Telecom Ramblings

On Friday, there were reports that Oppenheimer’s Timothy Horan issued a research note suggesting that Level 3 Communications (LVLT: chart, news) return to its acquisitive ways.  Hmmm, given that I have beaten this drum more than once over the past year or two – I can’t really let that pass without commenting, right?  Horan picks Global Crossing (GLBC: chart, news) as the top target, followed by XO Communications (news), and then on to Sprint wireline and Qwest longhaul.  Very familiar targets obviously, they’re always on the list and from a relative likelihood perspective I don’t disagree.  Each is likely available at the right price, though nobody’s quite sure what Icahn’s [Read more →]

It’s time for another look at whatever happened this week that I might have missed or passed over the first time. 

Covad completed its ‘intelligent network platform’ with the rollout of nationwide MPLS VPN services as well as QOS/COS capabilities.  Since being taken private, Covad has been reinventing itself as something larger than the simple [Read more →]

Remember UTOPIA?  No, not that one, I mean the municipal FTTH project in Utah with 16 cities combining their efforts to bring fiber connections to their residents in defiance of their local ILECs.  There have been many bumps in the road of course, but they are still out there and now they are making a bid to become one of Google’s lucky chosen ones.  In doing so, they remind us that this 1Gbps to the home song has been sung before, it is only new this month because Google is the one singing it.  So why start fresh when there is ready-made infrastructure to get behind and communities already primed to hook up to it? [Read more →]

Competitive metro and regional fiber operator Zayo has won some broadband stimulus funding in Indiana.  They are partnering with I-Light, which operates educational networks in the state from GRNOC at Indiana University, and will be building fiber connections to 21 Ivy Tech Community Colleges around the state.  Along the paths to those community colleges, they will also bring broadband connectivity to [Read more →]

On Tuesday, pan-European service provider Interoute announced its expansion into Ireland with a new loop through Dublin.  The driver for the new PoP is demand from multinational corporations.  Ireland was once something of a technological backwater, but nowadays connectivity to the island is increasingly important and network operators have been pouring in.    [Read more →]

Just a few weeks after AT&T (T: chart, news) gave in and said it would allow Skype and Sling onto its 3G network, Verizon (VZ: chart, news) followed suit.  At the 2010 Mobile World Congress, Verizon and Skype announced that they will team up to give Skype users: [Read more →]

There were several interesting news items in the data center sector yesterday, let’s take a quick peak at them.

Qwest (Q: chart, news) has added a new CyberCenter in Northern Virginia, bringing its total to 17 and adding some 129,000 square feet of space to its footprint.  They chose to buy an existing facility for some $29M rather than build their own or work with the data center developers, apparently simply to reduce time to market.  This comes on the heels of [Read more →]

International fiber and data operator Global Crossing (GLBC: chart, news) reported earnings this afternoon after the bell, posting solid numbers to end the year.  While slightly below my own optimistic guesses, revenue of $651M and OIBDA of $83M easily delivered on guidance, and the company generated positive free cash flow for both the quarter and the full year 2009.  Here is a quick tabular summary: [Read more →]

Neutral Tandem (TNDM: chart, news) reported earnings this morning, continuing their steady performance with revenue of $44.7M, which met guidance but was flat sequentially.  EBITDA of $22.4M was up sequentially, which brought the full year number to $84.6M – just above the guided range.    Overall, a steady quarter but perhaps not as spectacular as some have been accustomed to, but this is probably due to [Read more →]

Competitive service provider Paetec (PAET: chart, news) reported earnings this morning, without too many surprises.  Basically, the met guidance and most trends continued on the same track we had been seeing all year.  Here is a quick table summarizing the company’s sequential performance in 2009: [Read more →]

Tomorrow morning Global Crossing (GLBC: chart, news) will hold their earnings CC, which if their recent patterns hold means that they will be releasing the PR today after the market closes.   That of course means it’s time for a quick earnings preview.  2009 wasn’t a fun year for telecom as a whole, but when you discount currency fluctuations and consider the rest of the tough decade people at Global Crossing had already endured – I suspect they probably enjoyed it more than most.  Here’s a quick table previewing my expectations for how Q4 went relative to the rest of 2009: [Read more →]