Friday Fiber 1/14: Hibernia, Qwest, AboveNet, AlgoSpan, FiberLight, Level 3

Time to catch up on the rest of the fiber-related news this week:

Hibernia Atlantic had two notable announcements.  First, they announced the further reduction of latency across their Global Financial Network.  They reduced the NJ/Toronto routes to 9.5ms, and also sped things up in the NJ metro area.  They also have that new transatlantic link in the works of course, but a solid footprint on land is critical regardless.  Secondly, their media division, Hibernia Media, also made an interesting alliance with q.  They will leverage Qwest’s Ethernet private line solutions as part of their offerings in the US.  I wonder how that fits with Hibernia Atlantic’s relationship with XO, announced last January, and also where CenturyLink fits in since they will own Qwest in a few months.

abvt added a high profile investor yesterday, as TA Associates built a rather public position in the company via a secondary purchase from an existing shareholder.  That news led to a $3 run-up in the company’s stock yesterday.  It’s interesting to see a private equity company take such a route when so many of its neighbors are playing the M&A game.  But fiber in the public markets has not been getting the respect it has lately, so maybe they just think it’s cheap.

Over in London a chunk of dark fiber had a busy week.  Scottish and Southern Energy Telecommunications leased a piece of its dark fiber network in the city to Fibrespan Limited, who then turned around and supplied that fiber to its subsidiary AlgoSpan.  AlgoSpan supplies bandwidth to high frequency trading firms, and will use the fiber to offer lower latency to customers throughout the city, as well as on routes to their other endpoints in Stockholm, Frankfurt, Zurich, Chicago, and New York.  I’m not too familiar with SSE’s fiber assets, I’ll have to do some reading.

Metro specialist FiberLight (news) is taking a dip in the IP pool, announcing a dedicated IP platform targeting their government and enterprise customers.  They’re using gear from Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) and expertise from a little company called IBM to put it together.  They will then be able to package Ethernet and internet access over a converged network, diversifying their sources of revenue.

And finally, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) launched an enhanced customer web portal yesterday, with the rather unoriginal but suitable name ‘MyLevel3’.  The purpose is to ‘streamline business transactions’ with Level 3, which is hopefully a sign of more such transactions this year.  Better information for their customers can only be a good thing, but their success this year hinges on revenue growth and nothing else.

If you haven't already, please take our Reader Survey! Just 3 questions to help us better understand who is reading Telecom Ramblings so we can serve you better!

Categories: Internet Backbones · Metro fiber