Telecom Ramblings

Making its 18th acquisition of the recent era, Birch Communications today announced that it has signed an agreement to purchase substantially all of the assets of Lightyear Network Solutions. [Read more →]

Europe’s networking community got a bit of consolidation today, as one of the last fiber orphans of the dot com era found a new home at last. Viatel and its VTLWaveNet division have joined the Digiweb Group. [Read more →]

Yesterday rumors emerged that XO’s CTO Randy Nicklas had left the company, and indeed his picture disappeared from the company website’s management team. But it was clearly voluntary, as Nicklas has already resurfaced over at Windstream (NYSE:WIN, news, filings). [Read more →]

After discontinuing its efforts back in March, Earthlink (NASDAQ:ELNK, news, filings) appears to have finally landed the refinancing it was looking for. This morning they kicked off the private offering of $300M in senior secured notes due 2020. And simultaneously they commenced a tender offer and consent solicitation for the $292.3M in 10.5% notes due 2016 that they inherited from the purchase of Deltacom two years ago. No doubt we will hear what the new pricing will be later today or tomorrow.  [Read more →]

EdgeCast has won a big victory in its campaign to supply the CDN technology underlying telecommunications networks around the world. The Swedish giant TeliaSonera has partnered with them for managed CDN and site acceleration capabilities while adding their unparalleled Nordic depth to EdgeCast’s global reach. [Read more →]

With ITW now in full swing, there’s been lots of news to start the week. Here’s a quick rundown of items from the datacenter sector: new products from Digital Realty and Telehouse, a product enhancement from Global Capacity, and a new tenant for CoreSite. [Read more →]

According to CEO Bjarni Thorvardarson via Capacity Magazine, Project Express is back in business with a new vendor: TE Subcom. Three months ago, Hibernia temporarily suspended its plans for a new lower latency transatlantic system in the wake of the [Read more →]

With its enterprise business carrying the growth mantle of late, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) switched things up and today unveiled a new initiative aimed at selling cloud-based carrier VoIP to other service providers. Teaming with the cloud voice provider Alianza for a carrier cloud voice solution, they are targeting service providers of all types who need to focus on other things to find growth. [Read more →]

So the FCC punted again, asking for further comments on AT&T’s November proposal to begin to ‘sunset’ the PSTN via geographic trials free of regulation. AT&T wasn’t happy, with Jim Cicconi writing “We are puzzled it took the FCC six months to decide it needed such information.” Really? The FCC dithering and asking for comments when faced with an actual decision is  [Read more →]

We have a new job listing this week from the national managed services LEC MegaPath to go with two others still active from UPN as well. [Read more →]

This past week marked the 5th birthday of Telecom Ramblings, which is about 4 years 11 months longer than I figured it would last when I started out. There’s been lots of water under the bridge since then in fiber, data, content, and voice. Startups, consolidation, growth, bankruptcies, net neutrality, and always traffic growth — I’m ready for 5 more. [Read more →]

The news that Tom Wheeler is Obama’s pick to be the next FCC Chairman didn’t seem to make many waves this week, although there were a few rumbles of discontent among the activist crowd.  What do you think, did Obama choose well in replacing Julius Genachowski?  Vote and be heard! [Read more →]

Time for an end-of-week look at whatever I missed or didn’t get to the first time around: [Read more →]

This article was authored by Michael J Carroll, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

The Swiss government is tipping the Republic of Somaliland as one of Africa’s best investment bets, after a meeting between its foreign office and local community representatives. [Read more →]

Lots of news from the IaaS side of the cloud in the last day or two that is worth a quick look, with items from Earthlink, PeakColo, Data Foundry, and Equinix. [Read more →]

The independent European metro operator euNetworks continued its steady upward trends in both revenue and EBITDA with today’s report.  They’ve also been setting up their balance sheet for the next phase.  Yesterday they announced the raising of up to €45M in term loans that is earmarked for further organic and inorganic growth opportunities, and today they consolidated their share count.  Here’s a quick table of their numbers in context: [Read more →]

The shares of TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) jumped unexpectedly yesterday just after lunch. It seems all it took was comments by Corvex’s Keith Meister at the Ira Sohn conference to the effect that tw telecom is a likely M&A target. This is not the first time this rumor has hit the mill, and it won’t be the last.  But if he’s right, who would be doing the buying? [Read more →]

Banks in Europe have been very stingy when it comes to funding fiber networks in recent years, and hence euNetworks’ announcement today that they have secured up to €45M of debt funding could be a significant shift. euNetworks has earmarked the funds for either organic or inorganic growth, but they don’t really need that kind of money for growth of the organic variety at present. [Read more →]

Lots of interesting network news from around the world this week, let’s take a quick tour: [Read more →]

If all the world were like Brazil, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) would not be unhappy. The South American region as a whole has been hopping, and they’ve been able to generate the solid growth they’re looking for a path to elsewhere. This week they’ve picked up two Brazilian contracts already, one for hosting local content delivery and one for cloud-based IT services. [Read more →]

Delaware will be getting some more fiber infrastructure courtesy of Fibertech.  Yesterday the Rochester-based fiber operator and builder announced an expansion of its regional presence in the state, building southward from Wilmington through Dover and into Georgetown, following closely on the heels of that Ohio expansion they announced in December. [Read more →]

United Network Services, Inc, or UNSi, announced this morning that it has agreed to acquire Dallas-based Airband Communications. This isn’t consolidation of similar assets, but rather a merger of complementary technologies and capabilities. UNSi specializes in MPLS and managed services, while Airband focuses on fixed wireless access and VoIP services like SIP trunking and Hosted PBX. [Read more →]

Steady revenue growth by Cogent Communications (NASDAQ:CCOI, news, filings) took them back into positive earnings territory once again in the first quarter of 2013.  As with tw telecom some higher expenses pulled down both EBITDA and earnings per share slightly below expectations, however it appears to be mostly just lumpiness in this case. [Read more →]