Monday Roundup: Level 3, Switch, Net Insight, MEF, Vodafone

Here’s a quick roundup of early news this week or late last week:

Level 3 has forged yet another new interconnection agreement after what has been a busy spring on the peering front. They’ve inked a deal with Telefonica, which replaces an existing one of course while adding capacity and establishing new peering locations. Unlike its other recent interconnection agreements with US-focused last mile networks, the eyeballs this one reaches are in Europe and Latin America and the FCC’s newfound interest in the subject probably didn’t come into play much.

On the regional fiber front, Nevada Broadband Networks has sold some fiber connectivity out in, yes, Nevada. Switch has tapped NBN for conenctivity between its SUPERNAP in Las Vegas and the one it’s building to the north in Reno, a route that NBN has been building since last summer. NBN is 90% owned by Nebraska-based Pinpoint Networks, and has plans for more fiber in rural Nevada to come if their network map is anything to judge by.

And Net Insight won some business with The Switch, not to be confused with the previously mentioned Switch out in Nevada. Net Insight’s media transport solutions will power The Switch’s network as it handles the video needs of a ‘major national US sports league’. The MLS is one of their clients, but it’s not clear if this is the same one or another sports league. The rollout of additional capacity will happen over the second and third quarters of this year.

The MEF and ATIS have finished off some joint work, reconciling the MEF’s Carrier Ethernet standards with ATIS’s access ordering guidelines. It’s another key piece of the elbow grease underlying the MEF’s broader vision for Ethernet services in the industry, albeit one that only a select few will understand the details of.

And of course, no weekend these days is complete without some merger speculation involving Europe and a billionaire or two. Vodafone has verified that it is talking with Liberty Global, not about a merger but rather about some sort of asset exchange that nobody seems to have any details of. Liberty Global’s billionaire chairman John Malone has in the past described the two companies as a potentially great fit, combining wireless and cable reach across the continent but ditching the emerging markets pieces. I doubt we’ve heard the end of this one.

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Categories: Cable · Ethernet · Fiber Networks · Interconnection · Video