Network Bytes 9/21: Sidera, Integra, Earthlink, Mammoth, 360Networks

A quick look at several interesting items from competitive network operators:

Regional fiber operator Sidera Networks added another customer in the key financial vertical yesterday. Flexenet will be leveraging Sidera’s ultra-low latency connectivity to power its trader voice products. Sidera is hooking up their Manhattan facility to various financial exchanges in the NYC metro area. Sidera has been an independent company for just about one year now, since ABRY bought RCN last year. There were rumors the company was for sale this summer, but nothing has happened on that front and the rumors seem to have died out.

Western CLEC and fiber operator Integra Telecom offered another update on its fiber expansion progress since committing $52M in capex to the project for 2011. In August they added fiber into 52 buildings, 31 of which are new to them and 21 of which they already had a presence, giving them over 1700 fiber fed buildings now. Integra has been quite public about its shift in emphasis toward fiber and larger customers this year.  Hopefully they’ll see enough benefit from it such that it won’t be a one year aberration.

Earthlink (NASDAQ:ELNK, news, filings) made another yet another acquisition, announcing the purchase of xDefenders. Rochester-based xDefenders offers managed IT security, which will be rolled into Earthlink’s growing enterprise offerings. Earthlink remains hungry for further deals, as it is clearly only partway through self-assembling a fiber-based national CLEC using the proceeds of its dwindling but profitable access business.

Last week, Mammoth Networks announced an interesting deal down in Arizona with Wecom, Inc. Mammoth is providing a fiber solution to Wecom bringing in a 1Gbps connection to power its fixed wireless business in St. George, Utah and now remote Colorado City, Arizona by extension via microwave. Colorado City of course is where that crazy Jeffs character is from, not that has anything to do with it – just saying…

And just this morning, 360Networks unveiled an expansion into San Diego , where they have hooked up the redIT data center at 12270 World Trade Drive.  The new POP gives them a clean 70 markets covered across their western footprint.  360Networks has been expanding its footprint steadily but quietly for some time.

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Categories: CLEC · Mergers and Acquisitions · Metro fiber