Telecom Ramblings

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 →]

This article was authored by Lachlan Colquhoun, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. [Read more →]

According to Capacity, construction on the SEA-ME-WE-5 submarine cable is now finished.   [Read more →]

Here’s a quick roundup of some other news from this week: [Read more →]

It’s been a busy quarter for fiber and colo M&A, but today’s deal comes from the vendor side.  Nokia has announced plans to acquire Deepfield, boosting its real time analytics capabilities for IP networking. [Read more →]

AT&T announced the win of an interesting government contract today.  NASA  has tapped the telecommunications giant to provide a high speed VPN hooking up the giant radio antennas of the Deep Space Network. [Read more →]

Here’s a look at several news items of note from yesterday and today: [Read more →]

Zayo announced another connectivity win with a global enterprise yesterday. As has been their pattern for much of this year, the actual enterprise is un-named, but the bandwidth is real enough. [Read more →]

Philadelphia is looking to upgrade its Institutional Network capabilities, and it is turning to Comcast Business to supply the necessary metro fiber infrastructure. Philadelphia is of course the cable giant’s hometown, an inside track that probably didn’t hurt. [Read more →]

Here’s a set of quick-takes on some of the news items out this morning: [Read more →]

Of the various technologies that are expected to make 5G possible, it is perhaps C-RAN that will require the biggest shifts in deployment.  And so, I have a feeling that we’re going to be hearing quite a bit about C-RAN tests and demos throughout 2017.  We’re not yet done with 2016 of course, but this morning it was Vodafone and Nokia that announced a successful test. [Read more →]

We have two new job listings to peruse over on the Ramblings Jobs Board.  They were actually posted earlier than this last week, but I was out sick (dang flu) at the time and didn’t get this email done at the time. [Read more →]