REDWOOD CITY, Calif.,
Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the global interconnection and data
center company, today announced it has been selected by the Monet
Submarine Cable investors to provide U.S. facilities and services
for the next-generation cable landing station architecture to
support the Monet Submarine Cable System ("Monet"). Monet is
a planned submarine cable that is currently designed to deliver
over 60 terabits of capacity between the U.S. and Brazil.
Monet is owned by 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
(together the "Monet Investors"). In addition to being a Monet
Investor Google is also the U.S. landing party for Monet.
Construction of the system is underway and is expected to be
completed in 2017, terminating in the U.S. at Equinix's MI3
International Business Exchange (IBX®) data center, which services
the greater Miami metropolitan
area.
Highlights / Key Facts
- Brazil is the largest national
economy in Latin America, the
world's eighth largest economy at market exchange rates and the
seventh largest in purchasing power parity (PPP), according to the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. As global
enterprises look to capitalize on the business opportunity in
Brazil, they are finding that they
also require more capacity to run IT operations including
cloud-based applications. By connecting to Equinix data centers,
Monet and its users can leverage Equinix's mature business
ecosystems and interconnection platform – Platform Equinix™ – which
connects more than 8,000 global businesses in 40 markets around the
globe.
- According to industry research firm TeleGeography's Global
Bandwidth Research Service, over a billion dollars will be spent in
construction costs of sub-sea cables to Latin America and the Caribbean from 2015-2016, the second highest
region globally. Currently, more than 99 percent of global data
traffic is carried through submarine fiber cables, with less than
one percent of the remaining traffic carried through satellite
systems. This increased connectivity is expected to provide an
ultra-low latency path for Equinix and Monet customers deployed
between Miami and São Paulo.
- Networks are an essential part of business, education,
government and home communications. Many residential, business, and
mobile IP networking trends are being driven largely by a
combination of video, social networking, and advanced collaboration
applications, termed "visual networking." To remain competitive,
network operators are expanding their infrastructures to meet
demand for these new services—and are turning to colocation data
centers that not only offer all the network-to-network connectivity
of a carrier hotel, but also act as aggregation points for
concentrations of customers in network-centric industries.
- Monet will feature the latest high-quality 6-fiber-pair cable
and optical transmission technologies, with an initial design
capacity of greater than or equal to 60Tb/s (100Gb/s x 100
wavelengths x 6 fiber-pairs). This new cable system will be landed
at Equinix's Miami (MI3) data
center in North America and will
feature seamless connectivity to many neighboring cable systems to
extend the capacity beyond Miami
to other North American and European locations.
- In Brazil, Monet will land in
Fortaleza and Praia Grande near
São Paulo for distribution of traffic into South America. Landing facilities in those
markets are to be provided by Angola Cables in Fortaleza and Google in Praia Grande.
- The U.S.-Brazil route is an
increasingly used route as more businesses deploy in Latin America and require high-bandwidth
connectivity between these markets. Equinix has seen a rise in
sub-sea cable deployments as part of an increasing trend to upgrade
capacity as legacy cables end their lifecycles. Monet continues
this trend and is one of the first new fiber-optic networks
connecting Brazil and the United States since 2001.
- Equinix's Miami data centers are at the heart of one of the
largest Internet exchange points in the world and serve as a major
communications gateway to the commercial centers of Latin America. Equinix's Miami colocation facilities are home to a
dense concentration of financial services companies, cloud and IT
providers, network service providers, ISPs, content delivery
networks and enterprises, and provide the ability to serve Latin
American.
Quotes
- Javier Emicuri, Antel CEO and Chairman of Monet Executive
Committee:
"We're pleased to celebrate this important announcement made
by companies strongly committed to connect geographies, people,
countries and cultures. Monet System combined with other local and
regional investments will provide state-of-the-art connectivity
technology to enable the development of value-added and new
generations cloud services, including content distribution to the
Latin American Market."
- Tim Stronge, vice president,
Research, TeleGeography:
"The decision to locate Monet's Florida cable landing equipment at Equinix
Miami represents a promising new trend in submarine cable
communications. For cable owners, the elimination of a
separate cable landing station simplifies network design and offers
future savings on upgrades. For cable users, termination at a
multi-tenant data center with rich interconnection opportunities
greatly eases onward transport."
- Ihab Tarazi, chief technology
officer, Equinix:
"We are seeing strong demand from network, cloud and content
customers looking to leverage our MI3 data center in Miami for access to the Latin American market.
By offering direct connectivity to the Monet cable system and the
possibility of a low latency route between São Paulo and
Miami we can support the needs of
key global customers looking to expand in the region."
Additional Resources
- Nearly Half of the Enterprises in the Americas are
Interconnected [blog]
About Equinix
Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) connects the world's leading
businesses to their customers, employees and partners inside the
most interconnected data centers. In 40 markets across five
continents, Equinix is where companies come together to realize new
opportunities and accelerate their business, IT and cloud
strategies. www.equinix.com.
About Algar Telecom
Algar Telecom is a leading Brazilian Telecommunications
Company. It offers landline and mobile telephony, broadband
Internet access (3G and ADSL), data communications, cable
television, IT solutions, national and international long distance
services. For more information, visit
http://www.algartelecom.com.br/
About Angola Cables
Angola Cables is an Angolan telecommunications company founded in
2009, which operates in the wholesale market and whose core
business is the commercialization of capacity in international
circuits for voice and data through Submarine Cable Systems
throughout the South Atlantic and Africa. Angola Cables is
responsible for the management and development of WACS (West Africa
Cable System) providing carrier level services to operators in
Angola and in Sub-Saharan region
of the African continent, fast becoming one of the leading capacity
providers in the region. It is also developing SACS (South Atlantic
Cable System) connecting Luanda -
Angola to Fortaleza - Brazil, being the first transatlantic cable
system crossing the southern Hemisphere, connecting Africa and the Americas. It also operates
Angonix (Angolan IXP) in its data center in Luanda, the Angonap, and is building a
world-class data center and interconnection facility in
Fortaleza, Brazil. Africa is today the fastest growing region of
Internet penetration in the world. Angola Cables' goal is to
transform Angola into one of the
telecommunication hubs in Africa. For more information visit
www.angolacables.co.ao
About Antel
Antel is the Uruguayan state owned Telecommunications Company,
which has a strong commitment to universalize broadband access and
has taken firm steps to eliminate the digital gap, one of which is
the current deployment of a nationwide fiber optic network. Antel
currently provides Internet connectivity to a total of 74% of
households across the country with more than 62% of those having
fiber optic access. Antel was the first company in Latin America to provide customers with LTE
technology, and being placed in the top 10 countries of the world
on mobile broadband speed and coverage rankings. The brand new Tier
III Datacenter, strategically located between Argentina and Brazil, will complement Monet System and
position Antel as a regional connectivity and cloud services
provider. For more information, visit www.antel.com.uy
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that
involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ
materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking
statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but
are not limited to, the challenges of acquiring, operating and
constructing IBX centers and developing, deploying and delivering
Equinix services; unanticipated costs or difficulties relating to
the integration of companies we have acquired or will acquire into
Equinix; a failure to receive significant revenue from customers in
recently built out or acquired data centers; failure to complete
any financing arrangements contemplated from time to time;
competition from existing and new competitors; the ability to
generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain funds to repay
new or outstanding indebtedness; the loss or decline in business
from our key customers; and other risks described from time to time
in Equinix's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In particular, see Equinix's recent quarterly and annual reports
filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which
are available upon request from Equinix. Equinix does not assume
any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained
in this press release.
Equinix and IBX are registered trademarks of Equinix, Inc.
International Business Exchange is a trademark of Equinix, Inc.
To view the original version on PR Newswire,
visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/monet-submarine-cable-selects-equinix-for-landing-station-and-next-generation-digital-gateway-to-latin-america-300325729.html
SOURCE Equinix