for $40.50 per share, reflecting a ~70% premium to Shaw’s Class B share price.

The merger will create Canada’s most robust wholly-owned national network and accelerate the deployment of 5G. Once the transaction is complete, the companies plan to invest $2.5 billion in 5G networks across Western Canada, which is expected to create up to 3,000 net new jobs. The deal brings together Shaw’s fibre-to-home, WiFi and wireless networks with Roger's national wireless network and 5G capabilities.

Both Rogers and Shaw began as family operated businesses.

Rogers will also commit to establishing a new $1 billion Rogers Rural and Indigenous Connectivity Fund to connect rural, remote and Indigenous communities across Western Canada to high-speed Internet and closing critical connectivity gaps faster for underserved areas. 

Joe Natale, President and CEO of Rogers Communications, states: “We are proud to join forces with the Shaw family and team as we combine our companies and our 10,000 team members across Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, supported by a head office in Calgary. Western Canada is a major driver of our national economy and together we will have the scale, expertise and commitment to deliver the technology infrastructure needed to keep local communities connected, businesses competitive and attract new investment. We’re at a critical inflection point where generational investments are needed to make Canada-wide 5G a reality. 5G is about nation-building; it’s vital to boosting productivity and will help close the connectivity gap faster in rural, remote and Indigenous communities."

Read More

AEPONYX secures funding for silicon photonics on MEMS

AEPONYX, a start-up based in Montreal, announced the closing of a new $10 million funding round to support the buildout its 5G product portfolio.

Participants in this funding round were Fonds Ecofuel, BDC, Investissement Québec, and Fonds Innovexport.

“We are delighted to bring innovative products to the 5G market” says Philippe Babin, CEO of AEPONYX. “The creation of our integrated photonics with MEMS products enable the

Telecom industry to advance their next-generation networks. With the 5G adoption rate eclipsing where 4G was at this point in time, we see tremendous growth potential.”

AEPONYX said its integrated photonics innovations combined with their fast-tuning and ultra-small MEMS devices are well suited for telecom applications.

“While our technology works beautifully in quantum computing, LiDAR, and sensors, we are targeting telecom as our first market vertical” says Babin.

“These optical devices, combining high data rates with being quite small in size, are exactly what the market is looking for to advance the global 5G infrastructure significantly” stated Fonds Ecofuel’s Managing Partner, Richard Cloutier.

http://www.AEPONYX.com

Read More

Telstra activates Toronto POP

Telstra activated a point-of-presence in Toronto, its first POP in Canada. 

Telstra owns and operates the largest subsea cable system (with more than 250,000 miles of subsea cables globally); the company currently carries nearly one-third of all Asia-Pacific internet traffic.

The new Telstra POP is hosted at Cologix’s TOR1 interconnection hub in Toronto. Cologix’s TOR1 data center is located in the most connected building in Toronto with 150+ unique network partners in the onsite Meet-Me-Room (MMR) with more than 200 local customers. Cologix Toronto customers have direct connectivity to Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, IBM Cloud and Oracle FastConnect.

“We’re proud to be the largest and most connected data center company in Canada with 17 data centers across Canada in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver,” said Sean Maskell, Cologix Canada President. “Located at 151 Front Street, Canada’s largest and most important carrier hotel, Cologix’s TOR1 interconnection hub is a prime location for Telstra to enter the Canadian market. With our scalable, secure and reliable infrastructure across Canada, Telstra can quickly grow its business and reach new customers.”

Read More

Quebec's Videotron launches 5G with Samsung

Videotron launched its 5G network with a rollout beginning gradually in Montréal and then extending to Québec’s other urban centers.

After many successful decades in the cable television and Internet access business, Videotron launched its initial wireless operation in 2010. As of September 30, 2020, Videotron was serving 1,452,600 mobile subscribers.

For the launch, Samsung has provided 5G RAN, which covers 600MHz, 700MHz, 2.6GHz and AWS spectrums. Moreover, Samsung’s 5G RAN supports both LTE and 5G NR, enabling convenient operation of a network, and saves installation space while reducing CAPEX and OPEX.

“This is a big day for Videotron!” says Jean-François Pruneau, President and CEO of Videotron. “5G technology is throwing the doors open to a world of marvels and Videotron is very enthusiastic about embarking on the path to this promising and exciting future, in which technology will truly serve the daily needs and wants of our families and businesses.”

“Samsung is pleased to support Videotron for its first 5G service. This commercial rollout will open up new exciting experiences for Videotron’s 5G users,” said Jeff Jo, President and CEO of Samsung Electronics Canada. “Together with Videotron, Samsung will leverage its successful 5G experiences to bring reliable and advanced 5G services to users in Canada.”

https://videotron.com/residential/p/mobile/5g/A-psku13630330e

• As of September 30, 2020, Videotron was serving 1,481,800 cable television customers and 452,900 subscribers to its Club illico video streaming service. Videotron is also the Québec leader in high-speed Internet access, with 1,773,600 subscribers to its cable service as of September 30, 2020. As of the same date, Videotron had 

Read More

WSJ: U.S. considers a possible deal for Huawei's Meng Wanzhou

The U.S. Department of Justice is in talks with Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer and deputy chairwoman of Huawei and daughter of founder Ren Zhengfei, about a possible deal that could lead to her return to China, according to Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and other media sources. Ms. Meng, who was arrested in Vancouver, Canada in December 2018, is wanted by the U.S. authorities for alleged bank fraud regarding the re-export of restricted U.S. technology to Iran. Her extradition to the United States has been tied up in the Canadian courts.  

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-huawei-tech-canada/update-1-us-in-talks-with-huawei-cfo-meng-on-resolving-criminal-charges-source-idUSL1N2IJ32H

Canadian court rules extradition process can continue for Huawei exec

Wednesday, May 27, 2020  Canada, China, Huawei, People  

A Canadian court has ruled that the extradition process of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to the United States to face fraud charges may continue. The question at hand was whether the case should be dismissed for failing to meet the criteria of "double criminality" -- whether the alleged activity also violates Canadian law.

In a press statement, Huawei expressed its disappointment and said it hoped Canada's judicial system would ultimately "prove Ms. Meng's innocence."

 Huawei's CFO is arrested in Canada, U.S. seeks extradition

Wednesday, December 05, 2018  China, Huawei, People  

Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer and deputy chairwoman of Huawei, was arrested in Vancouver, Canada on December 1st at the request of the U.S. government, which is seeking her extradition, according to multiple news sources. U.S. authorities reportedly are investigating violations of economic sanctions on Iran.

Meng Wanzhou (Sabrina Weng) is the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei.

• A biography on Huawei's website says Meng Wanzhou joined the company in 1993 and has previously held the positions of Director of the International Accounting Dept, CFO of Huawei Hong Kong, and President of the Accounting Mgmt Dept. She is credited with the founding of five shared service centers around the world, the completion of Huawei's Global Payment Center in Shenzhen, leading an eight-year partnership with IBM focused on Integrated Financial Services.

Read More

Canada's TELUS names Nokia as a 5G partner

TELUS is deploying Nokia's solutions in its Canadian 5G infrastructure. The Nokia solutions being deployed for 5G include its subscriber data management and the policy controller, as well as its NetAct network management, LTE indoor picocells and IP edge routers. 

Nokia’s products will allow TELUS to cost-effectively manage its network through near zero-touch automation and adherence to service level agreements while helping the operator deliver ultra-low network latency, reliability and security to its customers.

Jeffrey Maddox, President of Nokia Canada, said: “We are very pleased to provide TELUS with Nokia’s cloud-native 5G core products and IP routing solutions. This deployment speaks to the breadth of Nokia’s ability to truly connect the network to the business at scale and strengthens Nokia’s position as a market leader in 5G core network deployments. Being hardware, vendor and network agnostic, we give our customers peace of mind and the confidence that a provider of our size will fully deliver.”

Read More

Vantage acquires Hypertec’s Quebec data centers

Vantage Data Centers has acquired the hyperscale data center business from Hypertec in Montreal. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Hypertec’s 49MW campus includes 25MW across two existing facilities and 24MW of expansion capacity. The campus, located less than two miles from Vantage’s existing 11MW campus in Montreal, sits on 10 acres and will consist of 320,000 square feet once fully developed. Vantage will immediately begin construction of a third facility to complete the campus. The Hypertec data center team has joined Vantage.

The acquisition expands Vantage’s total footprint in the Province of Quebec to 81MW of IT capacity across three campuses.

“The acquisition of Hypertec enables Vantage to continue capitalizing on Montreal’s hyperscale growth given its access to scalable renewable energy, attractive power costs, tax incentives and robust fiber connectivity,” said Sureel Choksi, president and CEO, Vantage Data Centers. “Since entering the Canadian market in early 2019, Vantage has invested heavily in the region. We have been very impressed by the Hypertec data center team and are excited to welcome them to Vantage.”

“Vantage continues making significant investments in the Province of Quebec, and the Hypertec acquisition further cements our position as a leading hyperscale provider in Canada,” explained Maxime Guévin, vice president and general manager for Vantage Canada. “This increased capacity positions us to better serve our local and international customers, and we expect Montreal to benefit from the addition of more high-quality jobs and revenue coming into the region.”

This is Vantage’s third acquisition in 2020, including the purchase of Etix Everywhere in February and Next Generation Data (NGD) in July.

http://www.vantage-dc.com

Vantage raises US$1.25 billion in equity funding

Thursday, November 19, 2020  Vantage Data Centers  

Vantage Data Centers raised US$1.25 billion in incremental equity capital from its existing investors, led by Digital Colony. This funding will be used to fuel ongoing expansion and development across North America and Europe.“Hyperscale data center market demand remains strong, and this capital raise will allow Vantage to accelerate its global expansion of sustainable, large-scale campuses,” said Sharif Metwalli, CFO, Vantage Data Centers. “This...

READ MORE

Vantage Data Centers opens data center campus near Frankfurt

Monday, November 02, 2020  Data Centers, Germany, Vantage Data Centers  

Vantage Data Centers inaugurated its first 15MW data center in Germany along with partners Energieversorgung Offenbach (EVO) and DataCenter-Group (DCG). The campus, located in Offenbach, will house three multi-story data centers totaling 55MW of critical IT capacity and 650,000 square feet (60,000 square meters) when fully developed. The opening of the Frankfurt campus is a key milestone in Vantage’s strategy to expand across Europe."The development...

READ MORE

Read More

Untether AI leverages at-memory computation for inference processing

Untether AI, a start-up based in Toronto, introduced its "tsunAImi" accelerator cards are powered by four of its own runAI200 processors, which feature a unique at-memory compute architecture that aims to re-think how computation for machine learning is accomplished. The company says that 90 percent of the energy for AI workloads in current processing architectures is consumed by data movement, transferring the weights and activations between external memory, on-chip caches, and finally to the computing element itself. 

Untether AI says it is able to deliver two PetaOperations per second (POPs) in its new standard PCI-Express cards -- more than two times any currently announced PCIe cards, which translates into over 80,000 frames per second of ResNet-50 v 1.5 throughput at batch=1, three times the throughput of its nearest competitor. For natural language processing, tsunAImi accelerator cards are rated at more than 12,000 queries per second (qps) of BERT-base, four times faster than any announced product.

“For AI inference in cloud and datacenters, compute density is king. Untether AI is ushering in the PetaOps era to accelerate AI inference workloads at scale with unprecedented efficiency,” said Arun Iyengar, CEO of Untether AI.

“When we founded Untether AI, our laser focus was unlocking the potential of scalable AI, by delivering more efficient neural network compute,” said Martin Snelgrove, co-founder and CTO of Untether AI. “We are gratified to see our technology come to fruition.”

The imAIgine SDK is currently in Early Access (EA) with select customers and partners. The tsunAImi accelerator card is sampling now and will be commercially available in 1Q2021.

Untether AI is funded by Radical Ventures and Intel Capital. 

http://www.untether.ai

Read More

Equinix completes acquisition of 13 data centers from Bell Canada

Equinix completed its previously announced acquisition of 13 data centers in Canada from Bell. The all-cash deal was valued at CA$1.041 billion and includes more than 600 customers, of which more than 500 are new to Equinix, and approximately 1.2 million gross square feet of data center space. Equinix and Bell have entered into an strategic partnership to integrated networking and hybrid multicloud services that combine Bell’s telecommunication services and technology expertise with Equinix’s global platform of interconnected data center and business ecosystems.  

Equinix now operates 15 data centers in Canada. Equinix also announced that Andrew Eppich, a six-year veteran of Equinix originally from Toronto, has been appointed Managing Director, Canada. 

Finally, Equinix and Bell have begun a strategic partnership that delivers industry-leading joint offers in Canada and globally. This partnership will enable enterprises in Canada to leverage integrated networking and hybrid multicloud services, combining Bell’s telecommunication services and technology expertise with Equinix’s global platform of interconnected data center and business ecosystems.  

Equinix to acquire 13 data centers from Bell Canada

Monday, June 01, 2020  Data Centers, Equinix  

Equinix agreed to acquire a portfolio of 13 data centers across Canada from BCE Inc. ("Bell") for US$750 million (CA$1,041 million) in cash.

The 13 data center sites, which represent 25 Bell data center facilities, are expected to generate approximately US$105 million annualized revenue, which represents a purchase multiple of approximately 15x EV / adjusted EBITDA.  The deal includes approximately 1.2 million gross square feet of data center space and 400,000 square feet of colocation space.

The deal will expand Equinix's coverage in Canada coast to coast, making it a market leader in data center and interconnection services. In addition to adding new capacity in Toronto, Ontario, where Equinix currently operates two International Business Exchange data centers, it will extend Equinix's interconnection services to seven new metros. These metros include Calgary, Alberta; Kamloops and Vancouver, British Columbia; Millidgeville, New Brunswick; Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa, Ontario; and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Read More

CityWest upgrades fiber infrastructure in British Columbia with Fujitsu

CityWest will upgrade its fiber optic network across western British Columbia using Fujitsu Network Communications' 1FINITY platform and Virtuora Network Control solution.

CityWest selected Fujitsu 1FINITY T300 Transport and L100 Lambda blades, along with the Virtuora Network Controller (NC), significantly increasing bandwidth and performance, as well as network efficiency. The compact modular 1FINITY T300 enables speeds up to 200G in a small footprint, helping to reduce power consumption and space constraints. In addition, the centralized provisioning and management capabilities of Virtuora NC allow CityWest to improve network automation, thereby reducing operational expenses.

CityWest is deploying the 1FINITY blades in a ring configuration, building in network redundancy to help protect against any point of failure and avoid lengthy mean time to repair (MTTR), ensuring the best possible customer service across a wide geographic region.

“At CityWest we remain true to our vision to deliver a superior customer experience, investing in 100G technology that will allow us to meet subscriber bandwidth needs well into the future,” said Donovan Dias, vice president, sales and project management, CityWest. “We opted to work with Fujitsu because performance, efficiency and network redundancy are all critical to our capability to deliver exceptional telecommunications and entertainment services to the consumers and businesses we serve, connecting our local communities to the world.”

“We are pleased to work with CityWest to advance innovation that allows delivery of enhanced speed and connectivity across the province, today and tomorrow,” said Annie Bogue, head of sales and marketing, Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc. “With the unrivaled flexibility, scalability and efficiency of the 1FINITY platform, CityWest can grow at their own pace with the latest technology in a disaggregated architecture.”

https://www.fujitsu.com/us/about/resources/news/press-releases/2020/fnc-20200922.html

Read More