European telco Proximus is looking to reach 85% of enterprises and more than 50% of households with fiber.
Belgian telecommunications operator Proximus said it expects to invest 3 billion euros ($3.13 billion) over the next 10 years to accelerate deployment of fiber across the country.
The carrier said it expects to cover more than 85% of all enterprises and more than 50% of all households with fiber, with plans to fully cover dense city areas with fiber-to-the-home and fiber-to-the-premises starting with a progressive roll out in six cities – Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, Ghent, Namur and Roeselare – in early 2017.
“This is great news for Belgian customers, as optical fiber can be considered as the ultimate broadband technology, allowing us to meet customer needs in the very long-term,” said Proximus CTO Geert Standaert.
Belgium’s Minister of Telecommunications Alexander de Croo said the roll out of FTTH is an essential step in the government’s plan to advance the country’s digital access.
“The Digital Belgium action plan wants to facilitate the investments in fiber in order to obtain a broadband speed of 1 [gigabit per second] for half of the Belgian households by 2020, and to meet the European 100 [megabit per second] speed target for all households by 2025,” the official said.
Seaborn Networks introduces point-to-point solution linking New Jersey and Sao Paulo
Seaborn Networks, a U.S.-based developer and operator of subsea fiber optic cable systems, unveiled what it claims is the lowest latency point-to-point solution between Carteret, New Jersey, and Sao Paulo.
The company said the Seabras-1 submarine cable, which is set for launch in June 2017, is a key enabler for SeaSpeed service, and is the first direct point-to-point cable system between the two markets.
“Seabras-1 was already expected to offer improved latency over the multipoint solutions that currently exist on this route,” said Paul Creelman, business development director and head of low latency sales at Seaborn. “However, SeaSpeed is an enhanced, proprietary end-to-end solution that offers the fastest path.”
The company said the $500 million project was completed in 2015. Manufacturing of the cable is already complete, with the cable deployment set to begin early next year.