Telecom Ramblings

There was some interesting M&A over in Africa today.  The pan-African network operator Liquid Telecom has teamed up with the investment group Royal Bafokeng to acquire Neotel from India’s Tata Communications.  The deal comes after a purchase of Neotel by Vodacom failed to get past regulatory hurdles. [Read more →]

Zayo’s plans for its Canadian Allstream assets became a bit clearer this morning.  The infrastructure provider has teamed up with the cloud voice specialist Mitel.  The two are partnering on a hosted and fully-managed real-time communications, collaboration, and conferencing solution that puts Mitel’s MiCloud solution over Zayo’s network infrastructure. [Read more →]

Cisco’s appetite for cloud technology and talent has not abated.  Today they announced another acquisition, one that will boost the company’s security portfolio.  The bellweather technology giant has announced its intent to buy CloudLock, Inc. [Read more →]

As we all wait for the bizarre Brexit fever to break, here’s a quick review of news from the start of this wee that’s worth a quick look. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was contributed by Stefan Bernbo, founder and CEO, Compuverde

There are currently as many cell phones in use in the U.S. as there are people in the U.S.: approximately 330 million. As mobility continues its relentless juggernaut around the globe, data creation has exploded beyond imagination. This, of course, has led to an unprecedented need for data storage. But traditional vertical storage solutions won’t do; telcos need [Read more →]

When demand for low latency first became a thing, a number of network operators sprang up specifically to step into the gap.  Closely held BSO was one such operator, nimbly serving the demand from HFT traders beyond the core markets everyone else was in.  They have leveraged that start to build a global footprint they now use to take on a growing swath of the industry. With us today to tell us what BSO has been up to is founder and CEO Michael Ourabah.  [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of some metro news from this week. [Read more →]

It’s time for a Friday poll on the subject of the day.  Is Brexit a big deal for telecom and internet infrastructure in Europe?  Or is it not a big deal at all?  Have your say: [Read more →]

It seems like a crazy decision by UK voters, but they did it.  Britain has actually voted by a thin margin to leave the EU.  I leave the details of all that to those who specialize in it, but what about our little world.  What does this mean for telecommunications and infrastructure companies?  A few thoughts, followed by a poll. [Read more →]

Comcast Business is taking aim at the SMB and enterprise markets in the state of Virginia.  Yesterday they announced plans to spend more than $9M over the next year to expand their fiber and Ethernet network reach to as many as 3,000 additional businesses. [Read more →]

Having specialized options to hook enterprises up to the various big cloud providers have become table stakes in the bandwidth game.  Here are three cloud connectivity announcements to look at this morning.   [Read more →]

CityFibre announced the signing of a new national master services agreement with Level 3 Communications.  The MSA will let Level 3 more smoothly access fiber routes on the rapidly growing CityFibre footprint in metro areas around the UK. [Read more →]

As it puts SDN into practice in its network on a significant scale, CenturyLink is taking a new software-defined product to market. Today they unveiled a fully managed SD-WAN. [Read more →]

The search giant google and the cloud communications specialist RingCentral are joining forces to serve apps and UC to the enterprise. They’ve got a new offering called RingCentral Office Google Edition in the form of a plug-in in the Google Apps marketplace. It is intended to bring together RingCentral’s communications platform with Google Apps and related technologies like Google Hangouts. [Read more →]

I’m at the Telecom Exchange in NYC today. In the meantime, here are a few quick-takes of news from around the globe: [Read more →]

Here are a couple of quick-takes from around the USA for this Tuesday morning. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was contributed by Adam Janota, VP of Global Marketing, Console

The rapid shift by Enterprise IT to a cloud consumption model is increasing network traffic exponentially. The numbers speak for themselves; the Rightscale 2016 State of the Cloud report found that 95% out of 1060 IT professionals surveyed, are using cloud services. As cloud consumption increases, enterprises are scrambling [Read more →]

Communications Sales & Leasing has made its second acquisition of the year.  The network REIT that was born from Windstream in the Spring of 2015 has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Tower Cloud.   [Read more →]

There was more consolidation in the world of VoIP and UC last week that managed to slip past my nets.  Onvoy has signed an agreement to buy ANZ Communications, which is the parent company of ANPI. [Read more →]

We have a new job listing on the Ramblings Jobs Board this week from Walker and Associates. [Read more →]

Telecom Ramblings will be at the Telecom Exchange next week, so if you’re there feel free to look me up.  In the meantime, here is a quick look at some other news from this week that is worth a look: [Read more →]

GTT’s network expansion took it to a new continent today.  The IP and Ethernet backbone operator has further boosted its APAC presence with a new point of presence down in Sydney, Australia. [Read more →]

A few weeks short of fourteen months after spinning off CS&L as the industry’s first (and still only) network REIT, Windstream has disposed of half its remaining stake in the company.  To be more specific, they did a debt-for-equity exchange with the CS&L shares, transferring them to creditors who sold them to Citigroup Global Markets, who then sold them to institutional investors led by Searchlight Capital Partners. [Read more →]