Telecom Ramblings

This week’s announced purchase of Cbeyond by Birch Communications caught many in the sector by surprise. While Cbeyond had been on the table for a couple quarters, many I had talked to were skeptical they would find enough interest. But with Birch stepping up with a $323M bid, I suspect other service providers making the transition to cloud and managed services may find suitors knocking. [Read more →]

It’s official, Netflix opposes the Comcast/TWC merger. I’m not sure why that question had to be asked, I’m sure any number of people could have ghost-written the answer they gave in advance.  [Read more →]

With one announcement yesterday and two before the long weekend, tw telecom offered some more details on the rollout of its fiber expansion, market by market. They announced the major new fiber investment back in November and have been wasting no time getting started. [Read more →]

Birch Communications apparently found itself a rather large Easter egg over the weekend, announcing the purchase of Cbeyond this morning. It’s an all cash deal worth roughly $323M, with Cbeyond’s shareholders getting between $9.97 and $10.00 per share – a level they certainly haven’t seen in a while. [Read more →]

Welcome back, at least for those who were off for a long Easter weekend.  While the world gets going again, here’s a quick look back at some of the data center news that came out late last week but I didn’t get to at the time: [Read more →]

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

A few decades ago telephone lines and backbone networks were typically built by national telephone monopolies. The coming of the 1990’s and mobile networks changed this. Most countries have telecom competition and a few [Read more →]

While 100G is still settling in on transpacific routes, the underlying technology continues to jack up the speeds. Yesterday, Ciena and the Japan-US Cable Network trialed 200G on a part of its network. [Read more →]

Lots of other metro network news from this week that is worth a quick look, here’s a quick rundown: [Read more →]

Also yesterday, Lumos Networks is planning an overhaul of its fiber-to-the-cell network, preparing for the coming LTE flood with the not so subtle moniker ‘Project Ark”. [Read more →]

FiberLight said yesterday that it has added the cloud to its bag of tricks. With the help of Cirracore, they have unveiled a cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service offering aimed at the business continuity and disaster recovery market. [Read more →]

In the category of obvious results, Netflix said yesterday in a blog post that its video streaming to Comcast customers is back up. Average speeds of 2.5Mbps were up 65% since January, a not insignificant boost. It had better be up, since they’re paying for it now right? [Read more →]

There are another 400 route miles or so of fiber on Lightower’s southern frontier this week.  The northeastern fiber operator said today that it has completed its expansion in the Washington DC and northern Virginia metro area.   [Read more →]

Over in the north of England, a new alternative FTTH project is taking shape. Two alternative broadband and content providers and one metro fiber builder and operator have teamed up to form a joint venture. The target is the city of York, and the goal is 1Gbps to homes and businesses. [Read more →]

The Northern Virginia, Washington DC, and Maryland fiber market is one of the most dynamic in the world. And with more than 800 route miles of high-fiber-count cables crisscrossing the region and an expanding portfolio of products, 24/7 Mid-Atlantic Network is a rising, independent provider in a geography that is on everyone’s radar. With us today to discuss the company’s approach and plans for the future is Sean Baillie, who joined the company last summer and then took over as President this past November.   [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of some global news from over the weekend and early Monday: [Read more →]

As expected the announcement last month that the US would give up its control of ICANN, the body that oversees domain names and such, has turned into a political football.  And no amount of backpedaling will get the talking heads to let it drop either.  One wonders who had such spectacularly bad timing to even mention such a thing as the country gears up for what looks like a very nasty off-year election cycle.  But anyway, now that it’s on the menu and we’ve had time to hear from both sides, let’s poll Ramblings’ readers: [Read more →]

TGIF.  Before you go, here’s a quick rundown of one last set of metro, data center, and vendor news from this week: [Read more →]

The so called “heartbleed bug” is apparently worse than an epidemic. It isn’t just going around, everyone’s already got it. The tiny yet massive flaw is in the popular security library OpenSSL. This is apparently a week for irony. [Read more →]

One of the next big frontiers of simultaneous cooperation and competition in internet infrastructure looks like it will be interconnection agreements that will be necessary to turn off the PSTN. Yesterday, the nations’s biggest ILEC and one of its larger privately held CLECs managed to actually get it done. [Read more →]

Well, it’s been an interesting week for the regulatory process that the Comcast/TW Cable merger will be mired in for a while. All the excitement in the news is what Business Week properly calls a sideshow, albeit an entertaining one.  [Read more →]

Time for a quick rundown of news on the international front from this week: [Read more →]

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

Security spend is outpacing IT spend. And the only thing that seems to be outpacing security spend is security losses. Martin Casado, VMware’s CTO for networking, says: “It’s like we’re losing this battle. We can’t spend our way out of the battle.” [Read more →]

Unite Private Networks is taking another step beyond its E-Rate roots with a significant new buildout of intercity fiber in the Midwest.  When complete, the new fiber will span nearly 200 route miles between Kansas City and Omaha along interstate 29.  It will feature a high fiber count, lower latency, and of course diversity from existing carrier routes. [Read more →]