Telecom Ramblings

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

Service providers are keen to leverage big data for targeted services, advertising and better customer service, but are at odds with what data to analyze and how to do it without alarming customers over privacy concerns. [Read more →]

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) hasn’t had an easy ride for a very long time, and plans to re-ignite the company’s Franco-American growth engines have come and gone a few times now. This morning the company’s new CEO Michel Combes put forth his own bid to get the job done, entitled ‘The Shift Plan’. [Read more →]

As Softbank’s revised bid lurches toward next week’s shareholder vote, Dish has thrown in the towel and will not be submitting that best-and-final offer after all. That decision at least simplifies the playing field. [Read more →]

Time for another quick Wednesday roundup of news from around the competitive telecom and internet infrastructure space: [Read more →]

Today Zayo announced the completion of its buildout up in Anoka County, to the north of Minneapolis. This project was one of the company’s BTOP awards, under which they got $13.4M in stimulus funds for a middle mile network connecting some 145 local public facilities. [Read more →]

A quick look at some news from vendors so far this week, a Finnish deal for Calix, two from Southeast Asia for BTI Systems, and a big milestone for Infinera: [Read more →]

Apparently when Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) complained that Dish’s $4.40 per share tender for Clearwire shares was illegal, they meant it. They’ve now filed suit to stop it, contending that if completed it would violate Delaware corporate law and a number of existing agreements that are already in place. [Read more →]

Earthlink (NASDAQ:ELNK, news, filings) has made another inorganic move, boosting its managed services capabilities with the acquisition of Sunnyvale, California-based CenterBeam.  They’ve been working hard for the past three years now transforming from an ISP into a managed IT/cloud services provider, putting together the necessary network, datacenter, and services pieces together one by one.   [Read more →]

There are two interesting items from Europe to start the week. TeliaSonera has brought in some talent from rather further south as CEO, and Telefonica has found itself denying reports of a buyout offer from AT&T. [Read more →]

The cloud-based services market is still evolving and telecommunications providers are still jockeying for position within it. And to get where they need to be, it is often easier to buy than build. On Friday, CenturyLink did just that built on its Savvis acquisition a few years ago with the purchase of AppFog on Friday. [Read more →]

Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) Enterprise Solutions has teamed up with Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) to make its Private IP services available to a wider audience. Enterprise customers can now access the bandwidth from Equinix’s IBXs around the world. [Read more →]

Yesterday saw a well-funded startup aim squarely at the content delivery space, looking to take on Akamai and its neighbors from a new angle. Instart Logic, with some $17M raised in April making $26M in all, has launched what it describes as a web application streaming network. [Read more →]

Time for another quick roundup of news on the metro front worth a quick look, with two items from Zayo, some Goodwill for Integra, a network build-out milestone for Optica, and another new datacenter for Earthlink: [Read more →]

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

My lords, ladies and gentlemen, pray silence please for Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the internet and voice of reason on government web snooping. [Read more →]

Charlie Ergen has apparently found the tipping point for the board of directors over at clwr. The latter has abruptly abandoned its majority owner Sprint’s side and is now recommending shareholders take the $4.40/share tender offer currently pending from Dish Networks. [Read more →]

CityFibre has tapped Level 3 to bring bandwidth to its UK metro networks and help enable the symmetric gigabit internet access offer they are putting together.  It’s a natural partnership, as Level 3 has regional fiber across the UK that derives from the Global Crossing deal that gets them into CityFibre’s second tier markets without worrying about much direct competition. [Read more →]

Time for a quick roundup of news from datacenter/cloud side of things: Colt moves on the Far East, Internap gets certified, Equinix lands another tenant, Interoute goes HD, and Sentinel gets more Carolina fiber. [Read more →]

Today, Infinera paired a key expanded customer deployment with a release of the vendor’s networking vision for the rapidly approaching ‘Terabit Era’. [Read more →]

Out in Japan today at Interop Tokyo, Cyan took several steps forward in their plan to take on the SDN world. The vendor has long had a software-centric approach to the network world, and has been building off of that toward a true multi-vendor SDN platform with its Blue Planet offering. [Read more →]

XO Communications has been delving steadily deeper into the cloud since Icahn took it private, and yesterday they added three new cloud-based services aimed at the enterprise. Their enterprise cloud computing, drive, and vault offerings put them up more directly against the likes of Amazon than they have been until now. [Read more →]

Time for a quick tour roundup from network operators and builders, with items from Alpheus, United Fiber & Data, EdgeConnex, BullsEye, and Windstream. [Read more →]

The only consolidator out there that has been competitive with Zayo in terms of raw number of deals since 2006 struck again yesterday. Birch Communications announced an agreement to acquire the client base, accounts receivable, and physical assets of Ernest Communications, bringing their total to nineteen in the past six or so years.  [Read more →]

The three wireless deals of the year now have another thing in common. Softbank has now sweetened the pot a bit in hopes of winning shareholder support for their deal and delayed the vote, much as happened recently with Sprint’s bid for Clearwire and for DT’s purchase of MetroPCS in April. And while I doubt they will make Crest Financial happy, they did bring the hedge fund Paulson & Co on board. [Read more →]