Telecom Ramblings

As we close in on the end of 2014, GTT is filling up on cash reserves to take on 2015. Yesterday afternoon they revealed their intention to raise money via a stock offering, the details of which they announced a little while ago.  It’s their second such sale of stock this year, having made a similar move this past May. [Read more →]

Zayo’s next fiber consolidation move is back on this side of the Atlantic, and actually rather far from the coast as well.  The Boulder-based company has agreed to purchase the carrier and enterprise business of IdeaTek. [Read more →]

Here’s another quick look at some news from around the sector: [Read more →]

Since its founding just four years ago, Cologix has grown to 20 data centers across eight markets interconnecting some 350 networks. They started focusing on tier two and three market opportunities before it became popular, blending acquisitions with organic expansions to rapidly establish themselves as a national player in the interconnection-focused data center world. Here to give us an update on Cologix’s approach is CEO Grant van Rooyen. [Read more →]

This morning, Ciena made its move into the network functions virtualization market. Not as a provider of VNFs themselves, but of a new managed services platform they’ll be selling to service providers to help deploy and monetize them. Their new Agility division and flagship Agility Matrix software includes a marketplace, a usage and on-the-fly licensing director, and the ability to run things locally or via the cloud. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick roundup of network and CDN news from around the world this week: [Read more →]

Quickly on the heels of a longhaul fiber build announcement, Zayo has another at the other extreme of the network.  They’ve announced a turnkey small cell deployment out in Indianapolis.  The first sites are already in service, with more than 100 to be installed by the middle of next year. [Read more →]

The data center services company IO has for some time now had two personalities, the carrier neutral colo provider and the modular infrastructure and DCIM software provider.  Today the company announced plans to separate into two companies, allowing each to focus on what it does best. [Read more →]

While new metro loops are almost commonplace these days, new longhaul intercity routes are still a rare beast. We’ve seen a few big projects lately though on the east coast with Allied Fiber in Florida and both Lumos and SummitIG in Virginia, and now Zayo says it is building a new dark fiber route much further inland.  [Read more →]

We had some M&A news in the financial networking vertical yesterday. IPC Systems is changing hands, with Centerbridge Partners paying $1.2B or so to take it off the hands of Silver Lake Partners.  [Read more →]

Seems like everything is in play these days when it comes to telecommunications consolidation in Europe. While Americans were all off on a turkey break, across the Atlantic several soap operas continued. [Read more →]

Holiday weekends are many things to the corporate world, and one of them is an opportunity to bury things they’d rather not have gain that much attention. In that finest of traditions, AT&T sent a letter to the FCC before the break responding to that call for information about its fiber deployments of earlier this month. In short, they’re backing down and still planning to follow through on the plans, although we’re not going to get to see just what those plans are since they were as usual heavily redacted. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Dan Joe Barry, vice president of marketing, Napatech.

Gigaom Research reports that software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) represent two of the more dramatic oncoming technology shifts in networking. Both will significantly alter network designs, deployments, operations and future networking and computing systems. Key drivers include improved network service levels and lower operating and capital costs. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Phil Marshall, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

This month I published a research report on the telecom tower industry; an industry that I have followed for nearly two decades since its inception in the United States in the mid-1990’s. In recent years, the tower industry has expanded at an incredible rate, particularly as operators seek cost effective network expansion strategies, and network sharing becomes more readily accepted. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of some recent network news that’s worth a look: [Read more →]

While I was traveling last week, the rumors of an M&A deal surrounding euNetworks became more than rumors. They company’s largest shareholder, Columbia Capital, has launched an effort to buy the rest of the company and take it private, looking to bring the independent western European fiber footprint all the way under its umbrella. [Read more →]

The M&A talk over in Europe today is focused on the UK, where BT and Telefonica are dancing around a possible transaction. While described by BT as ‘highly preliminary’, the idea would be for BT to get back into the wireless game by reacquiring O2, which it spun off over a decade ago. Telefonica would likely then own a significant minority chunk of BT. [Read more →]

As the holidays loom large, so does the urge to look ahead and speculate on what will come in 2015 and beyond.  With us today to opine about where the internet infrastructure industry is headed and why is Gillis Cashman, Managing Partner at the private equity firm M/C Partners.  M/C Partners is very tightly focused on communications services and infrastructure, and Gillis [Read more →]

This week we got two new listings from down south to take a look at. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Max Silber, executive director of mobility, MetTel

Mobile devices in the workforce are nothing new – since the invasion of Palm Pilots and Blackberry phones in the late 1990s, these devices have become as common in a cubicle or office as a desk phone and computer monitor.

What wasn’t expected at the dawn of the mobile era was the extent to which users would [Read more →]

With the travel, I have been playing catch-up all week on other news. Here’s another roundup, this time of network operator news: [Read more →]

Windstream is sending out some cards just in time for the holiday season, but they aren’t of the festive variety. The hybrid ILEC/CLEC is planning to slim down its workforce by 2.7% by December 1 in an effort to improve its cost structure and efficiency. [Read more →]

Lots of news from the vendors this week, especially around Ethernet, SDN, and NFV given GEN14. Here’s a quick look a few items I learned about at and around the event: [Read more →]