Telecom Ramblings

It looks as if the long discussed buyout of Vodafone’s 45% minority stake in Verizon Wireless may be back on the front burner. Yesterday, CEO Lowell McAdam went as far as to tell the Wall Street Journal that such a deal is currently “feasible” and that they would still love to own the whole business. He also said that Verizon’s growing wireline strength was making it easier to put together such a deal. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick look at three interesing news items from the vendors, including a new product from MRV, a 100G upgrade by NSN, and a submarine cable launch by Huawei. [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) gained another network operator’s support for the bit-mile peering concept, announcing a new agreement with xo this morning.  The long-term, settlement-free pact fits with the peering paradigm that Level 3 has been promoting while giving XO the [Read more →]

Several next-generation fiber operators have made the transition to positive earnings per share over the past few years (AboveNet, tw telecom, and Cogent), but none had further to go to achieve it than Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings).  But this year the numbers say that at long last it is likely Level 3’s turn to definitively end its long run of red ink. [Read more →]

The poll will remain open for a while yet, but enough results are in to call the election – as it were. Rambling’s readership is now much more of a common mind than a year ago about which companies are the likely consolidators: Zayo, Level 3, and CenturyLink.  Apparently, it’s much less crowded at the head of the buyers pack this year. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Dylan Bushell-Embling, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Global operator revenues tipped past the $2 trillion milestone in 2012, but future growth will be largely confined to a handful of segments, according to Ovum. [Read more →]

Everyone’s still cleaning out the cobwebs, but nevertheless, here’s a quick look at a few items from this week from TelePacific, Zayo, and the Yankee Group: [Read more →]

The steady drumbeat of expansion in the colocation space has had both an organic and inorganic component.  We start off the new year with a bit of the latter, as QTS is expanding its presence into Sacramento with the purchase of Herakles. [Read more →]

Birch Communications began the new year with another acquisition, its 17th since 2006. They have signed a definitive agreement to buy customers and network assets from Covista, which will expand its own hosted PBX and managed services reach in regions across the country. [Read more →]

Welcome back!  2013 has begun, and that means it’s time to take the temperature of the wireline M&A market in the US, just as we do every year at this time.   You saw me make a few predictions on New Years’ Eve, but now it’s time for the more general question: Who are the most likely consolidators of fiber networks this year?  You can pick up to three: [Read more →]

Now that the world hasn’t ended, the next long cycle of the Mayan calendar has begun, and everyone’s getting ready to listen to way too many versions of ‘Auld Lang Syne‘, it’s time for a few predictions about what’s ahead for telecom and fiber M&A in 2013. Not ‘things to watch’, ’emerging trends’, or other wimp-outs, but actual predictions that people can laugh at next December if they can outperform the modern attention span. After all, what’s a blog for if not to stick out one’s neck for no apparent reason: [Read more →]

Over the holiday week, DSLPrime put out an interesting piece looking at what may be the next great battle on the fault line of peering and network neutrality. It seems that China isn’t the only place you can’t watch YouTube these days, if you’re in France this December you may also be out of luck as Google and the French last mile providers are at odds and seem to be digging trenches. [Read more →]

magicJack VocalTec (NASDAQ:CALL, news, filings) ended what has been a very powerful year with a a flurry of holiday announcements, the least surprising of which was its now quarterly habit of pre-announcing its results. [Read more →]

In a surprise holiday announcement that has turned my earlier review of the 2012 US fiber M&A market into premature ramblings, Lightower Fiber Networks and Sidera Networks announced this morning their intention to merge. Berkshire Partners is behind the deal, in which both companies will be acquired for some $2B and then merged under the leadership of [Read more →]

This article was authored by John C. Tanner, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

ITEM: The US FCC has approved a plan for allowing spectrum sharing in the 3.5 GHz band for small cells.  The band in question (3550-3650 MHz) is currently used for US Navy radar operations and covers 60% of the US population. [Read more →]

Netflix got some coal in its stocking from the same place lots of people had presents delivered from this Christmas. On Christmas eve, the Amazon cloud’s elastic load balancer services ran into trouble at its US-East node, and Netflix’s streaming went down across much of North America alongside various other web properties that depend on it. [Read more →]

In another case of an entrenched operator buying its way into the managed hosting space, Montreal-based Cogeco is buying Vancouver-based Peer 1 Network Enterprises. The C$526M deal will add 19 data centers and extensive expertise in managed hosting, dedicated servers, colo, and, of course, cloud computing to Cogeco’s footprint. [Read more →]

A very Merry Christmas to you all, before everyone leaves early today. And on that note, here’s a quick rundown on some news from fiber and colo from the last few days that somehow slipped through the cracks: [Read more →]

The move by Sprint/Softbank to buy the rest of Clearwire surprised nobody except with its timing, but there is nevertheless some dispute over the price.  After all, Sprint is buying a company that it owns a majority stake in, and therefore there is always the suspicion that minority shareholders will get the short end of the stick.  In this case one of those minority investors, Crest Financial, is already making a stink and looking for allies.  What do you think, do they have a case?  Have your say, vote here: [Read more →]

The continent of Africa has gained yet another major submarine cable connection, as France Telecom-Orange and its consortium partners have officially brought the Africa Coast to Europe cable system online at a ceremony in The Gambia.  The fiber itself has been in place for months, but now the whole thing is ready to roll. [Read more →]

This article was authored by John C. Tanner, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

The controversial World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) to update the 1988 International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) ended in Dubai on Friday. The good news: the ITU did not take over the internet as many groups feared. The bad news: the telecoms sector now potentially has two [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of news from the data center space this week that is worth a quick look: [Read more →]

This morning, the pan-European network operator Colt Group (LON:COLT, news) announced new initiatives to cut costs and adjust to the shifting European service provider market. The company has for years now been managing a transition from legacy voice services into a more data-centric approach, and is now choosing to accelerate the process further. [Read more →]