Wednesday Roundup: GTT, Level 3, EarthLink, Bandwidth

The return of a familiar face, a refinancing, and two new products to peruse as we move over the hump of this mid-April week:

GTT has brought in some more executive muscle this week. They’ve hired Mike Sicoli as CFO. We interviewed Mr. Sicoli here back in 2010 when he took on the CEO job at Sidera, which was of course sold to Lightower two years ago (has it really been that long?). GTT is agressively expanding via the inorganic route, and during the first quarter agreed to purchase MegaPath’s managed services unit.  Sicoli will probably help GTT with its relationship with the financial markets, which I think are still trying to figure these guys out.

Level 3 says it is helping i3D.net to expand into Latin America. The Dutch-based managed hosting provider specializes in the gaming vertical, and is adding connectivity to Level 3’s PoP down in Sao Paolo, Brazil in order to expand its market reach. Level 3 is also doing a bit of refinancing, a subject it knows a rather lot about. They’re selling $700M of 5.125% notes due 2023 and $800M of 5.375% notes due 2025. The proceeds will pay off $1.2B of 8.125% notes and $300M in 8.875% notes, both due in 2019.  That looks like some nice interest expense savings.

EarthLink is expanding its WAN portfolio further, adding IPsec VPN service. The company has been retrenching for the past year under a new CEO after its multi-year transition from CLEC to cloud services foundered. As promised, much of what we’ve seen lately has been aimed more narrowly at managed network services for the enterprise.

And the IP communications specialist Bandwidth has launched a cloud-based call routing platform. The idea is to enable carriers to operate voice networks more efficiently in a world where voice remains critical yet isn’t generating the revenue it once did. Shifting routing decisions from physical switches to the cloud makes plenty of sense, at least to me.

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Categories: Cloud Computing · Financials · Internet Backbones · Jobs · VoIP