Telecom Ramblings

More news than usual either slipped past my nets this week, got bumped by other news somehow, or rendered me speechless somehow (yes, it happens!).  But news is almost always lighter on Friday, which lets me catch up a bit.  Here’s a few rapidfire tidbits:

Hibernia Atlantic expanded its Global Financial Network into 1200 Federal in Carteret, NJ via a dark fiber build from Sunesys.  Hibernia was one of the early movers in the financial networking latency war that has been spreading all year, and has been quietly expanding its on-net presence in the area ever since.    Their new native 40Gbps transatlantic wavelength product doesn’t hurt either.

Global Crossing (NASDAQ:GLBC - chart, news, filings) took its EtherSphere product family global in a PR with a video component.   Ethersphere includes point to point, point to mulitpoint, and multipoint to multipoint solutions, and had previously been formally available only in the UK.  The VPLS market has been around for a while, but is jut now beginning to find real traction.  I wonder if Global Crossing is the kind of carrier that will be interested in Equinix’s neutral ethernet exchange efforts.

RCN Metro announced that it has been selected by the Chicago Board Options Exchange as a preferred provider of extranet services, bringing its total of on-net financial exchanges to 20 and adding to its own hand in the finanicial/latency hostilities.

TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC - chart, news, filings) announced the successful installation of a 34 site IPVPN solution for Texans Credit Union, as well as a full suite of other services from voice to transport to access lines.  There’s rarely anything sexy about these deals TW Telecom puts out, but that’s where those excellent quarterly profits and cash flow come from nevertheless.  The whole sector could use more of them.

And just this morning, Level 3 Communications (NASDAQ:LVLT - chart, news, filings) brought Mark Martinet in as its new Chief Information Officer, who will report to COO and President Jeff Storey.  Hopefully the sales guys will welcome him with a full sales funnel so he can make sure those provisioning systems are humming properly again – it’s been a while.