Telecom Ramblings

The Hard Life of Wholesale Carriers

Rob Powell — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:48:13 +0000

Todd Underwood made his last post for Renesys the other day, with a perceptive yet dismal view of the wholesale bandwidth business - I recommend a read. Wherever Todd winds up, I hope he finds a way to keep blogging, his voice on the subject of internet traffic has consistently been one of the best around. … [visit site to read more]

Data Centers Growing, But Marketcaps Keep Shrinking

Rob Powell — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:21:13 +0000

DataCenterKnowledge has a nice article today summarizing the current market valuations of datacenter-related stocks. It is a shocking table that reminds us just how ugly things are out there. In the financial markets anyway… … [visit site to read more]

Verizon’s End Run Around Net Neutrality

Rob Powell — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:39:16 +0000

Yesterday, Verizon announced its new content distribution strategy, using Velocix caching solutions and focusing on delivery to their own customers more so than the rest of the internet. And yet, the more I think about it, the more I think this is less about the CDN business than it is about the other elephant in the room: net neutrality. … [visit site to read more]

Global Crossing’s South American Blitz

Rob Powell — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:01:46 +0000

They haven’t caused much of a stir, but Global Crossing (GLBC) has really been on the march in South America. It’s not for lack of trying though, the company has issued a dozen PRs since the beginning of the second quarter alone that relate to events in the region. Today’s deal with Minera Chinalco in Peru is just the latest in a string of awards, deals, and facility expansions. … [visit site to read more]

Verizon Makes Its CDN Move

Rob Powell — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:06:09 +0000

According to Ryan Lawler over at Contentinople, Verizon is poised to enter the CDN game. But Verizon doesn’t seem to plan on following the paths taken by AT&T or Level 3, they seem to have an entirely different approach in a partnership with Velocix. The idea is that Verizon wants to efficiently distribute content both internally and externally by leveraging … [visit site to read more]

A Storm Blows In From Amazon

Rob Powell — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:06:42 +0000

Amazon (AMZN) formally launched its CDN last night, called “Cloud Front“. It’s HTTP only, is limited to those storing data on Amazon S3, has no SLA and fewer bells and whistles than any CDN has ever had. And it’s revolutionary. … [visit site to read more]

Juniper, Infinera, Level 3 Unite for 100GbE

Rob Powell — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:33:16 +0000

Juniper (JNPR), Infinera (INFN), and Level 3 Communications (LVLT) announced today that they will work together towards the eventual development of highly anticipated 100 Gigabit Ethernet technology, along with research networks Internet2 and ESnet. Of course, we already knew that each was working on their own part of this, so one might wonder why we needed a press release. And given that the economy trumps everything right now, especially new technology that won’t be here until 2010 when the media expects us to be living in caves, nobody is likely to get that excited today. … [visit site to read more]

More Datacenter Construction Suspended

Rob Powell — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:59:29 +0000

Dupont Fabros (DFT), which builds and operates datacenters as a REIT, has suspended construction at both its NJ-1 (Piscataway NJ) and ACC-5 (Ashburn VA) sites. This follows the news of three weeks ago that their Santa Clara project had been suspended. The company had just raised $100M but had needed far more than that to continue in Santa Clara. Well, apparently they need more to finish in New Jersey and Virginia as well, because this news effectively suspends their construction across the board. … [visit site to read more]

Level 3 Digs Up $400M to Refinance With

Rob Powell — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:48:28 +0000

Wow, while I was writing up my model, Level 3 dropped a bombshell. The company announced commitments for $400M in debt from a group of holders ranging from top shareholders Southeast Asset Management and Fairfax on down to board members Walter Scott and Robert Julian. Simultaneously, they issued tenders for their 2009 and 2010 convertible debt, currently trading at various discounts. Where to start? They totally surprised me, I expected the company wouldn’t make a move for a while yet. Others did see signs recently that the company had a refinance in hand, congrats to them. … [visit site to read more]

Q4 Projections & Model for Level 3

Rob Powell — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:18:09 +0000

Here is my updated Level 3 Communications (LVLT) model with projections for Q4 and onward into 2009 and 2010. As with recent spreadsheets, this one is stored on Google Documents. I have included a summary page for Q4 and full year 2008 projections, but if you really want to see the details or further projections then you can delve into to the other sheets. … [visit site to read more]