Author: Brendan Swan

Brendan is a Senior Analyst with GlobalData. With approx. 20 years' experience in working in the telecommunications industry providing market and competitive insights with focus on the global enterprise market.

nexfibre and Netomnia: Is Bigger Better for UK Fiber Competition?

by Brendan Swan, posted in Communicate
A professional headshot of a man smiling, wearing a dark suit with a light pink shirt, set against a neutral background.
B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

• The UK’s Competition and Market Authority released its interim findings on nexfibre’s proposed acquisition of Netomnia, in which it raised concerns that the acquisition could reduce wholesale competition.

• Deploying multiple overlapping networks have put smaller altnets under financial pressure, with consolidation seemingly the only way forward.

It’s been humorously said that the UK has roughly one altnet for every postcode – well over 100 to be exact – each armed with big ambitions and a digger. It’s therefore no surprise that consolidation is now firmly on the agenda, with M&A activity set to reshape the alternative network landscape. The market that emerges could look very different from the landscape we see today. With the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) releasing its interim findings on nexfibre’s proposed acquisition of Netomnia, raising concerns that the deal could reduce wholesale competition, particularly where the two networks overlap. Yet consolidation could create a larger stronger challenger to take on BT’s Openreach. Though this raises the broader question: Does the UK need more fiber networks, or fewer but stronger networks capable of competing at scale with Openreach?

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Australia’s Cable Wars Are Heating Up: Thanks, AI

by Brendan Swan, posted in Network
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B. Swan

• Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping Australia’s fiber map, driving investment beyond city limits and into emerging data center locations.

• Route diversity is becoming strategic, with terrestrial and subsea network providing greater resilience and flexibility for future digital workloads.

Australia’s fiber build-out is getting a second wind – and this time, artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the rules of the game. In the same week, Vocus and SUBCO announced new terrestrial and subsea cable projects demonstrating that Australia’s connectivity investment cycle is picking up speed. But this is about more than adding fiber. AI, cloud and data center expansions are changing where capacity is required and creating demand for networks with diverse, resilient routes that can withstand outages, congestion and other disruptions.

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AI Changing the Commercial Model for Fiber Build

by Brendan Swan, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, Communicate
B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

• Zayo will build 8,000 miles of new long-haul fiber across key AI corridors, with Nvidia becoming its anchor customer.

• Nvidia’s extends beyond GPUs and compute, with partnerships spanning the optical and networking ecosystem underpinning AI infrastructure.

Until now, the AI Infrastructure race has predominately been focused on GPUs, data centers and access to reliable power, yet beneath all three sits a less visible, but increasingly critical, layer – connectivity. As AI workloads become larger, more distributed and dependent on moving large volumes of data between locations, fiber is emerging as a fundamental component of the AI Stack. Zayo’s recent announcement to build 8,000 miles of new long-haul fiber across key AI corridors, backed by Nvidia as its anchor customer, could mark the new beginning of a new investment cycle for terrestrial networks. The bigger question is whether AI-related companies could become the anchor customer needed for the next generation of fiber investment?

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More Than Minutes: Strategic Partnerships Are Transforming International Voice

by Brendan Swan, posted in Communicate
B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

• e& and Globe Telecom demonstrate how strategic partnerships are transforming international voice through stronger service quality, fraud prevention, and expanding global reach.

• The future of international voice will be defined by user experience and security through strategic partnerships, not the lowest termination rates.

Over recent years, international voice has been viewed as a legacy service, highly commoditized with declining traffic volumes and shrinking revenues. Beneath the surface, however, the market is undergoing significant transformation. Rather than competing solely on the lowest possible termination rates, international carriers are forming strategic partnerships to improve service quality, extend global coverage, and strengthen network resilience to combat the threat of fraud. The recent announcement between e& and Philippine Globe Telecom reflects the shift, demonstrating how collaboration is becoming a key competitive differentiator in the next phase of international voice. As the wholesale communications market continues to evolve, could these partnerships become the defining factor that separates market leaders from the rest?

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Beyond Subsea: Why Australia’s Next Fiber Race Is on Land

by Brendan Swan, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

  • Australia’s digital infrastructure race is moving onshore, with long-haul fiber becoming as important as international subsea connectivity.
  • Vocus and Telstra are expanding their terrestrial network to meet growing AI, cloud, and hyperscaler demand across key intercity corridors.

Over the last decade, Australia’s digital infrastructure strategy has largely centered on subsea cable investment, from new builds to strategic consortium partnerships. These new international systems have expanded capacity, improved network resilience, and strengthened Australia’s connectivity to the world. However, as artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes data traffic patterns, investment is shifting from beneath the ocean to fiber corridors underpinning Australia’s AI future.

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Racing to AI: Tata Communications Accelerates Its Connectivity Position to Singapore

by Brendan Swan, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

  • Tata Communications is strengthening its global network to create an AI-ready digital corridor linking India with Singapore.
  • As AI workloads grow, the India to Singapore route is becoming one of Asia’s most strategically important connectivity corridors.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping one of Asia’s busiest digital corridors. As AI workloads, cloud adoption and investment by hyperscalers accelerates across India and Southeast Asia, demand for high-speed, low-latency connectivity is rising just as rapidly. Tata Communications’s latest investment in new subsea cable infrastructure between India and Singapore is more than another cable announcement; it reflects a broader strategy to build an AI-ready digital corridor linking India’s emerging data center hubs with the Southeast Asia’s largest cloud ecosystem. With these investments, Tata Communications seems to be quietly assembling one of the region’s most comprehensive AI connectivity platforms.

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Why Quantum-Safe Connectivity Could Become the Next Differentiator for Wholesale Providers

by Brendan Swan, posted in Cloud Enable, Secure
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B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

  • Telecom Italia’s Sparkle has launched its quantum-safe interconnect (QSI) with Equinix across 20 International Business Exchange (IBX) positioned throughout Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
  • With the rise of quantum computing, it has highlighted the importance of cybersecurity, with growing concerns around future attacks where sensitive data could be compromised – store now, decrypt later.

The wholesale telecommunications segment has traditionally competed on scale, reach, latency and price. However, as enterprises accelerate the adoption of AI, hybrid cloud, and internationally distributed workloads, another factor is rapidly moving up the priority list: Security. With cyber threats becoming increasingly sophisticated and quantum computing edging closer to becoming able to break traditional encryption, quantum-safe connectivity is emerging as the next major differentiator for wholesale operators seeking to move beyond price-led competition. CSPs that can combine their global reach, low latency, and post-quantum security will be positioned to capture a greater share of the enterprise and hyperscaler demand. The broader question now emerging for the industry is whether security could soon become just as important as scale, reach, and price in wholesale telecommunications.

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Telstra and Google Deepen Infrastructure Ties to Power Australia’s AI Future

by Brendan Swan, posted in Big Data
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B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

• Telstra and Google have expanded their partnership, leveraging complementary subsea and terrestrial fiber assets to strengthen regional connectivity and digital infrastructure.

• The partnership aligns with Google’s strategy to expand its infrastructure through deeper collaboration with telecom operators.

If telecom press releases were a streaming service, “Strategic Partnership” would be the show nobody gets hyped up about, but somehow it continues to be renewed for another season. So, when Telstra and Google announced yet another episode, it would be easy to save it under the industry favorites category: “Sounds important and involves cloud, platforms, and future opportunities.” The problem is that this one might actually matter. Behind the familiar language sits a partnership that reflects a bigger shift, where telecom operators are increasingly positioning themselves as digital infrastructure providers, and where hyperscalers are becoming more embedded in the infrastructure that carries the growing volumes of data, applications and digital services. As the demand for AI and cloud continues to grow, will partnerships like this become the new battleground for telecom operators?

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Voice Reimagined: Orange Wholesale and ng-voice Bring Voice Services into the Cloud Era

by Brendan Swan, posted in Cloud Enable, Internet of Things
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B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

  • Orange Wholesale together with ng-voice to launch its IMS-as-a-service, offering a cloud-based alternative designed to remove the complexity of traditional IMS deployments.
  • The new solution will deliver voice services with a lower cost of ownership while removing the operational complexity of maintaining its own IMS infrastructure.

As international voice margins continue to decline, wholesale carriers are under growing pressure to reinvent a revenue stream that has been in continual decline for years. Orange Wholesale has teamed up with ng-voice, to launch an IP multimedia subsystem (IMS)-as-a-service offering designed to modernize how telecom operators deploy and manage their voice services.

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Ooredoo Carves Out Fiber and Subsea Unit to Accelerate Regional Connectivity Ambitions

by Brendan Swan, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

• Ooredoo Group launches Ooredoo Fibre Networks, an independent entity dedicated to managing and scaling Ooredoo’s international connectivity and submarine cable infrastructure ambitions.

• By establishing a new entity, Ooredoo can be financially independent from its domestic operations, enabling it to be more transparent to present and future investors.

As global bandwidth demand surges and AI-driven cloud expansion continues to reshape traditional global traffic corridors, Ooredoo’s decision to establish a standalone business dedicated to international subsea cable and terrestrial fiber connectivity signals a shift in strategic intent. Rather than simply expanding capacity, the carrier appears to be reorganizing its infrastructure to compete more assertively in the wholesale and transit arena, where scale, route diversity, and commercial agility increasingly define market leadership. In a region that is fast-emerging as a key route, is Ooredoo positioning itself to evolve from a multi-national connectivity provider into the Middle East’s regional connectivity powerhouse?

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