Telecom Ramblings

The first cable to cross the southern Atlantic ocean took another step forward this week.  Angola Cables has has signed a contract with Japan’s NEC Corporation to build the cable system, which promises to link Africa and South America directly for the first time.   [Read more →]

The Google Cloud Platform became the latest of the major clouds to get some public connectivity attention. Yesterday four partners officially began offering direct access to Google’s cloud, one data center specialist and three fiber operators. [Read more →]

The Caribbean fiber market saw a significant consolidation event yesterday. Cable & Wireless Communications has agreed to purchase Columbus International for $1.85B, with one of telecom’s billionaires taking a hand in the deal. [Read more →]

Enterprise growth in the US was strong for both tw telecom and Level 3, helping the now combined companies turn in solid third quarters.  The deal closed late last week, and thus the results of both companies were reported together this morning.  Here is a quick summary of their numbers in some context.  First, tw telecom: [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown on some of the news from around the world so far this week: [Read more →]

With the close of the deal late last week, Level 3 Communications and tw telecom are now a single entity at least on paper. But tomorrow we will hear about how Q3 went for the two of them when still separate. [Read more →]

Lots of very interesting cloud news out early this week, here’s a quick rundown: [Read more →]

More consolidation activity over in Europe this morning, as Altice is making its case for a bigger piece of the pie. They’ve offered €7B, or about $8.7B, to buy Portugal Telecom from Brazil’s Oi. [Read more →]

Ok, I’m still trying to make sense of the report late last week in the Wall Street Journal of a new plan gaining strength at the FCC to take care of the net neutrality issue. The details are vague at best, but it’s hard to imagine too many supporters lining up from either side. Maybe that’s a good thing. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Grace In Mono, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Early this month, the Philippines’ two major telcos, the PLDT Group (Smart and Sun) and Globe, started offering free internet services. Globe gave free Facebook while Smart and Sun Cellular announced free bandwidth for browsing, searching, online shopping, and e-mail. However, according to a handful of accounts, the PLDT Group’s free-data promo only allows access to select websites and apps, [Read more →]

Level 3 and tw telecom chose Halloween 2014 to complete the deal they struck back in June. It’s a done deal, and now the integration begins in earnest. [Read more →]

After years of consolidation in the US fiber networking market, next week’s likely closing of the Level 3/tw telecom acquisition will usher in a new era. It’s been a year where the field of significant potential fiber M&A targets in the has passed the threshold from numerous to definitely scarce. [Read more →]

With their 325 Hudson project gaining momentum in Manhattan, Amerimar Enterprises and industry veteran Hunter Newby have taken on a new project. Amerimar has purchased the carrier hotel at 717 South Wells Street, and will be redeveloping it to include a new “Meet Me Room”. [Read more →]

There are few buzzwords less specific these days than the word cloud, but for me the intercloud manages to fog things up even more.  The internet already connects all the clouds out there right?  So what are we really saying?  I asked Luke Norris, CEO of Peak and one of the folks most involved with hooking up clouds to each other, to help me understand how the intercloud changes the game.  We last talked with Luke last summer as Peak was just beginning its national white-label cloud expansion.  [Read more →]

In the CDN cloud world, Akamai remains barely challenged by the rest of the sector when it comes to the raw numbers. They turned in another strong quarter yesterday after the markets closed, shrugging aside the perrenial worries about Apple or another big customer moving traffic off onto internal infrastructure. But it’s hard work staying on top and fourth quarter guidance wasn’t as big as hoped, so the stock seems to be slumping anyway. [Read more →]

Just about all network operators these days are looking to hook up the cloud, introducing new ecosystems and programs targeted on the new opportunities out there. Tata did the same this morning with a ‘comprehensive cloud enablement platform’ called IZO, but with a new twist. This one featured an ecosystem of 13 other network operators as partners. [Read more →]

It’s midweek already, and Halloween is just two days away.  Here’s a look at some of the networking news from this week: [Read more →]

Last week, the Canadian service provider Mitel made another move for yet more business VoIP scale and took its bid for rival ShoreTel public. Today, ShoreTel’s board followed up its initial private rejection with a more public one. [Read more →]

Over the past 9 days or so, Fairpoint workers have been on strike for the usual things – better pay and benefits, fewer job losses, etc. Meanwhile, the company scrambles to keep its networks and services functional with the people it has. Labor disputes in the unionized part of the telecom world do happen of course, but this one may be getting uglier.  [Read more →]

Here’s a quick roundup of news from the past few days, with three from the data center, one from VoIP, and the last from fiber M&A: [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by the MEF.  

In the light of the MEF’s recent Third Network announcement, a round table discussion on the Metro Cloud opportunity arising from this announcement was held on 15th October in Düsseldorf, Germany. [Read more →]

Late last week there was some consolidation in the colocation sector that slipped past me. TierPoint has agreed acquire Xand from ABRY Partners, adding six data centers and 140,000 square feet or raised floor space to their footprint. The deal gives them some a total of 13 facilities and some 300,000 square feet while bolting on a solid northeastern presence. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Dylan Bushell-Embling, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Over-the-top players will cost operators an estimated $14 billion in lost revenues this year, up by 26% from 2013, Juniper Research estimates. [Read more →]