Telecom Ramblings

The owner of the Los Angeles carrier hotel fixture One Wilshire has plans to expand further north.  GI Partners announced yesterday the acquisition of KOMO Plaza up in Seattle. [Read more →]

We started off the week considering the likely consolidation targets among US fiber networks in 2017.  Now let’s flip the question around and ask who the likeliest buyers are.  Who do you think is going to be shopping for network assets this year? [Read more →]

As promised over the summer, Oak Hill Capital Partners has completed its acquisition of Oxford Networks.  At the same time, they have taken the company and merged it with their other fiber holding in the area, FirstLight Fiber.   [Read more →]

AT&T today revealed more about its plans to bring bigger bandwidth to the consumer market, and it’s looking like less and less fiber will be doing the job.  Meanwhile, they will be trialing 5G delivery of DIRECTV NOW in the first half of 2017 to residential subscribers over a fixed wireless 5G connection in Austin.  AT&T also has 5G over millimeter wave in trials with business customers, also in Austin. [Read more →]

After the slow holiday news season, I was curious what new initiatives the new year might start off with and who might be driving them.  It turns out driving was the right verb there, and the question of who is a whole lot of folks.  Starting yesterday afternoon, there has been an interesting set of interrelated announcements by a suite of big companies in and around cars and the internet of things. [Read more →]

As holiday weeks go, the end of 2016 was pretty quiet in telecom and internet infrastructure.  Here’s a quick look at some news from around the world worth noting: [Read more →]

2017 is finally here, and that means it is time to take the pulse of M&A in the world of network operators once again.  Let’s start off with who Telecom Ramblings readers think are the most likely targets of consolidation.  Which network operators do you think are most likely to get bought this year?  This is going to be a whole new game, given the deals for XO, EarthLink, Electric Lightwave, Hibernia,  Level 3 and others in 2016.  [Read more →]

Happy New Year to everyone!  It’s been quite a year, with both good and bad as usual – not to mention truly perplexing.  It’s usually quiet during the last week of the year due to the holidays, but this time the silence out there seems greater than usual.  It’s as if everyone is holding their breath, unsure of what 2017 will bring.  Well, what better time to dust off the old crystal ball and make a few predictions? [Read more →]

Tomorrow I’ll take a stab at some predictions for the world of telecom and internet infrastructure in 2017.  But first, let’s revisit the ones I made last year and see how I did.  Ooh, I’m not looking forward to this: [Read more →]

The M&A landscape in 2016 has been quite interesting.  This week we’ve gone back to look at events in the network and data center spaces, and now let’s turn to the Voice, UC, and Managed services end of things.  I don’t pretend to cover all managed services in detail, so I’ll miss a few, but the Voice/UC side has been particularly interesting this year in North America.  We’ve covered a few by network operators already, here are some more independent moves. [Read more →]

Yesterday I sifted through the year in M&A by network operators for North America.  Today let’s turn our attention to colocation and data centers: [Read more →]

This year’s consolidation activity by network operators in North America was like a bag of potato chips.  If you eat one, you’ve got to eat at least one more.  Well, maybe they weren’t quite as addictive as potato chips, but it definitely seemed like most of the deal makers of the year showed up more than once. [Read more →]

Up in the Pacific Northwest we have the rumor of a bit of pre-Christmas network M&A.  According to sources, Wave is making its third acquisition of the year.  Although there has been no formal announcement just yet, the regional operator is apparently acquiring Cascade Networks. [Read more →]

Christmas weekend is approaching rapidly, but here’s a few more quick-takes first: [Read more →]

This article was authored by Fiona Chau, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Reliance Communications announced Wednesday it has signed binding agreements with Canada-based Brookfield Infrastructure and institutional partners to sell 51% stake in its tower unit, Reliance Infratel. [Read more →]

Internap has decided not to wait until the new year begins to update the market on its plans and expectations.  The cloud and networking company has reaffirmed its Q4 guidance while, offered projections for 2017, and revealed more details on its ongoing reorganization and cost cutting. [Read more →]

There was a bit of fiber M&A over in northern Europe yesterday.  The private equity outfit EQT’s Infrastructure fund is acquiring Denmark-based GlobalConnect A/S. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick roundup of some of the interesting news from the past 24 hours or so: [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was contributed by David W Wang

SD-WAN will boom in next two year. Based on the survey result unveiled at Light Reading’s Executive Summit in Rome early this month, SD-WAN technology is either critical or important for telecom operators looking to automate their operations and reduce service costs, according to 84% of telco respondents to this new survey. [Read more →]

Xura is taking aim at every layer of the mobile network infrastructure stack with twin acquisitions of Mitel Mobile and Ranzure. Xura itself was bought and taken private by Siris Capital earlier this year for $643M, and Siris clearly sees it as a consolidation platform for 5G technologies. [Read more →]

Akamai has made an inorganic move to expand its security services portfolio this morning.  The CDN and cloud services provider has announced the acquisition of Silicon-Valley-based Cyberfend. [Read more →]

The market for ultra-low latency connections doesn’t get the press it used to, but it’s definitely still there.  Today Avelacom took the wraps off a new DWDM route between London and Moscow, cutting the RTT latency by a bit over 2 milliseconds while adding new PoPs along the way. [Read more →]

When Donald Trump is inaugurated as the next US president in 5 weeks or so, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will already be gone.  He announced yesterday his plans to resign from the commission on January 20, 2017, handing control of the regulatory body over to the Republican party. [Read more →]