Pacnet has announced the sudden departure of CEO Bill Barney, and the appointment of an interim replacement.
The company, which operates the EAC-C2C subsea cable network, revealed that effective today Barney is no longer serving as CEO or on the Pacnet board.
Barney has been CEO of Pacnet and predecessor Asia Netcom for over a decade. Asia Netcom merged with Pacific Internet in 2007 to create Pacnet.
No clear explanation was given for his resignation.
Barney's departure comes the month rumors surfaced that Indonesia's PT Telkom has made a play to acquire Pacnet, in a deal which would value Pacnet at around $1 billion inclusive of debt.
CFO Brett Lay has stepped in as interim CEO while the search for a permanent replacement is conducted.
Lay is a 25-year veteran of the telecom industry, and has been serving as Pacnet's CFO for the last five years.
Separately, Pacnet and vendor Infinera claim to have conducted the first demonstration of 500Gbs optical “super-channels” in Asia-Pacific.
The companies teamed up to transmit more than 3 Tbps of capacity over 4,500km of the C2C network, using Infinera's DTN-X platform. The platform uses Infinera's 500 Gbs Photonic Integrated Circuit technology.
This collaboration is part of a project to scale up Pacnet's subsea cable infrastructure to the newest optical technologies, Barney said.