[SatNews] Build more cables and sell them cheaper is the key message that members of the network engineer teams from two of the world's largest online content companies have for the telecommunications industry. Najam Ahmad, director, networking at Facebook and Vijay Gill, senior manager, engineering and architecture at Google, both highlighted the challenges of managing massive global networks that must handle lots of traffic while keeping costs down and maintaining service quality.

iBasis, the wholly owned subsidiary of KPN, is looking to move beyond its traditional wholesale voice market and into new market segments including mobile and M2M services.

The next five years will mark a key transitional phase for submarine capacity players and the broader telecom industry, according to Pacnet CEO Bill Barney.

Tyco Electronics Subsea Communications (SubCom) has been contracted to upgrade a trans-Pacific system spanning a total of 9,500km with 40G technology. If successful, the project will represent the longest system to be upgraded with 40G to date.

NTT Communications last week announced a 33 percent upgrade of its IP backbone between Japan and the US, adding 100Gbps of new capacity to its previous network of 300Gbps in less than one year.

Infinera yesterday unveiled its new FlexCoherent technology at PTC'11. The Pennsylvania-based networking company says that FlexCoherent is a key enabling technology for next-generation optical transmission systems implementing coherent detection.

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