Telecom Ramblings

Contributed by Jay Borer, marketing development manager for 3M’s Communication Markets Division

2014 was a big year for communication service providers and the manufacturers that support them, as we worked together to continue to look for ways to extend services and increase speed and bandwidth to the growing base of subscribers. As we move into 2015, whether a service provider is looking to upgrade to a fiber infrastructure or extend the life of an existing copper network, everyone is looking to balance bandwidth and cost. [Read more →]

It’s official. When New Year’s Day rolls around, Equinix will be a REIT. The company’s board of directors voted on the subject yesterday before heading home for Christmas, unanimously approving the conversion it began working on a couple years ago. [Read more →]

The rumors from last week turned out to be true.  Telstra has agreed to acquire Pacnet in a deal worth some $697M, including some $400M in debt.  The deal includes both Pacnet’s submarine cables spanning the Asia-Pacific theater and also the company’s joint venture in China.   [Read more →]

As Christmas looms and the schools let out, here’s a quick rundown of some news from the network side of things so far this week: [Read more →]

All this North Korea and Sony hacking stuff has been taking a dark turn of late.  Yesterday, North Korea was apparently vanished from the global internet by circumstances unknown.  I say unknown in the sense that the hackers who invaded Sony Pictures over the film “The Interview” remain unknown.   [Read more →]

The data center marketplace has been evolving rapidly lately.  Those data center alleys aren’t going away, but there’s unprecedented action at the network edge.  Driven by the need to put content closer to eyeballs, data centers are springing up in places they’ve never been before.  One of the biggest builders at the edge, and until now one of the most secretive, is EdgeConneX, which has dozens of facilities already either in service or under construction already.  With us today to shed some light on EdgeConneX’s activities and plans at the edge is industry veteran Clint Heiden, Chief Commercial Officer. [Read more →]

Windstream is upgrading its metro and regional fiber networks this winter with some help from Cyan. The hybrid CLEC/ILEC will be using Cyan’s Z-Series packet-optical hardware to move up to 100G across its major markets, with initial deployments underway. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Stefan Hammond, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

As a cranky journalist, I have my vision of The Way The World Should Be. As a tech-geek, I have some understanding of personal data security policies. So hang on tight and grab your asbestos helmet while I blast some steam, because here’s five things. [Read more →]

This morning Hibernia Networks is supplying an update on the new transatlantic cable it has been building, and adding a new landing station to it as well. The Express cable will now have a branch come ashore in southwestern Ireland, bringing direct connectivity to both the UK and the US to the city of Cork. [Read more →]

Just a week after taking the helm of Windstream, newly minted CEO Tony Thomas has moved to put the companies network REIT spinoff back in the spotlight.  The company is providing an update today on the transaction and what they hope it to accomplish. [Read more →]

Equinix has been rolling out new partners for its Cloud Exchange all year, or at least all three quarters since it was introduced.  But for the holiday season they saved the announcement that key player in the world of cloud computing has signed on: IBM. [Read more →]

There’s M&A in the wind in the Pacific region today, as Pacnet has apparently attracted some attention from down under. Australia’s Telstra has confirmed that it is in duscussions to acquire the company. That’s all they said though, responding to speculation from Bloomberg today in a three sentence letter to the Australian Securities Exchange.  [Read more →]

Time for a quick mid-week survey of news from around the world: [Read more →]

Here’s a quick survey of recent regional customer wins and expansions that are worth a quick look: [Read more →]

Late last week, Windstream got itself a new CEO. And yesterday, that new CEO continued the shakeup with a series of promotions, putting together his new leadership team. [Read more →]

The wireless market in the UK just may get its incumbent back. BT said yesterday that it has entered into ‘exclusive talks’ to by EE, the mobile operator jointly owned by Deutsche Telekom and Orange. While the process will take a few weeks, the apparent price tag is £12.5bn. [Read more →]

Last week I had the rare pleasure of an in-person visit at 60 Hudson on New York City. Frank Orlowski, the Chief Marketing Officer of DE-CIX, and the always helpful folks at Zayo’s zColo division, where DE-CIX has its cage, offered me a tour. And since I am once again based in the area I was actually able to take them up on it. Despite the fact that I write about this stuff every day, I have rarely had a chance to see any of it in person. In fact the only other data center I’ve seen the inside of was [Read more →]

This article was authored by John C. Tanner, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Your new favorite Internet Of Things standards initiative: [Read more →]

TGIF and 13 shopping days left before Christmas.  Here’s a quick look at news from across the space and around the world before you head home: [Read more →]

So yesterday Netflix came out in defense of its OpenConnect caching infrastructure, actually having to tell the FCC that the program isn’t a fast lane. The question had been posed by the FCC’s Ajit Pai and might seem a bit silly, but it’s a direct consequence of the way the network neutrality debate has veered off-road this year. [Read more →]

Predictions for earnings per share for telecom vendors is always a bit of hit or miss, just because of the stochastic nature of the type of sales they make and the currency fluctuations where they make them.  Ciena finished out its fiscal 2014 today, reporting a surprise loss for the October quarter but apparently the market is happy enough there wasn’t worse news given other data lately.  Here’s a quick table of the numbers in some context: [Read more →]

Time for a quick roundup of news from the metro and federal fronts.  Oops, it’s Thursday, not Wednesday! [Read more →]

Contributed by Prayson Pate, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice-President of R&D, Overture

Over-the-top (OTT) services cause fear and heartburn for wireline Communication Service Providers (CSPs) because of the revenue they take as well as the network load that they create.  Rather than fearing OTT services, CSPs should leverage new technologies such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NVF) to [Read more →]