Telecom Ramblings

MEF has updated the industry on its progress toward the 3.0 version of its standards. At MEF19 out in Los Angeles this week they issued a flurry of announcements shifting more of their work on SD-WAN and related automation from theory into practice. [Read more →]

Lots of interesting bits of news this week to keep an eye on: [Read more →]

A couple of SD-WAN enhancements, some big supercomputing bandwidth, and a new data center tenant: [Read more →]

For global carriers made interesting announcements late last week that should be noted, with three with new or expanded vendor relationships and one doing balance sheet work: [Read more →]

Peering relationships have kept the internet working smoothly for decades, but given the pace of change in today’s cloud-powered digital economy it should not be surprising that peering is evolving too.  How should it evolve to best keep the iottabytes flowing?  With us today to talk about where peering has been and where it should be going is Peter Cohen, Vice President of Peering, Interconnectivity and Ecosystem Development at QTS.  QTS has been actively advocating for more network access points and Internet diversity nationally with and globally.  [Read more →]

Some interesting vendor consolidation was announced yesterday. Ribbon Communications says it has entered into an agreement to acquire ECI Telecom Group for $460M or so in cash and stock. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was contributed by Josephine Bernson, Chief Revenue Officer of Great Plains Communications

Telecom providers that serve local community banks would do well to keep in mind the mandate of these smaller financial institutions when it comes to the challenges associated with digital transformation in the face of a gap between easy internet access and adequate broadband connectivity. [Read more →]

African fiber infrastructure is having quite a week. Following quickly on the heels of Liquid Telecom's completed east-west route across central Africa, Orange has announced plans at AfricaCom to build out some significant fiber of its own in West Africa. [Read more →]

One new partnership, two new PoPs and a metro fiber acquisition: [Read more →]

Packets looking to cross Africa from east to west now have a new option other than going the long way around via subsea cables. Liquid Telecom has unveiled a new terrestrial route crossing the continent through some of the most difficult and politically dicey terrain on the planet. [Read more →]

For those expecting a quick resolution to the ongoing dispute between Windstream (and its creditors) and Uniti Group, yesterday was a bit of a setback. Ok, well I doubt few were expecting a 'quick resolution', but hey. The mediation process the two were undergoing has been suspended, as the parties have apparently reached an impasse. [Read more →]

A few items from the start of this week: [Read more →]

We may see an independent Global Cloud Xchange emerge from the downfall of India's Reliance Communications. The conglomerate's international subsea and cloud connectivity arm announced late last week that it has a new plan for reorganization that will see the company emerge from the bankruptcy process as an independent company. [Read more →]

The wholesale voice business doesn’t get much attention these days, but plenty of revenue still flows through it and many of the companies within it are lean and hungry.  One such company is Peerless Network, which has recently been moving into the enterprise voice market.  With us today to talk about Peerless Network’s approach to the voice business is co-founder and CEO John Barnicle.  John has been in the telecom business for three decades now, starting with the local telephone monopolies and co-founding both Focal Communications and Neutral Tandem before this.  [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Steffen Paulus, Director of Portfolio Marketing at Nokia

In a recent discussion with Nokia, John Abraham, principal analyst at Analysys Mason, argued that many service providers are not well equipped to monetize 5G-enabled use cases and business models. [Read more →]

A few interesting items to note today: [Read more →]

A few quick takes from midweek: one new IX opportunity, two new data center tenants, and a UC deployment: [Read more →]

With us today for another round of talk about the fiber business over in Europe is Brady Rafuse, CEO of euNetworks.  It has been 10 years since Brady took over as CEO of euNetworks, and over that time the company has grown from humble origins into one of the most dynamic, independent, pan-European infrastructure providers in the market.  This week the company announced the delivery of Super Highway 1, a brand new and fully diverse fiber route from Dublin to London complete with a new subsea link across the Irish Sea. [Read more →]

A few items worth noting from around the world and around the industry: [Read more →]

The pan-European network builder and operator euNetworks raised the curtain this morning on the project it has spent the better part of this year on: building out some brand new fiber across northern England and under the Irish Sea. Super Highway 1 connects Dublin with both London and Lowestoft via a fully diverse route. [Read more →]

In the five short years since its founding, ZenFi Networks has built out one of the densest networks out there.  The company’s plans for a C-RAN network design targeted at very dense metro connectivity seem quite prescient now as the entire internet infrastructure sector braces for the arrival of 5G.  The LinkNYC deal gave them an anchor customer to deploy an innovative network across all 5 boroughs of New York, and their merger with Cross River Fiber has taken them far out into Northern New Jersey.  With us today to talk about ZenFi Network’s ongoing buildouts, their “horizontal tower model” and future projects is CEO and co-founder Ray LaChance.  [Read more →]

Three bits of colo expansion news, each at a different stage of the process: [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Mattias Fridström, Chief Evangelist at Telia Carrier

Last fall, IBM cemented the legitimacy of hybrid cloud when it announced a record $34 billion deal to acquire Red Hat in the largest software acquisition ever, and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty projected that revenue for the hybrid cloud could reach $1 trillion by 2020. Now that hybrid cloud and multi-cloud strategies are here to stay, what does this mean for the wholesale carriers, cloud and communication service providers that provide connectivity to their customers and, ultimately, the end users of these environments? [Read more →]