Telecom Ramblings

Three interesting contracts landed this morning, let’s take a quick look at each.

RCN Metro, the metro fiber division of RCN (RCNI: chart, news), won a deal with Pacific Northwest Net. They will be providing multiple ethernet circuits between Boston and New York, their two largest markets.  By its name, Pacific Northwest Net sounds like an unlikely buyer of east coast transport services, but [Read more →]

The Financial Times is reporting that British Telecom (BT: chart, news) and the UK regulator Ofcom are discussing the opening of the incumbent operators ducts.  That could of course lead to big changes throughout the UK bandwidth sector, since in theory it would inable operators to pull their own fiber for many, many routes without having to dig up the streets.  That could in turn eventually lead to many more networks competing at multiple [Read more →]

Industry interest in Deltacom (news) seems to have spiked lately – two relatively unremarkable bits of news (a refi, and some channel upheaval) have resulted in almost two dozen comments here on this site, and I have seen a marked increase in search queries on the subjects such as ‘delatcom rumors’.  Could Deltacom be preparing to sell itself??  Of course it’s not really so simple, the things a company does maximize its potential as an M&A target are so often the things it ought to do anyway to improve its position in the market:  improve the balance sheet, clean out the garage, etc. However, I thought I’d summarize in one place the cases for and against [Read more →]

After holding back the tide through 2009, it seems that AT&T (T: chart, news) could no longer stall the inevitable.  In quick succession, both the Sling Player and Skype have apparently been given the green light to operate on the iPhone over the operators 3G network.  Sling Media’s app was unceremoniously rejected as a bandwidth hog back in May, and restrictions on Skype usage were fodder for many months in the network neutrality debates.  Now the barbarians have successfully entered the castle, and the question [Read more →]

According to reports, German telecommunications powerhouse Deutsche Telecom (DT: chart, news) is considering an IPO or even a spinoff of its T-Mobile USA unit.  The idea would be to provide the unit with new funding with which it could reverse its flagging fortunes.  One suggestion is that they offer up some 20% of the company, which could raise some $4B for a 4G network buildout.  No doubt that would make the equipment providers very happy, since four national 4G network builds in progress over the next couple of years would be quite a boon. [Read more →]

So much of the news in the sector lately has been about hooking up data centers, both new and old, as fiber operators add depth to their networks.

Today national CLEC Paetec (PAET: chart, news) announced plans to build a new data center in Andover, to the north of Boston.  The two floor facility will add some 40,000 square feet of raised floor space for customer use, and 92,700 square feet total.  This is the first in a series of [Read more →]

Many eyes have been trained on today’s report by Akamai (AKAM: chart, news).  The company upset the status quo in the fall by lowering prices and setting off a bit of a pricing war.  Events went better than planned, and in December they unexpectedly offered increased guidance.  But what is really going on in the CDN marketplace has been somewhat opaque until these numbers.  What numbers, you ask?  Oh yeah…Here is a quick table: [Read more →]

Colocation and managed hosting provider Savvis (SVVS: chart, news) reported Q4 and full year 2009 earnings this morning.  The company took a harder hit than most in the datacenter space during last year’s economic downturn, as churn from large financial customers took hold.  And just a few weeks ago, CEO Phil Koen stepped down.   But in the fourth quarter they seem to have regained some of their operational footing.  Here are the numbers in the context of prior quarters: [Read more →]

Optimum Lightpath, the metro fiber division of Cablevision, announced today that it is offering 40G transport links to its customers, upgradeable to 100G when the time comes.  They will be initially targeting the services at the low-latency driven financial sector in the New York bandwidth market, which is currently the focus of a great deal of attention.  No doubt over the next year or two [Read more →]

Cable giant Comcast Corp. (CMCSA: chart, news) is apparently buying New Global Telecom (NGT).  While there has been no formal announcement, there is a memo circulating at Comcast about the purchase.  Terms are of course not available, but it’s safe to say that for Comcast this purchase is small relative to its overall bulk.  However, strategically it could be of much greater importance, as they are not [Read more →]

The content markets division of Level 3 Communications (LVLT: chart, news) and its Vyvx predecessor have been delivering the Superbowl video feed from the venue to the broadcast studio for over two decades now.  In the past that meant delivering the raw feeds to a production truck outside the stadium, compressing it, and then sending on the smaller, more easily managed feed from there.  This year, however, they will be skipping the truck and delivering raw 1.5Gbps HD feeds via fiber from the stadium in Miami to CBS’s broadcast studio in New York City.  From there they will also [Read more →]