Telecom Ramblings

Here’s a quick summary of news items that caught my eye this week but for one reason or another I didn’t comment on at the time.

Level 3 Communications (LVLT: chart, news) unveiled substantial upgrades to its customer portal.  The new portal offers greater visibility into order placement and review, service and network management, invoice management, and reporting and analysis.  It’s one more step along Level 3’s multi-year Unity systems upgrade path, hopefully it will help reduce churn over the next few quarters.

Switch & Data (SDXC: chart, news) fired another salvo in the next-gen financial networks wars over latency, winning a contract with trading solutions provider Pragma Securities.  Pragma will host its applications in the company’s new North Bergen facility, which has been winning its share of business alongside Equinix (EQIX: chart, news).  Not that it really matters since Equinix is acquiring Switch and Data, since it will all land in the same hands eventually.

Metro fiber provider RCN Metro added another financial company to its customer base as well.  ECHOtrade, which specializes in services for the off-the-floor trader, will take advantage of the company’s connectivity to major internet exchanges and financial institutions and also colocate within RCN Metro’s NY facilities at 111 8th Ave.  Just about every company in the financial world seems to be making nextgen plans. 

Hosting and cloud provider Navisite (NAVI: chart, news) won a high profile NYC deal with the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  They will be providing managed application services to support the institution’s various finance, accounting, and workforce applications.  I doubt that by itself it’s a very large deal, but every little bit counts.