Telecommunications company Colt Group S.A. (LSE: COLT) has announced a major revamp of their advanced fibre-optic network, as well as extensive Layer 2 network expansion in Japan. This will enable high-bandwidth services with speeds ranging from 10Gbps up to 100Gbps on mass scale, with greater routes and diversity. The phased expansion of both available services and coverage areas is slated to begin in January 2017.
This overhaul is driven by the continued growth of network traffic manifesting in the form of video streaming, cloud services, smartphone market penetration, and other data-rich consumption channels. Industries such as FinTech are also seeing the creation of new business models stemming from the digitization of operations. The next generation of data- hungry mobile networking also looms, with 5G rollouts coming in 2020.
Cloud service providers, financial organizations, content distributors, and even ISPs all increasingly require backbone networks with greater reliability, higher capacity, and speeds greater than 10Gbps.
Furthermore, recent years have seen a drop in high-bandwidth costs, as well as business-wide adoption of high-bandwidth networks. Colt is moving swiftly with their revamp in order to provide immediate response to the predicted increase in network traffic and subsequent market-generated demand.
Service Expansion Details
Colt Leased Line Service (Fibre-Optic Network)
- Added service availability in metro area networks with speeds up to 100Gbps and quick service initiation
- Multi-route diversity for protected connectivity between Tokyo and Osaka, and between cable stations (Chikura and Maruyama) and metro area networks
- 50% increase in number of POPs (including both data centre and other nodes)
- Service launch: January 2017 (sequential addition of coverage areas)
etherXEN (L2 Network)
- Increase in etherXEN service areas offering bandwidth up to 10Gbps
- Backbone capacity expandability up to 100Gbps with high-bandwidth services available on short lead times
- Service launch: 2017 Q2