Telecom Ramblings

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) said this morning that it plans to sell $300M of senior unsecured notes due 2019 in a private offering to qualified institutional buyers. The money will go to general corporate purposes, most likely debt refinancing – which of course is where most of it usually goes. In conjunction with the sale, Level 3 offered up the following quote:  [Read more →]

Today the wireless backhaul specialist ftwr finally surrendered to the inevitable and announced that it has filed voluntary petitions for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in North Texas. Under the proposed reorganization, the $176M in long term debt would be [Read more →]

The folks planning to run fiber through the Northwest Passage are still out there, and today took one more step toward making the cable a reality. Arctic Fibre (news) says it has launched a process to quantify Canadian demand for bandwidth on the 15,300km cable that will stretch from Tokyo to London. Canadian carriers and government agencies will have until September 1 (6 weeks from now) to [Read more →]

This Week in Tech had a really nice special last Friday taking a deep look at traffic congestion, bandwidth caps, and everything in between.  Dane Jasper of Sonic.net, Reid Fishler of Hurricane Electric, Christopher Mitchel of muninetworks.org, and Benoit Felten of Diffraction Analysis weighed in.  I’ve embedded the video below or you can view it on the TWiT site directly, it’s well worth a watch. [Read more →]

Time for a quick look at recent items from the metro: [Read more →]

We’ve already seen a parade of downcast pre-announcements from telecommunications vendors, but this morning’s addition to the list is a bit bigger. Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) said this morning that the poor economy is slowing down their progress more than they had projected. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick roundup of today’s other news from the international front via NTT, Tata, NBN, and Digital Realty: [Read more →]

Pacnet (news) wasted no time finding a new CEO to replace Bill Barney, who was sent unceremoniously packing six weeks ago in a surprise move by the company’s board of directors. Today the company announced they are bringing in a ringer with a familiar face: Carl Grivner, who headed up XO until last Autumn of course.  [Read more →]

euNetworks (news) said this morning that it has deployed an intercity fiber link between London and Dublin capable of 8.8Tbps, completing the meshing of its 13 metro markets into a single optical domain. The independent European metro operator has long been in Dublin of course, but had connected the city to the rest of its fiber via leased capacity. The additional intercity fiber will let them complete their service set across all markets. [Read more →]

Late last week, the Northeastern and MidAtlantic-focused CLEC Broadview Networks (news) announced that it has reached a long term agreement to restructure its balance sheet. Something had to give this summer, as the company’s $300M or so in debt was coming due in September. In short, they’ll be converting that debt into a combination of new notes and lots of equity, smoothed by a quick, prepackaged trip through BK court. [Read more →]

We have a new listing on the Ramblings’ Jobs Board this week from Telarus, which was also kind enough to tell me that the registration process was broken.  If anyone else had difficulty figuring how to register to post a job, it’s fixed now but [Read more →]

Here’s a quick look at some of the other news items this week, including two acquisitions in the Pacific amongst other things: [Read more →]

With the Abovenet deal now complete, Zayo Group (news, filings) is turning some attention to organic expansion with news of an  expansion of its metro dark fiber footprint into Albuquerque, New Mexico.  With a 4G wireless customer anchoring the project, Zayo hopes to offer big bandwidth to the R&D, government, and manufacturing industries in the region. [Read more →]

Recently, the FCC came up with a brilliant new way to expand the Universal Service Fund as part of its reform of the system: eliminate the exemptions on submarine cables landing in the US, thereby applying a 15.7% tax on assessable end-user revenues. And by brilliant, I mean bone-jarringly stupid. [Read more →]

If the early word is any indication, this is going to be a difficult quarter for equipment vendors. Acme Packet checked in with rough times a few days ago, AudioCodes announced a restructuring effort, and now ADTRAN had a weak Q2 and projected a weaker Q3, while Calix is pre-announcing a big revenue miss.  [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) followed up its launch of services in Latin America with an important customer victory. Terra, a global digital media company and the largest in Latin America, has picked the company’s Vyvx managed video network solutions to support its sports and events broadcasts. [Read more →]

NYSE Technologies, the tech unit of NYSE EuroNext, is planning a new SFTI access center in Equinix’s brand new NY5 data center in Secaucus New Jersey. That facility is scheduled to formally open for business in less than [Read more →]

A quick roundup of network news from this week from the US Government, Comcast, EMAXX, and Troy Cable: [Read more →]

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

Telcos need to find a way to do things differently and get better at reaching out to other parties. [Read more →]

A quick survey at some items from the data center over the last day or two, from zColo, Internap, CDNetworks, and Equinix: [Read more →]

Masergy Communications (news, filings) made an inorganic move today into a new line of business. The managed network services provider has acquired Broadcore Communications, which specializes in cloud communications. Masergy is clearly building up its cloud portfolio to better address the needs of enterprises, and may very well have other targets in mind. [Read more →]

Two early data points for Q2 financials are now in, with quite opposing viewpoints. Upstart VoIP provider magicJack VocalTec (NASDAQ:CALL, news, filings) pre-announced even better results than it had promised, while Acme Packet (news, filings) took another punch in the gut. [Read more →]

Telefonica (NYSE:TEF, news, filings) said this morning that it has successfully trialed a new network design leveraging ADVA transport gear and a RAYcontrol GMPLS control plane, Juniper edge routers, ROADM, and multi-layer configuration from the European IST project ONE effort. That’s a long list, but what does it mean? [Read more →]