Telecom Ramblings

Somalia may still be a basket case, but it is now a connected basket case. Liquid Telecom says it has built the first fiber link into the country, crossing the border from Kenya and hooking into the fiber network of Hormuud Telecom Somalia (HORTEL). [Read more →]

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

It’s time for a quick roundup of some interesting news items: [Read more →]

The world of UC, cloud communications, and VoIP is definitely going through a phase at the moment, as we have another merger of note. The two Canadian-based international providers Mitel Networks and Aastra Technologies have announced a friendly merger.  [Read more →]

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

BT Global Services’ Kevin Taylor highlighted three key mega trends at BT’s Leadership Summit earlier this week: the power of the individual, instant globalization and the end of limitless resources. [Read more →]

The business VoIP segment has been quite an eventful place lately, at least relative to the years leading up to now. This morning we have another bit of consolidation, as 8×8 has announced a definitive agreement to buy the UK’s Voicenet Solutions.   [Read more →]

While there are a few stragglers out there who haven’t issued Q3 results, I have updated the competitive telecom trends plots to reflect data through the end of the third quarter.  One of the interesting items to note is the clear upward trend in relative valuations, i.e. the ratio of enterprise value to annualized EBITDA lately.  Here’s the chart: [Read more →]

According to reports, Deutsche Telekom has indeed agreed to buy GTS Central Europe, or at least most of it, giving it a deeper fiber footprint throughout eastern Europe. The price tag was €546M doesn’t include the company’s Slovakian assets, which will apparently remain [Read more →]

If it seems like just six weeks or so since the last Zayo earnings release, that’s because it has.  Nevertheless, Zayo has posted its fiscal Q1/2014 numbers, and like the other network operators this quarter they’ve been just pushing forward with steady organic growth, though with a bit of inorganic stuff in there too – this is Zayo of course.  I’ve rebuilt the table to account for the more granular service breakdown over the past three quarters: [Read more →]

Time for a quick Friday roundup of news from the data center and cloud space: [Read more →]

Cogent Communications issued its Q3 earnings report this morning, following through with yet another dividend boost and another step forward on the growth front.  Here are their Q3 numbers in some context: [Read more →]

Over on the European earnings front, euNetworks saw the diverging trends from the second quarter continue on through the third as they shifted into a higher capex gear with their recently announced network expansion projects.  EBITDA rose even as revenue fell, and both EBITDA margins and on-net buildings passed key milestones despite continued headwinds of churn: [Read more →]

It’s been nearly seven years since they acquired the one-time Digital Island assets from Savvis back in 2006 for $135M, but Level 3’s content delivery network is definitely coming of age. Today they announced a broad global footprint expansion, adding more than two dozen nodes across Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. [Read more →]

Along with their usual very solid but very predictable earnings report for Q3 they released last night, tw telecom tossed in a major new network expansion to shake things up.  The company already boasts the most on-net buildings for a competitive network operator and maintained its torrid pace to hit 20,000 of them by the end of the year.  But in a much less common expansion move for tw telecom, they making moves into five brand new markets as well as making major new investments in 27 of their existing ones. [Read more →]

Another European-style interconnection exchange has launched in the USA.  Amsterdam’s AMS-IX announced this morning that it is now accepting orders for its new AMS-IX New York exchange, which is one of several Open-IX initiatives taking the peering and interconnection market by storm. [Read more →]

As part of its Q3 report today, Cbeyond says it has formed a strategy committee that will evaluate both ways to accelerate its transformation and possible strategic alternatives. The possible alternatives could include M&A as either a buyer or seller and other strategic arrangements. [Read more →]

Time for a quick mid-week roundup of news from regional and metro network operators around the USA: [Read more →]

With its Q3 results released yesterday after the market closed, EarthLink offered few surprises. The one time dialup giant and now cloud IT services player has spent the last few years integrating and supplementing acquired assets, assembling a cloud-based portfolio of managed services, churning off revenues that don’t fit, and generally not getting much credit for all their hard work with investors. [Read more →]

After raising money earlier this year, euNetworks has announced another major new project putting some of that capital to work. They’re building out new network from the duct on up to add high fiber counts and multiple routes out to Slough, west of London. [Read more →]

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

ITEM: Ten years from now we will give up smartphones in favor of displays embedded in our eyeballs and wired directly into our brains. [Read more →]

In one of the more expansive efforts to put SDN and OpenFlow to work, Pacnet this morning unveiled an aggressive pan-Asia Network-as-a-Service offering. Initially in beta, the platform promises dynamically provisioned, flexible, scalable Ethernet pipes between key data centers and cloud nodes throughout the region. [Read more →]

Longtime readers may have noticed that there are some hot new topics/buzzwords I don’t seem to favor, and on top of that list in my own mind are M2M and the ‘Internet of Things’.  But Mike Manos over on LooseBolts has a piece out today that finally resonated with me. It’s not that these topics aren’t real opportunities and new directions, it’s that the packaging is so wonkish.  [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Jack McCarthy, the content manager at ShoreTel

As organizations become increasingly mobile, many have questioned the viability of using a voice over IP phone system as a long-term solution. While companies may think that the technology is antiquated in the emerging mobile landscape, VoIP offers benefits comparable to mobile phones, making it a valuable business asset. [Read more →]