Telecom Ramblings

Zayo Group (news, filings) said yesterday that it is planning a metro fiber buildout in the Jacksonville metro area, with its full suite of bandwidth infrastructure services in tow. With the exception of the starter set in Miami they acquired from AboveNet, Florida has been the last densely populated area of the US that Zayo hasn’t significantly penetrated.  [Read more →]

Time for a quick roundup of news from managed network services providers, with a contract for Earthlink, a product enhancement for MegaPath, some funding for Birch, and a partner for Global Capacity. [Read more →]

As anticipated, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) posted its fourth quarter results this morning, and for once there was some good news on the revenue front.  The global fiber operator grew CNS revenues by 1.8% sequentially on a constant currency basis, powered by sequential global enterprise revenue growth of 2.2%.  Adjusted earnings per share were a couple pennies better than anticipated, but on the EBITDA line it took a rather large one time benefit to make guidance look good.  As always, here’s a chart of their numbers in the context of the past four quarters: [Read more →]

For the fourth quarter, TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) posted higher than expected revenues but came in lower than I had expected for both EBITDA and earnings per share.  Mostly this was due to some hiring they have been doing to put in place the personnel necessary to drive a higher growth rate, plus the effects of October’s balance sheet move.  The company boosted its sales force by 5.7% and added other support staff rather faster than I expected they might.  Here are their Q4 numbers in some context: [Read more →]

According to an article by Capacity this morning, Hibernia Atlantic has now halted all work on its Hibernia Express transatlantic cable project due to the uncertainty around its vendor Huawei’s status in the US market. It had been so long since we’d seen an update on the project that I suspected something of this sort was in the works. [Read more →]

The Swedish giant Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC, news, filings) announce this morning that they have won a $1B outsourcing contract in Southern Asia.  Reliance Communications will be outsourcing the operation of a portion of both its wireless and wireline networks to them over the span of a $1B, eight-year managed services agreement.   [Read more →]

Over the next 30 hours or so, two of the USA’s largest competitive fiber operators will feature their fourth quarter numbers: tw telecom and Level 3 Communications.  Given that Integra and Zayo didn’t offer up any negative surprises, the economic playing field is probably fairly stable.  Here’s a preview of what I expect from both companies’ numbers: [Read more →]

Ok, I’m back in the saddle again after a vacation in the wild side of China, and I see we have a new job listing this week from Zayo Group. [Read more →]

The privately held competitive fiber operators are posting the early financial numbers this year, with Zayo Group (news, filings) turning in a big EBITDA number reflecting integration progress in its fiscal second quarter.  It’s always a challenge to parse Zayo’s financials in light of their voracious M&A appetite, but here’s their numbers in some context: [Read more →]

I’ve been posting this week from Xishuangbanna, China down on the Myanmar border, and it’s been a blast – though I was a bit late yesterday due to a miscalculated trip that happened to pass through a forest fire (really). Lots of interesting news still out there I didn’t get to, here’s a Friday roundup as I head home: [Read more →]

The Southeastern fiber builder and operator FiberLight is undergoing a leadership transition, as longtime CEO Mike Miller is stepping down. Miller, who helped found the company 16 years ago and turn it into a regional fiber power, will be retiring from FiberLight to pursue other opportunities.   [Read more →]

For the recent few quarters, Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) has been posting better than expected earnings numbers.  They managed to mostly continue that string yesterday but the street was apparently looking for more.  First here are their numbers in context: [Read more →]

Integra Telecom isn’t public currently, but it lately hasn’t been shy about posting its earnings numbers.  Yesterday they posted their preliminary Q4 results, giving us one of the first year-end data points for competitive fiber operators.  Total revenues held steady, with recurring revenues rising with the trend and adjusted EBITDA up strongly for the second straight quarter.  Here’s a table of their recent results in context: [Read more →]

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

Now that Carrier Ethernet 2.0 is all set for commercial deployment, you may now all brace yourselves for Carrier Ethernet 3.0. [Read more →]

France Telecom-Orange and Alcatel-Lucent today announced the deployment of a 400G wavelength optical link today. With the actual deployment of 100G now starting to gather a bit of actual steam, I suppose it’s time for the next big thing to start stealing the spotlight. [Read more →]

I’m on the road this week, so I’m a bit more rushed than normal. But already so far this week there has already been a bunch of news from the metro that I wish I had more time to delve into: [Read more →]

Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) reported its fourth quarter earnings yesterday after the market closed, finishing out the year by meeting guidance and coming in just ahead of analyst projections on all fronts.  The company is now in the midst of deploying its latest DTN-X platform across a variety of customers, a stage at which margins dip for a time.  Here’s a quick chart of their numbers in some context: [Read more →]

We’ve been hearing a lot about deployments of 100G by network operators around the world lately, but far less about the market for the waves themselves. The deal that Sidera Networks announced this morning with the MSO MetroCast belongs in the latter category though.  [Read more →]

GTT made another inorganic move yesterday with the announcement that it has acquired Chicago’s IDC Global. That will add IDC Global’s two colo facilities and the metro fiber hooking them up to 350 East Cermak to GTT’s collection of assets, and give it a head start with cloud services too. [Read more →]

The buzz around telepresence tailed off last year, which was to be expected given the early stage of adoption it was actually at when the technology was the newest thing.  However today I noted the news from AT&T, which has forged interconnection agreements with both the Indian giant Tata Communications and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems division and thus increased the scope of its service.   [Read more →]

Session border specialist Acme Packet (news, filings) found itself a strategic buyer, and not a minor one either. The database giant Oracle has agreed to purchase the company for $2.1B in cash, or $29.27 per share. That’s a 22% premium to the closing price on Friday, and works out to a purchase price of $1.7B net of the cash on Acme Packet’s balance sheet. [Read more →]

The Washington Post this morning has an interesting piece about the FCC’s new plans for public super WiFi networks across the country. It has me a bit puzzled, because it looks like a reincarnation of the municipal WiFi movement of a few years ago. The prospect of free broadband connectivity around town, enabling cell phone users to offload virtually everything and avoid paying for minutes and such was always a big draw. [Read more →]

With the exception of the MegaUpload flap a year ago, Cogent had a rather quiet year in 2012, selling the usual tons of bandwidth at low prices, building out to both new markets and additional buildings, and of course weathering Hurricane Sandy.  The market certainly liked it as the company’s stock price rose 35% on the year and has continued to rise since.  Cogent has always had a unique, tightly focused, and lately entirely organic approach to the bandwidth business. Here to give us an update on where the company is and where it’s going in 2013 is CEO Dave Schaeffer. [Read more →]