Metro Bytes 10/4: tw telecom, Fairpoint, Sidera, Tech Valley

With CompTel this week, everyone’s got something interesting going on, but nobody’s got time to read them all. Here’s a quick survey of some of it from the metro and regional connectivity side of things:

Serving bandwidth and voice to military installations is a specialty of TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings), and they have long been serving Ft. Bragg down in North Carolina. Yesterday though they added an additional multi-year, $2.5M contract with the US Army installation for communication services to three MEDCOM clinics and to Camp Mackall. It was a competitive bid, but once you have fiber in the gate for such a contract, you tend to have the upper hand.

Up in northern New England, rural ILEC FairPoint Communications (news, filings) is rolling out more Carrier Ethernet. They now have Ethernet Private Line and Ethernet Virtual Private Line services available across Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. It’s been over eight months since Fairpoint emerged from Chapter 11, and they’ve mostly managed to stay out of trouble – which is a good thing. They still look like an eventual M&A target for CenturyLink, Windstream, or Frontier though.

Philadelphia’s La Salle Univeristy has selected Sidera Networks to power its campus-wide network upgrade. The bandwidth will support the Catholic university’s e-learning platforms as well as the usual day to day needs of students and staff. Sidera also made an interesting move in the financial vertical yesterday buying 250Gbps from Spread Networks.

And finally, TechValley has closed its purchase of New England fiber operator segTEL.  Owned by Riverside Partners, the combined company has 150,000 fiber miles and over 700 lit buildings. They have a rather unique footprint and the funding to make good progress going forward.

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: Ethernet · Mergers and Acquisitions · Metro fiber