AquaComms and Equinix to Create High Capacity Connection between New York and London

One of the first transatlantic subsea cables built in nearly 15 years to meet increased bandwidth needs for global businesses

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Equinix, Inc.

Aug 17, 2015, 03:00 ET

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Aug. 17, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the global interconnection and data center company, today announced that it is working with Aqua Comms Limited (AquaComms), a provider of scalable, subsea capacity-based network solutions, on the deployment of its new transatlantic fiber optic system, America Europe Connect (AEConnect). Scheduled to be ready for service before the end of 2015, AEConnect, spanning more than 5,400 km across the Atlantic between Long Island, NY and the West Coast of Ireland with stubbed branching units for future landings, will provide high capacity connectivity from New York to London and beyond to greater Europe.

Equinix's New York and London International Business Exchange (IBX®) data center campuses serve as carrier-neutral network access points for AquaComms to connect its low latency subsea cable route. This new connectivity between North America and London allows network service providers to be able to tap into economic opportunities stemming from a presence in two of the biggest commercial centers in the world.

Highlights / Key Facts

According to research by industry analyst firm TeleGeography, London (2) and New York (5) are in the top five global metros for peak international Internet traffic and the London to New York route is the second largest international Internet traffic route globally with multiple terabits of peak traffic. In its 2015 Global Bandwidth Research Service report, TeleGeography notes that private network bandwidth on the trans-Atlantic route eclipsed Internet bandwidth for the first time in history, rising to 13.9 Tbps and accounting for 56 percent of used bandwidth.
Explosive growth in mobile, content delivery, video streaming, tele-presence, social media, and cloud-based data traffic offers tremendous revenue opportunities for high-margin corporate and retail services such as Ethernet and MPLS. 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 telehouse, but also act as aggregation points for concentrations of customers in network-centric industries.
AquaComms' AEConnect is one of the first subsea cables between New York City and London in nearly 15 years and was specifically designed to meet the high growth of bandwidth requirements of global data centers, cloud-based networks, financial services market participants and content providers. With more than 52 Tbps of available capacity, the 100G compliant system will utilize the latest optical technologies to provide the most advanced subsea system, coupled with a control plane based on a SDN platform to serve bandwidth-intensive applications.
Global businesses are increasing using more capacity to run IT operations including cloud-based applications. In both the New York and London markets Equinix offers direct connectivity to leading cloud service providers including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform via the Equinix Cloud Exchange™. These dedicated, private connections reduce network costs and provide higher, more consistent network performance than Internet-based connections for enterprise customers looking to build hybrid clouds.
Earlier this year Equinix announced that it is boosting interconnection capacity by opening new data centers in five major markets including New York and London. Equinix's New York campus is the largest retail colocation campus in the New York metro and has a high interconnection rate, with more than 18,000 interconnections between businesses in this metro alone. By providing this increased capacity, Equinix expands its role in advancing the digital economy's interconnected era, in which businesses are demanding increasing levels of interconnection to accelerate business performance.

Quotes

Greg Varisco, chief operating officer, AquaComms:
"Responding to the demand AquaComms is seeing for high capacity, high reliability connectivity between North America and Europe, we made a strategic decision to deploy with Equinix. Their data centers in New York and London act as major international hubs for network traffic, offering our customers the ability to extend existing networks or expand into new markets."
Tim Stronge, vice president, Research, TeleGeography:
"The international bandwidth market is undergoing a transformation. The traditional dynamic by which carriers link broadband users to global networks is still a core part of the market, but on the largest routes, content companies have overtaken carriers as the biggest bandwidth consumers. The largest content providers have become major customers of long-haul capacity as they expand their own internal networks. Increasingly, these entities have capacity requirements that exceed those of the largest carriers."
Jim Poole, vice president, global service providers, Equinix:
"Equinix has the largest concentration of NSP/CSP's, financial, media and entertainment, gaming, e-Commerce customers available in our business ecosystems. This new bilateral submarine connectivity gives both Equinix and AquaComms' customers yet another choice for driving business advantage in today's global economy."

Additional Resources

Equinix Accelerates Interconnected Era with Global Launch of Five New Data Centers [press release]
Equinix Expands New York Campus with State-of-the-Art Facility [press release]
Shaping the Interconnected Era [blog]

About Aqua Comms Limited
Aqua Comms Limited (AquaComms) is the owner and operator of the transatlantic cable AEConnect and the Irish Sea cable CeltixConnect, and was established to build, acquire or merge with subsea fiber optic cable networks to provide capacity networking solutions to the global media, content providers and IT companies. To learn more about Aqua Comms and its new transatlantic subsea cable system, AEConnect, visit www.AquaComms.com.

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 33 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.

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.
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SOURCE Equinix, Inc.