Telecom Ramblings

Colombia has a new submarine cable landing to the east. GlobeNet announced today the completion of its subsea extension, bringing both direct connectivity to Miami and a lower latency path between Colombia and Brazil into play. [Read more →]

It’s been quite some time since we weren’t quite sure where the FCC Chairman was trying to steer the boat. But since he formally took over a month ago, Tom Wheeler’s agenda has seemed harder to get a handle on than past commissioners. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick look at some news from the fiber networking front: [Read more →]

The US may still be recovering from turkey and shopping, but Europe has plenty going on this week to look at: [Read more →]

Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) made a substantial inorganic move today, announcing an agreement to acquire Florida-based Prolexic Technologies for about $370M in cash plus the assumption of outstanding unvested options. Prolexic offers cloud-based distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection for data centers and enterprise IP applications. [Read more →]

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

Top 10 things heard at NetEvents Singapore cloud confab: [Read more →]

Whenever we transition into the Xmas shopping season, the jobs board generally slows down .  However, this week we do have a new listing from Walker and Associates. [Read more →]

The US is mostly out for the weekend, now trying to work off all that turkey with a bit of shopping.  But the globe does keep on turning, and so here is a quick survey of some news from around the world: [Read more →]

Before USA readers go off for the holiday weekend, here’s a little 400G, a trip to the dentist, and of course bandwidth to a volcano. [Read more →]

In another leadership transition announced in this short week, XO has found itself a new chief executive officer. Industry veteran Christopher Ancell has been appointed CEO, and will join the company after Thanksgiving weekend runs its course (December 2). [Read more →]

According to the New York Times and others today, the NSA spying revelations are reaching deeper into the network.  In other words, to get at the data Google and Yahoo may or may not have given them voluntarily, they may have been tapping into the fiber itself.  In particular they cite Level 3, but again without actually accusing them of, well, anything at all except maybe owning fiber.  But seriously folks, all this is mind-numbingly obvious. [Read more →]

The other big news this week that everyone is talking about of course is the possibility that TW Cable might get bought. The two suitors are said to be Comcast and Charter, with some even speculating the two could split up the assets in order to optimize their take and keep regulators from freaking out.  [Read more →]

Come next May, Level 3 will have a new Chairman to go along with this year’s newly minted CEO. Walter Scott will be retiring from the board of directors and his post as its chairman by simply not standing for reelection when the 2014 annual meeting comes around. The new chairman will be the board’s resident admiral, [Read more →]

In another sign of NTT’s campaign for greater international network depth, the Japanese telecommunications giant is taking on Spain. With the help of the regional fiber and quad-play services provider ONO, they are expanding deeper into the country, adding two new PoPs.  [Read more →]

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

While most everyone in the industry can hardly contain their excitement about the potential for SDN to reduce complexity in the network and take costs out, there’s one critical element that no one is talking about – the back office. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Stephen Collins, Vice President of Product Marketing and Business Development at Active Broadband Networks

Fixed broadband providers are struggling to accommodate explosive growth in bandwidth consumption while also satisfying the needs of their subscribers. In order to remain profitable, operators need to reduce the cost and complexity of broadband service delivery while improving customer quality of experience. In order to do this, broadband providers must [Read more →]

The FCC’s new chairman, Tom Wheeler, said this week that he wants to move forward with the transition from TDM to IP in the industry.  What do you think, is the moment ripe for regulators to give the PSTN a little push toward that distant sunset?   Pick up to two answers: [Read more →]

There was a bit of network consolidation today down on the US-Mexico border.  Transtelco has announced the acquisition of Dallas-based XC networks.   [Read more →]

Here are four other expansion items from yesterday and today spanning four different segments of the industry: [Read more →]

Worries about security have been with us for a long time. For a long time the focus was hackers and viruses and worms, then in recent years it has been about the supposedly murky intentions of organized outsiders like the Chinese military complex and Huawei.  But those were on the fringes trying to get in past the good guys. But when the NSA and the US government became the bogeymen these past few months in the wake of the Snowden affair, the threat was suddently from the inside.  As a result, I think the game changed materially this fall and we have just begun to see the ramifications play out. [Read more →]

It’s time for a quick tour of the network news from around the world today: [Read more →]

Continuing with its expansion in the southeastern USA, Zayo yesterday announced new investments down in Miami. Zayo gained the Miami market from AboveNet, which itself had just moved into town relatively recently. [Read more →]

CenturyLink has struck again in the cloud/datacenter space, announcing this morning the acquisition of Tier 3. Tier 3 operates a public cloud platform which has now immediately morphed into the CenturyLink Cloud. [Read more →]