Telecom Ramblings

This article was authored by Dylan Bushell-Embling, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Indian operators could be in for another rocky year in 2013, according to a report from Fitch Ratings, which has assigned the entire sector a negative outlook. [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) won another streaming deal this morning from the visionary vertical.  Ok, there is no visionary vertical, but maybe there should be.  TED will be using Level 3’s CDN to stream its Ted Talks videos, of which there are 1,400 now that as a group have been viewed more than [Read more →]

Another quick look at news from international network operators: expansions by Pacnet and Geo, an upgrade at Reliance Globalcom, and a new security offering from Interoute: [Read more →]

Several weeks back when CenturyLink announced its 100G product launch and expansion, the gear they were using was unspecified. There was speculation at the time that it was Infinera’s long awaited Tier 1 win for its DTN-X, and today that speculation became reality. CenturyLink has deployed Infinera’s gear in its backbone, the Tier 1 deed is finally done. [Read more →]

Time for a quick roundup from the colocation sector, with new facilities for Windstream and Equinix, automation enhancements for CoreSite, and a new fiber network tenant for Interxion. [Read more →]

Rochester-based Fibertech (news) has announced a major expansion initiative in Ohio. They’ve long had a substantial metro presence in Columbus, but it has been a rather long time since they paid any other attention to the Midwest. [Read more →]

Successful peering agreements and their inner workings usually don’t get their own press releases, but not so today’s settlement-free peering agreement between Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) and TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings).  But while it hasn’t been in the news lately, Level 3 has been on the warpath regarding the way such agreements ought to be designed ever since the dispute with Comcast a couple years back. [Read more →]

After several difficult years as a drain on its parents, the joint venture Nokia Siemens Networks has been looking for strategic alternatives for some time. So it will come as no surprise that today they announced an agreement to sell the company’s Optical Networks business unit. Marlin Equity Partners will be taking the division on a new, independent path.  [Read more →]

The independent IP backbone Hurricane Electric is further expanding its European network toward the south and east.  Last week they added two more PoPs in Milano and Vienna.   [Read more →]

We have a new job listing on the Ramblings’ Jobs board this week from none other than XO, and six others still active as well. [Read more →]

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 →]