Telecom Ramblings

There’s a post over on Seeking Alpha from this weekend provocatively entitled “Level 3 Communications: Is It Time For A Change In Leadership?” that I feel an urge to respond to. Now, one can argue whether Level 3 investors ought to be frustrated enough with the past decade to demand such a change, but it seems to me that actually making such a move at this particular moment would be an odd bit of lunacy. [Read more →]

Following up on my look at relative headcount growth among competitive fiber operators, let’s take a quick look at two metrics one can derive from it along with the other data I have collected over the years for my competitive telecom trends section.  First, here’s a plot of annualized revenue (in thousands of $) versus employee headcount at the end of each quarter, or in some cases year: [Read more →]

NTT Europe, a subsidiary of the Japanese telecommunications giant, said today that it is expanding its IP network into eastern Europe. They have expanded into Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, adding new PoPs in the usual spots: Budapest, Bucharest, and Sofia.  The expansion will let NTT better serve carriers in the region, and give them better access to what is a growing slice of the bandwidth market. [Read more →]

Friday again, and I feel a turkey approaching. First though, here are a few quick notes from the colo side of things: [Read more →]

This article was authored by Don Sambandaraksa, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Core crunch. It’s not happening yet, but it might just be the catalyst to usher in 4G and force the industry to re-think where things are going in the wireless world. [Read more →]

Data center and interconnection provider Telx unveiled plans today to do something it has never done before: build a colocation facility from the ground up. The company’s 15 other facilities have all been within carrier hotels or other buildings built by other hands. This time, they’ve got plans to build a three story flagship facility in Clifton NJ, adjacent to its existing data center at 100 Delawanna Ave. [Read more →]

Midwestern fiber operator US Signal is taking the 100G plunge.  Leveraging Cisco’s 100G coherent solution, they have completed a successful trial on a link between Chicago and Kalamazoo, Michigan on existing 10G infrastructure with no re-engineering.  The successful trial has emboldened US Signal to enable the technology across [Read more →]

Yesterday Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings) expanded the geographical scope of their SaaS offerings into the Far East, offering their mobile delivery and content management products in Japan and Korea. That includes their [Read more →]

My sympathies to the rank and file over at ftwr, this has been a disastrous week.  Following the news yesterday of a missed interest payment and potential default, the wireless backhaul provider said it has reduced its workforce by 40% and suspended all capital spending in an effort to conserve the cash they have left.  At the end of Q2, the company’s headcount stood at [Read more →]

Indian-based telecommunications giant Tata Communications (news, filings) announced today the upgrade of its TGN-Atlantic cable to 40G. The transatlantic market has only in the past several years worked through the overcapacity that was left over after the bubble. But now that they have finally done so, this upgrade by Tata surely won’t [Read more →]

You knew it couldn’t be good when ftwr filed an NT 10-Q last week, delaying its quarterly report. Today the company not only continued that delay, but also had its chairman and two directors resign from the board as the company acknowledged that it elected to not make a $1.3M interest payment on its 9% converts yesterday.  The debt in question comes due in November of next year, but I guess they’re going to make their stand now. [Read more →]

There has also been a spate of interesting news from the major international carriers lately:

Another new submarine cable went into service in a distant part of the world yesterday. India’s Tata Communications (news, filings) and Oman’s Nawras formally launched the [Read more →]

Here are several interesting items in the metro space lately that are worth a quick look: [Read more →]

Carribean subsea network operator Columbus Networks has been busy upgrading its systems lately. Earlier this month, they added capacity to the ARCOS-1 system, and today they announced a key upgrade to their complementary CFX-1 system.  They have brought in TE Subcom to add 40G service, which will bring the capacity to [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of some news bits over the past few days: [Read more →]

European colocation provider InterXion (NYSE:INXN, news) has been making lots of expansion plans for 2012, and added another one today.  They will be building a sixth facility in Amsterdam, featuring 4,000 square meters of space and 10MW of power.  I’m guessing we’ll soon be hearing about a seventh too, as they say this one is already 50% filled.  It will cost [Read more →]

Yesterday TelePacific issued a release highlighting their headcount growth this year, saying that growth in demand has led to what will be an additional 200 employees by the end of the year for the western CLEC.  That seems to be in addition to the company’s acquisitions of OCiX and Tel West, though since TelePacific is private we don’t have much independent data to work with.  However, it got me thinking – just where are the jobs in the sector these days?  Headcount is a fairly widely reported metric, why not collect it and see what we can do with it?   [Read more →]

Continuing its integration of the Latin American assets of Global Crossing, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) today announced capacity upgrades as well as additional service deployments in Mexico.  That means waves, private line, IP transit, Ethernet WAN, IP VPN, and Ethernet local access – the core of [Read more →]

One of the more ambitious terrestrial fiber projects in Africa is starting to go online.  Liquid Telecom says that the first phase of its buildout in Zambia has now been lit, connecting the capital Lusaka with the Copperbelt.  Phase 2 will bring the rest of the route on line, connecting Chirundu on the Zimbabwean border with Chiliabombwe on the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  A map or two are definitely in order here, found over on TechZim: [Read more →]

A few weeks ago, there was speculation that abvt might be shifting toward a buyer’s stance in the M&A arena and I gave some thought to a few possibilities.  But there is one other candidate that I didn’t even look at, but which on second thought may make the most sense of all:  Cogent Communications (NASDAQ:CCOI, news, filings).  No, I’m not kidding – think about it: [Read more →]

TGIF, and Happy Veterans Day for those in the US. Here’s a quick look at other news this week that slipped past my nets the first time around: [Read more →]

European independent metro fiber operator euNetworks (news) reported substantially higher revenues and adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2011, boosted by the company’s inorganic efforts over the summer.  The acquisition of LambdaNet and TeraGate on top of organic growth in the company’s network sales has more than doubled their revenues.  Here’s a quick table of the company’s results in context: [Read more →]

Mitsubishi Electric says that it has signed a contract to upgrade the Asia America Gateway to 40G. The job entails upgrading installing submarine line terminal equipment in eight countries, which will take the total design capacity up to 5.2Tbps. One would think it might take longer to chew through the capacity of a new state of the art cable, but [Read more →]