Telecom Ramblings

Over the past few months, we have seen NYSE Euronext assemble a team of partners with which it will build its next generation infrastructure in and between New York and London.  One big unnamed piece in that team until today was where they were getting the fiber.  The fiber routes are critical because of NYSE Euronext’s desire to drive out every microsecond of latency possible.  With yesterday’s PR it is now clear that they are getting it in large part from metro fiber specialist Abovenet (NYSE:ABVT - chart, news).

Abovenet is a natural choice of course, and I suspected they would be involved.  New York and London are perhaps its two strongest markets with very extensive footprints. Nevertheless, it is interesting that the NYSE decided to go with the company, given that it has only in the past couple years emerged from a half decade fiscal nightmare of the first order.  There are other companies with substantial footprints in both cities, e.g. Level 3, Verizon, and AT&T come to mind, but Abovenet’s prevailed.