Telecom Ramblings

Reports this morning say that Verizon has done what they’ve been rumored to be considering for much of 2015.  They’ve apparently started a process to sell the company’s data center assets. With Citigroup advising, they hope to monetize some 48 facilities with a target of more than [Read more →]

In the news today that’s worth a look, some M&A activity in Europe, in UC, and at the FCC, plus with a contract win. [Read more →]

In December I updated Ramblings’ Competitive Telecom Trends data and charts, and we looked at where EBITDA margins, capex, and proxy cash flow have been going for competitive network operators across the sector.  Today let’s finish up with a quick look at valuation as represented by the ration of Enterprise Value to EBITDA.  Here is the graph, looking back a number of years and ending with a current estimate. [Read more →]

In case you haven’t seen it elsewhere, JSA TV is holding another CEO Virtual Roundtable this Friday morning at 11:30am EST.  Your humble author will be moderating the panel, so don’t forget to reserve a free seat for the live broadcast.  [Read more →]

These polls have become something of an annual tradition, and so let’s kick off the new year correctly.  Which network owners/operators do you think are the most likely to be acquired in 2016?   [Read more →]

Happy New Year to all!  This year seems to have ended without the pre-New-Year surprise M&A or other incident, but I’m sure the news will pick up on Monday.  In the meantime, here are my internet infrastructure predictions for 2016.

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Tomorrow I’ll make some predictions for 2016.  Today I’m going to turn a critical eye on the ones I made for 2015 with the benefit of hindsight.  So what did I predict and how did I do? [Read more →]

Yesterday we looked back at the network M&A transactions of 2015.  Today let’s look at the data center world, from colo to the cloud.  There was quite a lot of activity, how much of it do you remember? [Read more →]

This article was authored by Don Sambandaraksa, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

I had the pleasure of being invited to give a presentation at the Thai Netizen Network’s end of year conference recently where I addressed an audience and fellow speakers who were obviously saddened by [Read more →]

Consolidation in the sector continued at a pretty good clip this year, although it was still a deceleration overall perhaps from prior years.  Here’s a quick review, and let me know if I missed anything.  [Read more →]

I’ve been avoiding T-Mobile’s Binge On offering and the broader the sponsored data dispute for weeks now, but it’s time to weigh in.   [Read more →]

As we ease into Christmas at the end of this week, here’s some quick catchup on some other news that’s worth a look:  [Read more →]

Yesterday in the New York City metro area, two metro fiber operators teamed up to expand their reach. RCN Business and Cross River Fiber will be leveraging each other’s assets to stretch across the Hudson River.  [Read more →]

Yesterday, the Department of Defense awarded contracts worth up to $4.3B to a group of telecommunications carriers and systems integrators. Artel, AT&T, BT, CenturyLink, GTT, CapRock, Level 3, and Verizon Business stand to pick up some significant federal business. [Read more →]

Last week, Juniper revealed that it had found ‘unauthorized code’ in its ScreenOS firewall software, and while they issued a patch very quickly the repercussions for the industry as a whole are just getting started. This wasn’t a bug, it was rogue code designed and covertly inserted to do what it did, which was to allow anyone to tap in to communications, encrypted or not.  And it has been in place for 2-3 years. [Read more →]

Lightower often has something interesting to announce in the last week or two of the year, whether organic or inorganic.  Today they revealed a new expansion plan in the city of Baltimore through the acquisition of network assets from HarborLight Networks. [Read more →]

As this should be a pretty slow news week, let’s take another look at what the updated data in Telecom Ramblings’ recently updated competitive telecom trends section can tell us.  There’s one plot there that I’ve always had but never really figured out what to do with — let’s give it another shot. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Jouko Ahvenainen, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

More and more services are transitioning to the internet and self-service. Data analytics and artificial intelligence help people in their daily activities. Now we see some services where people can get internet services that include human service components. [Read more →]

The middle of the country saw a bit of fiber consolidation today. Great Plains Communications has entered into an agreement to buy Pinpoint Network Services and Pinpoint Broadband from Pinpoint Holdings. The deal will further boost Great Plains Communications’ expansion within the region. [Read more →]

I expect lots will be off for much of the next two weeks.  I’ll be here for all but the actual holidays though, should you want a quick catch-up.  Here’s some Ethernet, some fiber expansion, and some VoIP from the metro and regional side of networks for this Friday morning: [Read more →]

For this rainy Thursday (on the east coast of the US), here are two metro/regional fiber updates on the eastern seaboard, a 100G metro deployment across the Atlantic, and a bit of colo/peering in sunny southern California: [Read more →]

On Monday we looked at EBITDA margin trends via the recently updated competitive telecom trends graphs.  Today let’s look at capital expenditures for network operators of all types to see whose spending on new projects is up and whose is down.  In the following plot of trailing-12-month capex you can see that overall, spending is definitely up. [Read more →]

Some SDN, cloud communications, and submarine cables for your Wednesday perusal: [Read more →]