Telecom Ramblings

Reports out of Japan say that Deutsche Telekom AG and Softbank have made a deal. Apparently, Softbank’s Masayoshi Son made a proposal in mid-May and Deutsche Telekom AG has agreed, although confirmation seems to be elusive. If true, the deal would bring together Sprint and T-Mobile in the USA to create a strong #3. [Read more →]

Once the construction arm of Xspedius, FiberLight builds and operates deep regional and metro fiber networks in Texas, the DC metro area, Georgia, and Florida.  They are currently in the midst of a giant buildout project in Texas that when complete will have added some 8,000 route miles to their network. With us today to talk about the company’s expansion plans is Paul Pierron, who was promoted to CEO three months ago after joining the company as COO early in 2013.  He is no stranger to this sector or to FiberLight’s main markets, having previously held leadership roles at AT&T, SBC, Sprint, Nuvox, LightCore and Xspedius. [Read more →]

Long after Google got involved in such mundane things as submarine cables, it seems two other tech giants have gotten the itch. Apparently both MicroSoft and Facebook are making plans to follow in Google’s transpacific footsteps and invest in a new undersea fiber build.  Actually Facebook is already part of APG I believe, but might be looking to up its presence further. [Read more →]

Some interesting news this week from vendors: [Read more →]

I have updated the competitive telecom trends graphs with the data from Q1 and the stock price movements since.  There are a few interesting highlights worth zeroing in on.  The charts below are snapshots, you can play with the interactive data on the main competitive telecom trends page. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Joseph Waring, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Point Topic has just released its forecast for worldwide fixed broadband at the end of the decade – its estimate is 989.4 million lines at the end of December 2020.  Let’s put that number in perspective.

[Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was contributed by Pravin Vijay, Director-Marketing at Flytxt. 

The definition of data archaeology is now around retrieving data and information from data sources having unknown or alien formats. This definition is going to get extended in this era of ‘big data’. A new stream will emerge, where unearthing insights and realizing the value from ‘invisible’ and ‘unknown’ data could be the span of study and focus. We can probably [Read more →]

This week’s new listing on the Ramblings Jobs Board comes from Jaymie Scotto & Associates. [Read more →]

Here’s a final roundup of news from the metro this week before everyone heads for the beach. [Read more →]

A week or two ago, Ramblings had a birthday and I forgot to throw a party. Yep, this website turned six years old this May, and I needed folks liking the automated LinkedIn ‘work anniversary’ notice to remind me of the date.  Here’s a big THANK YOU to everyone who has helped this site survive and thrive, whether as a sponsor, as a reader and commenter, retweeter, etc.   [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Stefan Bernbo, CEO and founder of Compuverde. 

A 2012 Cisco report estimated that global data center traffic would rise from 1.8 zettabytes (ZB) in 2011 to 6.6ZB in 2016. One explanation for the explosive growth in data is the “Internet of Things.” The Internet of Things (IoT) describes the era where wireless, network-connected devices become ever more [Read more →]

Europe’s OTT market is about to get shaken up, and other stories from around the world this week. [Read more →]

Catching up with news this Wednesday in the data center space: [Read more →]

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

Quantcast published its latest report on discovering content on mobile. According to the report apps dominate mobile content use. People use over 80% of their mobile time in apps. And apps drive also a lot of mobile browsing traffic, 24% of browsing traffic comes from apps. But only about 1,000 apps have [Read more →]

Furthering its expansion in the Mid-Atlantic region, Lightower today announced significant metro fiber buildout plans for in Maryland. They are adding some 270 route miles in and through downtown Baltimore, the surrounding metro area, and in the corridor down to Washington DC. [Read more →]

It’s time for a roundup of network news from the past few days that is worth a quick look: [Read more →]

According to Dan Rayburn, there’s another CDN in the game and it’s Comcast. We’re not talking about fast lanes in the last mile here, though there is sure to be some confusion. [Read more →]

Last week the hosting and cloud provider Rackspace revealed that it has been approached by multiple potential partners or acquirers and has hired Morgan Stanley to help it figure out its alternatives. The company’s star has fallen a bit in recent years, with bigger public cloud rivals like Amazon gaining scale advantages and squeezing margins.  [Read more →]

That AT&T was preparing to make a move on DirecTV was well known, but I actually thought they might not pull the trigger. I thought wrong, as over the weekend the two went public with the latest telecommunications and media mega merger. [Read more →]

This week’s new listing on the Ramblings Jobs Board comes from Lightower Fiber Networks in the northeast, joining three other listings still active. [Read more →]

In its second European acquisition in the past month, Zayo has bought itself some more fiber.  This time it’s an asset that has been for sale for a while, and which they always seemed to be the right buyer for: Geo Networks. [Read more →]

May’s network neutrality debate has been something of a circus already.  But there’s one thing that puzzles me.  As a former lobbyist and longtime player in all this, Tom Wheeler had to know that any sort of wavering on fast lanes would send folks into hysterics.  Yet somehow here we are.  Is there a deeper game going on here?  [Read more →]

The more I think of yesterday’s comments by the FCC’s Tom Wheeler about paid prioritization and fast lanes, the more I see the fingerprints of Apple. Remember the rumored Apple/Comcast discussions a couple months back about a separate pipe to the consumer? [Read more →]