Telecom Ramblings

There were several interesting items from the datacenter space yesterday worth a quick look: [Read more →]

This morning Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) said it was looking to raise $350M in a private offering of senior notes due 2020.  By the end of the day though, the offering seems to have grown just a bit as a Bloomberg note now says they are raising a refinancing war chess of $900M at 8.625% — an extra mere $550M. Apparently while the stock market has not been treating the company well lately, the debt markets are quite happy with them. [Read more →]

Telehouse added another big piece to its growing data center footprint yesterday, entering the Frankfurt market in force.  The subsidiary of Japanese giant KDDI has purchased Databurg GmbH to gain its first foothold in the key German financial center and data center market.  [Read more →]

Pan-European network operator Colt Group (LON:COLT, news) is bolstering its network assets in the British Isles, according to an announcement this morning. They are buying fiber capacity on the new CeltixConnect cable launched by Sea Fibre Networks (news) just last month.  [Read more →]

Router giant Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) offered up a preannouncement yesterday afternoon, lowering guidance for the fourth quarter.  That’s already the second vendor to say that carriers didn’t break open their wallets for Christmas. Last week, Acme Packet kicked off the New Year with similar news. [Read more →]

The content world is spawning all sorts of video and music providers globally these days, so many that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with. Today Level 3 picked up a deal with iMusti, which provides Indian content worldwide – think Bollywood.  Well, their site currently looks like mostly music rather than video, but it looks like they have plans to ramp up the bits. [Read more →]

In its quest to put a real dent in Akamai’s dominance of the CDN space, EdgeCast Networks (news) [a subsidiary of Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings)] has spent much of its effort in the past two years figuring out how best to work with carriers.  Today those efforts culminated in the formal launch of their licensed CDN program and the transfer of control  to a tier 1 US carrier of a fully functional CDN they built based on it. [Read more →]

In December Optimum Lightpath crossed a substantial milestone, connecting its 5,000th building in the New York City metro area – the most I know of by any non-incumbent provider in a single market. The company, which is the independently run metro fiber arm of Cablevision, has been very actively building out its network and has been steadily taking share in the mid-market from the incumbents. With us today is Optimum Lightpath’s President, Dave Pistacchio, to offer his viewpoint on the where the company is now and where it is headed. [Read more →]

A quick look at a few items from the big guys before you leave for the weekend: [Read more →]

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

Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Intel have devised a technique to speed up data traffic between servers inside a data center by bouncing it off the ceiling – literally. [Read more →]

No not the university, it’s actually about metro fiber getting hotter across the Atlantic. Yesterday, French-based competitive network operator Neo Telecoms announced the acquisition of the MIT group. The MIT Group operates in the Languedoc Roussilon region of France, which is basically the half of the country’s Mediterranean coast that is closer to Spain.  Their main focus was on the metro area of Montpellier.  Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are three of them: [Read more →]

On Tuesday, I ran this poll asking readers to choose the companies most likely to be aggressive in M&A this year.  I’ll leave the poll open for a while yet, but the results are clear enough already to discuss a bit.  Zayo, tw telecom, Level 3, Earthlink, and Windstream make up the top 5, in that order. My own votes were only partially overlapping with that list. [Read more →]

The network business swiftly returned to work this week, so here is a quick look at several interesting items already out there this week: [Read more →]

According to Business Insider, Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) has in fact killed off the Umi, the consumer-targeted telepresence offering they unveiled a year and a quarter ago.  At least, they aren’t selling any more of them.  It was inevitable – $600 up front and $24.99/month to make video calls from your living room couch in 1080p, hope you shaved first. [Read more →]

Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR, news, filings) kicked of 2012 by tacking on a yet more colocation space to its extensive portfolio.  Today the data center REIT announced two transactions  that bring 489,000 square feet into its orbit. [Read more →]

Well, it didn’t take long for 2012 to punish someone for Q4 guidance. Acme Packet (news, filings), a specialist in session border controllers and related technology, yesterday offered up a rather dismal preannouncement, reducing guidance for the fourth quarter and the full year 2011.  According to CEO Andy Ory: [Read more →]

Over in the CLEC world, Birch Communications has been doing a bit of a stealth rollup.  Yesterday they announced their 14th acquisition on the past five years, signing an agreement to purchase the operating assets of AstroTel.  Those assets include an IP network covering part of the west coast of [Read more →]

Of course, it had been a whole quarter since the 360Networks deal was announced and a month since it closed, so Zayo Group (news, filings) naturally kicked of 2012 with its 18th acquisition. The company’s zColo division has bought MarquisNet’s Las Vegas data center business. [Read more →]

Colocation and boutique IP networking provider Internap Network Services (NASDAQ:INAP, news, filings) took another big step into the cloud this morning, announcing that they have purchased Voxel.  Voxel sells hosting and cloud services to the enterprise.  The deal has already closed, and has been valued about [Read more →]

Welcome back everyone!  I have asked this question each of the last several years, and in 2011 readers actually did a pretty good job, with five of the top seven making big moves during the year.  Once again, I’m including US fiber network operators generally valued at $500M or above, public or private – though I don’t claim the list is complete.  You can select up to three, so your second and third choices matter: [Read more →]

The travails of LightSquared (news) added quite a bit of spice to the wireless business last year, and the news won’t be letting up now that 2012 has begun. Over the weekend, the 4G wholesale protagonist got at least a bit of good news with a reprieve from Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings). [Read more →]

The need for raw speed in the financial vertical has apparently evolved to the point where wireless transport may find wider usage.  According to this article, which a friendly reader pointed out to me over the holiday weekend, wireless gear is increasingly being marketed for its low latency advantages.  In fact there is one firm, McKay Brothers, that says it is building a wireless NYC-Chicago link that will best the ultra-low latency fiber build of Spread Networks.   [Read more →]

On this slow-news, mid-holiday Friday I’d like to take the opportunity for a bit of housekeeping.  First I’d like offer a big Thank You! to the many advertising sponsors that have helped make Telecom Ramblings possible throughout 2011.  In alphabetical order: [Read more →]