Telecom Ramblings

According to Renesys and others, Syria has finally taken itself off the internet. Observers suspect that something ugly is about to go down, as Damascus seems desperate enough to go off the deep end in its battle against the opposition. What surprises me the most though is not that the country’s leaders shut down the internet, but that it took so long.

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Time for a Friday look at news from the data center and interconnection segment: [Read more →]

It’s been a week or two, so it was obviously time for another acquisition by Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings). Today they announced their intention to purchase privately held Cariden Technologies.  Cariden joins Cloupia and Meraki on Cisco’s November shopping list, and the Christmas season is just getting started. [Read more →]

Over Thanksgiving I finished the Q3 update for my competitive telecom trends charts, which tabulate various normalized metrics for alternative fiber operators from across the sector.  This autumn we have seen margins continue to expand with few exceptions, but the market hasn’t been giving anyone much credit for the operational improvements as valuations have been going in the other direction. [Read more →]

Over in Japan, Nissho and Infinera have been demonstrating the DTN-X again, showing the ability to provision an 8Tbps pipe made up of those 500Gbps super channel PICs. That would clearly be rather old news, except for the fact that it’s a rough neighborhood. [Read more →]

Time for some mid-week catch up from network service providers, with quick takes on news from Fairpoint, Agile, Masergy, and Windstream. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Alan Creighton, the President and CEO of Momentum Telecom.  You can find more of his writings on the Go Momentum Blog blog.

Hurricane Sandy brought substantial destruction to homes and businesses across the Northeastern region of the country just about a month ago today. In the aftermath, telecommunications service providers reported outages that left 25% of the cell towers in 10 states without power and as [Read more →]

Here’s a quick look at some news from the data center space, with Savvis, ViaWest, Global Capacity, and FiberMedia: [Read more →]

India’s Reliance Globalcom is upgrading its FLAG Europe-Asia cable to 100G technology, at least on part of it. In a release today they said the new gear will bring massive capacity to a route that connects Jordan to Egypt on the other side of the Red Sea. The rest of the FEA cable [Read more →]

While much of the state is still busy recovering from Sandy prior to the onset of winter, Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR, news, filings) has been on the move in New Jersey. The data center REIT added a turn-key lease customer yesterday, and bought a new property to develop this morning. [Read more →]

Yesterday, someone played a rather pathetic penny stock trick on the tech market and the journalists who cover it. A fake press release appeared on PRWeb claiming that Google was acquiring a WiFi hotspot operator called ICOA for $400M. The AP and numerous tech blogs (including the usually more alert TechCrunch) picked up the story and ran with it until both Google and its supposed lunch vigorously denied any such thing had happened. [Read more →]

The pan-European network operator Interoute got a little bit bigger this morning, as it has announced an agreement to purchase Comendo Network A/S. Comendo Network A/S is the data and video division of Comendo A/S, and serves the Denmark marketplace and boasts [Read more →]

As long time readers know, I keep a list of metro fiber and lit building statistics.  But as some correctly point out, lit buildings are not all equal and by itself this information only shows one aspect of fiber depth.  Hence, I’ve been trying to dig a bit deeper to find other data that is comparable across the sector that offers further insight.  Today I’m offering up the first version of a compilation of on-net towers per operator, assembled from public data for the US market only (for now).   [Read more →]

Just before the Thanksgiving break, reports emerged of a breakthrough in the world of quantum internet security. The idea of using quantum physics to prevent eavesdropping on data transmissions has been edging closer and closer to reality for some years now. The brains at Toshiba and Cambridge have [Read more →]

It’s a holiday weekend already in the US of course, but there’s still a little news yet to catch up with on the US regional front, with items from OCG, Dakota Carrier, Windstream, and NaviSite. [Read more →]

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

ITEM: Researchers claim that LTE base stations can be jammed and shut down with a simple trick and a cheap transmitter. [Read more →]

Time for a quick look at some news from the international front from Pacnet, Level 3, euNetworks, VTLWaveNet, and AT&T. [Read more →]

There’s another piece of metro fiber infrastructure that may be on the block out there, at least if yesterday’s transaction between Quanta Services and Dycom Industries is any indication. Quanta is selling its telecommunications subsidiaries for $275M in cash to Dycom, which specializes in telecommunications contracting and related services.  [Read more →]

Colt Group (LON:COLT, news) said yesterday that it has made 100 Gigabit Ethernet available across its pan-European footprint. The deployment leverages the company’s Infinera DTN gear, which powers their infrastructure across 18,000 buildings, 20 owned data centers, and 39 metro areas. [Read more →]

In a new content delivery alliance between the CDN and telecommunications industries, Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) and Orange are teaming up, putting Orange’s global telecommunications assets to use in ways more efficient for the delivery of content.  [Read more →]

The carrier neutral data center giant Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) made a move on a completely new part of the world this morning, announcing the purchase of its first data center in the Middle East and an alliance with a regional operator to smooth the way forward.  [Read more →]

There’s a very interesting article over at Capacity Magazine that takes a look at the future of European fiber networks in light of the coming expiration of the IRUs signed in the bubble years. Yes, the golden age of the fiber swap (1997-2000) was 12-15 years and four presidential elections ago now.  The industry is sliding inexorably toward having to figure out what [Read more →]

For all the talk about how we don’t have enough competition in wireless, one willing competitor is finding it hard to force the door open enough to slip in. Dish Network and its Chairman, Charlie Ergen, have been trying to shoulder their way into the space for more than a year now, and according to the WSJ today the FCC is about to add some weight to the other side of the door once again. [Read more →]