SAN JOSE—Less than two weeks after UpLink International finalized its White Knight takeover and development of the African fiberoptic network left abandoned by the sudden pullout of financially strapped European rival Planétaire Systems Corp., UpLink has injected the troubled marine fiberoptics market with yet another surge of stockholder attention, winning an estimated $30 million contract with Texas-based Sedco Petroleum to wire its regional subsea facilities into the carrier system. The new network segment will deliver high-speed phone and Internet/Intranet connections between Sedco’s growing string of platforms in the Gulf of Guinea and their coastal offices and is expected to increase the quality and reliability of communications for the oil company’s marine-drilling operations.

Financial analysts are in general agreement that the deal will benefit both parties. Sedco stands to increase production from its facilities and heighten its prestige in a region where competition is intense for the leasing of offshore fields. UpLink likewise will receive a considerable economic and public relations boost from the move, quieting speculative jitters that its African project would sap corporate revenues at a time when most telcos are scaling back the pace of expansion, and investor optimism in broadband remains low due to lingering after-shocks from the dotcom implosion and consumer reticence toward new media technologies, such as video-on-demand and live-event multicasting.

In a symbolic display of commitment for the fast-track prioritization of their plans, Sedco Chairman of the Board Hugh Bennett, and UpLink Founder and CEO Roger Gordian—the latter almost absent from the public eye since his near-fatal illness several years ago—have informed the Wall Street Journal that they will attend a formal contract-signing ceremony sometime next month aboard one of Sedco’s state-of-the-art drill platforms off Gabon, not coincidentally the hub of UpLink International’s African fiber network. Only the size of Colorado, with a population of under two million, the country nonetheless can boast of a relatively stable civil infrastructure and accelerated democratic reforms under President Adrian Cangele, offering foreign companies a lower-risk host environment than its notoriously chaotic regional neighbors—among them Cameroon, Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), and Angola.

This is not to suggest that Gabon is anything close to a Western investor’s paradise. UpLink’s large and formidable private security force has acquired a worldwide reputation. But despite Cangele’s reform measures, a complex political landscape and employee safeguard issues have led many other corporations to remain wary of their practical ability to conduct business in the tiny nation. . . .

From L’Union Online
(limited content English version):

PRESIDENT CANGELE AND PARLIAMENT
SHARE IN JOYOUS RECEPTION FOR UPLINK
INTERNATIONAL