Interoute has announced it is to deploy a 4,000km dark fibre network in Europe. The network has been commissioned by an unnamed social media company. It will connect Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.
The news comes less than a month after Interoute announced another deal to supply 1,000km of dark fibre. That deal sees data centres in Spain and France being connected. Once again, Interoute was unable to name the client.
Jonathan Wright, VP of Commercial Operations at Interoute, commented: “We are proud to be the first choice for OTTs and internet companies to enable their European growth. This is a great endorsement of the technical expertise that underpins our transport and infrastructure services as we continue to innovate across our footprint.”
What does this mean
The dark fibre market is once again experiencing solid growth. It has long recovered from the over supply of the early 2000’s. Driving that growth is cloud computing, a robust data centre market and services from over-the-top (OTT) providers.
Cloud is experiencing significant growth. After a few years of trials, pilot projects and watching business units benefit from cloud-based applications and services, IT departments are now seeing it as a key platform. To make it work, however, requires the ability to move large amounts of data to and from the cloud. There is also a big demand for low latency dedicated services.
OTT providers are part of that cloud market. They are also offering new services and applications to consumers. Online gaming from gambling to mobile games, collaboration, social media and messaging are continuing to show strong growth. To back that up, the OTT providers need reliable and dedicated network capacity. This is where Interoute is succeeding, especially in Europe.
GTT Communications bought Interoute for €1.9 billion earlier this year. It will be pleased with the state of the order book that Interoute has. The only question is when will we see Interoute integrate its European networks with some of the global networks owned by GTT?
