Megaport brings services to South America via subsea cable

Australian interconnection services provider Megaport's United States subsidiary has signed a deal with Seaborn Networks, giving it access to a fibre-optic subsea cable system between the US and Brazil to expand its services to customers in South America.

In return, Seaborn will be able to provide its South American customers with Megaport's software-defined networking (SDN)-enabled interconnection services via an online portal, as well as exclusively offer Megaport-enabled "broadband on demand" for connecting internationally.

Under the deal, Megaport's first third-party operated point of presence will be established in Sao Paulo, which the provider called a "previously under-served market".

"A strategic alliance such as this with Seaborn Networks enables us to leverage our unique SDN to provide cloud connections between North and South American enterprises in a flexible, cloud-agnostic manner," said Megaport CEO Denver Maddux.

"Seaborn was an easy choice for a strategic alliance and exclusive South American partnership."

Seaborn customers will be able to access Megaport's datacentres across the world, with the latter to provide management and support for these services.

Megaport's routes allow enterprise customers to connect directly to Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Interconnect without needing a physical presence of their own in all locations.

The Seabras-1 subsea cable, stretching between New York and Sao Paulo, is due to begin providing services in June.

Megaport's US subsidiary has been expanding its footprint within North America, last year partnering up with enterprise datacentre provider CyrusOne to provide SDN-enabled interconnection and cloud services to customers using CyrusOne's US datacentres.

Megaport itself also announced opening a new connectivity route on Tuesday between Los Angeles and Hong Kong, as well as a secondary path between Singapore and Hong Kong due to high traffic along this route.

Megaport also switched on its link on the transatlantic AE Connect 13TB subsea cable connecting New York, London, and Dublin last week under a partnership with the cable's owner, Aqua Comms.

As of the end of September, the company had 1,409 ports, 561 customers in 19 countries, and 132 connected datacentre locations -- 40 in the APAC region; 33 in North America; and 48 in Europe.

The interconnection services provider in October reported revenue of AU$1.8 million for the first quarter of the 2016-17 financial year, up 91 percent "due to organic growth, acquisitions, and execution of key strategic partnerships".

The company recently raised AU$31 million in capital through a share purchase plan in order to continue its global expansion.