Telecom Ramblings

The terrestrial path between the Far East and Europe has been gaining importance steadily over the last 5-10 years, and today another option was unveiled.  RETN and Transtelecom (Kazakhstan) have partnered to launch TRANSKZ, which connects RETN’s European network with Hong Kong by crossing Kazakhstan. [Read more →]

A day after announcing its planned acquisition of FairPoint, Consolidated Communications has made another inorganic move but in the opposite direction. They have entered into a definitive agreement to sell their Enterprise Services equipment and IT Services business to the systems integrator ePlus. [Read more →]

This morning we have yet more consolidation to add to the pile that has been accumulating during the final quarter of 2016. Equinix has agreed to purchase a portfolio of 29 data centers on 24 sites from none other than Verizon. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of some interesting news from three international network and infrastructure players: [Read more →]

The final months of this year have seen a flurry of infrastructure deals, and this week starts off with another.  Consolidated Communications has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire FairPoint Communications in an all-stock deal worth about $1.5B. [Read more →]

Last week, news emerged that some more infrastructure assets might be up for sale.  Cologix, which has spent the last five years consolidating tier 2 data center and interconnection assets, is said to be considering a sale. [Read more →]

October and November were hot for fiber and infrastructure M&A, and now December has one already too.  Ohio-based Everstream has struck in Michigan for the second time in 2016.  They have signed a definitive agreement to acquire Lynx Network Group. [Read more →]

Here’s some additional metro fiber news from three continents as the week winds down: [Read more →]

A year ago, Altice made a move on the US cable market, purchasing Cablevision and Suddenlink. Now, as the fourth largest cable operator in the country, the French group has announced just what they plan to do with those assets. They are plotting a big fiber rollout. [Read more →]

Three other bits of network news to peruse this morning: [Read more →]

CyrusOne said this morning that it has broken ground on a new data center out in the Chicago metro area.  The new facility will span some 425,000 square feet on the company’s campus in Aurora, Illinois. [Read more →]

After eight plus years of buying US fiber assets, Zayo has yet to run out of targets it seems.  The Boulder-based fiber operator has struck again, announcing the acquisition of Electric Lightwave in a $1.42B cash deal announced this morning. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown on some news from around the world this Tuesday morning: [Read more →]

Back in July, the British regulator Ofcom ordered BT to separate its Openreach wholesale wireline arm and operate it as a separate company.  That process has apparently not gone as they desired, because today they ratcheted up the pressure further.   [Read more →]

In the US, Thanksgiving is over and we are now in the interlude before Christmas when little gets done.  Little doesn’t mean nothing though, so let’s take a quick survey of what else is out there: [Read more →]

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, there was a bit of interesting network news from South Asia. Global Cloud Xchange has announced the deployment of a national 100G backbone across India as well as some recent M&A I must have missed along the way. [Read more →]

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

No one was the least bit surprised last week when the Australian Government committed another $A20 billion ($14.8 billion) to the roll-out of the National Broad Network. [Read more →]

Yesterday, Zayo revealed an organic expansion into the UK city of Manchester. They’ve added a new PoP there in response to customer demand, including initial sales to both a multinational content provider and to a pan-European systems integrator. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Henrik Nydell, Senior Product Manager at Accedian

We are in the midst of a transitional period for mobile network operators and their use of virtualized performance assurance tools. One driver of the changes now underway is that, especially for new services such as voice over LTE (VoLTE), quality of experience (QoE) is proving to be more critical than ever, and also more challenging to achieve using conventional tools and methodologies. [Read more →]

Today there was yet another M&A to add to the list of the month-long spurt of inorganic activity. This time it is in the arena of wholesale carrier voice, and to a lesser extent submarine cables. UNIFI Communications has acquired WIS Telecom from Orascom TMTI, which is of course controlled by the Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris. [Read more →]

The last few weeks have seen a new wave of M&A in the telecom and internet infrastructure world.  But successful consolidation often comes down to putting the right people in the right places to get more out of the combined assets than others have been able to do.  Companies spend a lot of resources acquiring the right talented executives that can do that job, and they often turn to recruiters with deep industry knowledge to help them do it.  Competitive Telecoms Group, Inc is one such resource, and with us today to talk about his approach is CEO Jerry De Martino. [Read more →]

A short week in the US is on tap, but plenty is going on internationally anyway.  Here are a few quick takes for the start of the week: [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Chris Purdy, CTO, CENX

With SD-WAN, it’s all about flexible, assured connectivity. Software-Defined Wide-Area Networks offer a long laundry list of benefits for both enterprises (that use them) and service providers (that offer them). If you’ve been following the SD-WAN conversation, you are undoubtedly familiar with many of the claimed benefits: [Read more →]