Telecom Ramblings

According to a NY Times article today, the top antitrust enforcer in the Justice Department told the Senate yesterday that indeed, it is necessary to keep too much spectrum from falling into too few hands. Testifying before a Senate subcommittee, he backed the notion of a ‘spectrum screen’ in the interest of promoting competition when it comes to [Read more →]

Here’s a quick look at some network news from US-based operators this week, with contracts for Comcast Business and Level 3, a product move by XO, and an expansion by Hurricane Electric: [Read more →]

The pan-European fiber operator Interoute became the latest operator to take the 100G plunge in an announcement today. Their choice of gear will surprise nobody, with Infinera’s DTN-X and its 500Gbps super channels taking the prize. [Read more →]

Yesterday’s surprise unsolicited bid for Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) by DISH certainly shook things up, assuming it was even possible to shake up something as volatile as wireless consolidation has been lately.  Time for a poll of Ramblings’ readers, what do you think?  Which enigmatic billionaire will prevail, Charlie Ergen or Masayoshi Son? [Read more →]

Here’s a quick look at some data center news over the past few days, with items from Digital Realty, Equinix, Datagram, and CyrusOne: [Read more →]

This sure is turning into a high stakes game of wireless M&A poker. In what will surely be the story of the week, Dish has now launched a $25.5B bid for Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) itself. That works out to something like $7/share, which Dish says represents a 13% premium to the bid for 70% of Sprint by Softbank and is 12.5% above where Sprint’s stock closed on Friday.  [Read more →]

Sprint and Clearwire have taken the gloves off in an effort to win approval for their merger by playing what has become Clearwire’s favored card. Yep, they have once again threatened to stop paying interest and thus default on their own debt, thereby forcing themselves into bankruptcy. And yes, I think it will probably work — again. [Read more →]

Time for an end-of-week look at a cross section of network news from Zayo, 24/7, DukeNet, Tata, and Level 3: [Read more →]

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

ITEM: A group of 18 vendors have banded together to create a collaboration project to make software-defined networking (SDN) more interoperable. [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) wasted little time picking a successor to James Crowe, who announced his intention to leave the company by the end of 2013 just last month.  Today the company named Jeff Storey as both CEO and President effective immediately, elevating him from his previous role as COO and President.  He now takes over responsibility for proving the company’s growth model going forward. [Read more →]

Where there were two deep, independent, northeastern fiber footprints, there is now just the one. Lightower Fiber Networks and Sidera Networks announced the completion of their merger this morning, creating a northeastern, pure-play, fiber juggernaut that just might be hungry for further consolidation. [Read more →]

After a few years of slow uptake, 100G is starting to truly hit its stride across all types of networks around the world.  Yesterday Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) won two contracts for its coherent technology, one on the West Coast and the Rockies and the other in the MidWest. [Read more →]

As the shareholder vote at MetroPCS loomed this Friday, Deutsche Telekom faced the possibility that it’s proposed merger with T-Mobile USA might not carry the day. Speculation had been rising for weeks that they would blink, and in fact that’s exactly what they have now done – to an extent. [Read more →]

Time for a quick roundup of US data services news, with items from XO, Cologix, Global Capacity, Cbeyond, and UNSi: [Read more →]

The internet exchange DE-CIX is getting a big new Ethernet platform. Traffic growth at Europe’s internet exchanges has not tapered off, and DE-CIX is looking at a whole lot of data traffic to get ready for over the next few years. To meet those needs, they’re putting in place a next generation Ethernet interconnection platform called Apollon. [Read more →]

Yesterday, I ended my look at Google Fiber’s plans for Austin with the question of how the incumbents might respond to this evolution beyond the demo. Apparently, AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) was way ahead of me, because they stepped up and unveiled their own Gigabit fiber buildout plan for Austin. This sets up quite an interesting dynamic, not so different from that popular poker variant, Texas Hold’em. [Read more →]

Hurricane Electric has decided to jump on the 100G bandwagon, and they’re going to get the wavelengths for it from Zayo.  The global IP backbone and IPv6 trend-setter has purchased 100G waves along Zayo’s recently upgraded routes, which include both New York to Washington DC and Chicago to Memphis, and probably [Read more →]

Lots of news this week by vendors from around the world, here’s a look at items from ADVA, Alcatel-Lucent, Calix, and Ericsson: [Read more →]

It’s still unofficial, but with this many leaks it’s quite clear we’re way beyond the rumor stage. Google is doing what I never figured they’d do: taking their formula from demonstration to an actual multi-market footprint. The next city to get the Kansas City Gigabit Express: Austin, Texas. [Read more →]

Spring must be the season for these things, as the past few weeks have seen more than a couple cross the wires.  Today Windstream announced the receipt of a new federal contract from the GSA.  The local services acquisition deal puts their voice and data solutions before government agencies across GSA Region 6, the Heartland region of [Read more →]

For the past several weeks, a drama has played out in the Chinese press surrounding the messaging app WeChat. You see, users are up in arms over the possibility that the government won’t let the company that runs the service keep not charging for it. [Read more →]

An article in the Times of India this morning presented details about an impending deal that would put Reliance Globalcom into the hands of Bahrain’s Batelco. Rumors of such a transaction have been bubbling up since the middle of March, and although Reliance has been trying to turn the division into cash for several years now with no success, this one is starting to look like the real deal. [Read more →]

We have two more job listings this week, one from AireSpring and another from Unite Private Networks. [Read more →]