Telecom Ramblings

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) said this morning that it has been selected as the official media and technology provider for the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte next week. It’s a major coup in the ‘politcal vertical’, but of course this almost an encore performance, as  four years ago out in Denver Level 3 did the same thing for Obama and crew.  [Read more →]

Time for a look at some news from around the world, with items from Hibernia Atlantic, AT&T, NTT, AXTEL, and Level 3: [Read more →]

A week without an expansionary move by Zayo Group (news, filings) is a rare thing these days. Yesterday the national fiber operator said it has upgraded its fiber route between Spokane, Washington and Portland, Oregon.  [Read more →]

Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC, news)‘s Business Class division announced big expansion plans for the largest metro market in the US. They’ll be putting some $25M into building out their fiber network in the Big Apple this year.  [Read more →]

Amsterdam’s AMS-IX is extending its exchange tentacles further into Equinix’s infrastructure in the Dutch capital.  The giant European internet exchange spans the metro area with some big pipes, with connectivity across Europe as well.  [Read more →]

Yesterday we had a bumper crop of cloud news, as providers across the ecosystem continue to jockey for position via partnerships, product launches, and the like. Here’s a quick rundown on items from Savvis, Masergy, Navisite, Cisco, Juniper, and Limelight: [Read more →]

TeliaSonera AB (ETR:TLS, news, filings) International Carrier and Hibernia Atlantic are teaming up, combining their respective media delivery businesses. Hibernia Media will be acquiring TSIC’s MediaConnect business and merging it into its own, while TSIC’s global fiber backbone will be used to greatly augment the combined networks’ reach around the world, but especially [Read more →]

Hughes Cloud Services is taking its SLA all the way to the desktop via Level 3’s MPLS network, according to a release out today. Rather than messing with private lines and longhaul connectivity, they’re sticking to the IP/MPLS layer with enhanced network monitoring to help monitor network health. [Read more →]

So the big news late last week, of course, was Apple’s victory over Samsung in its patent lawsuit to the tune of $1.05B. While there are still more rounds to go before that victory is set in stone, it will roil the handheld device sector bigtime and may even just be a skirmish that leads up to a fight with Google. But I’ll let the gadget blogs take that on. What I’m wondering is whether this is something network operators really did not want to see. [Read more →]

Mammoth Networks says it has completed a major native Ethernet upgrade to its backbone, boosting capacity throughout its Western territory by five-fold. The upgrade covers nine key sites and a dozen markets, including Albuquerque, Billings, and Spokane. [Read more →]

And I do mean catchup – I’ve been on the road for the last 36 hours, and so I apologize for falling a bit behind! Here’s a quick look at some news to close out the week from DukeNet, CenturyLink, Hibernia Atlantic, and FiberMedia: [Read more →]

Yesterday, just after I left on a trip (naturally), the FCC made a very important but still inconclusive regulatory move. In a party line 3-2 vote, the agency suspended the rules passed in 1999 that allowed incumbent providers flexibility in special access pricing. [Read more →]

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

As you no doubt know, the ITU has plans to update its International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs), which were last updated in 1988, and have since become badly outdated. At the time, most [Read more →]

In a bid for faster international growth, Calix Networks (NYSE:CALX, news, filings) has made a deal with the much larger vendor Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC, news, filings). They have agreed to acquire the fiber access business of from the Swedish giant, including its GPON solution which is the main focus. [Read more →]

The Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Communications (NYSE:NTT, news, filings) has been very vocal about the expansion of its IP backbone over the past few years. Yesterday they announced they have passed 500Gbps between Asia and Oceania.  That compares not so unfavorably with [Read more →]

The end of August tends to be a slow time when it comes to big news, but there’s still interesting stuff to find if you look hard enough: [Read more →]

Some quick catchup with news from overseas — Rackspace down under, Equinix in southeast Asia, and PCCW in the Middle East: [Read more →]

Here’s a quick roundup of some cloud/colo news with items from Equinix, Savvis, Limelight, and iomart: [Read more →]

That’s what an article in Forbes says this morning, quoting a financial model put together by analysts critical of the effort. It seems crazy to think that Google has any intention of spending that much money on this demonstration, but the fact is that we still don’t really know how much skin they’re really putting into the game.  [Read more →]

This morning Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) formally launched its CDN services across South and Central America. The Chilean online streaming company Grupo Z has already signed on for the delivery of its diet of [Read more →]

Colocation and cloud services provider Viawest (news) [a subsidiary of Shaw Communications (news)] isn’t kidding around with its expansion in Las Vegas. Today they announced the acquisition of CoreLink’s downtown Las Vegas data center, a move that reflects the company’s aggressive footing as described by CEO Roy Dimoff in an interview here on Ramblings last month. [Read more →]

I have updated my competitive telecom trends pages with both new data (for Q2 and a few additional companies) and several charts that I have been working on over time. Along with the Net-Debt/EBITDA plot, the collection now includes a Revenue/Employee and EBITDA/Employee plots, although the number of data points is relatively sparse still for both.  You can always find these pages in the Resources section, but here’s links to all eight: [Read more →]

The behavioral platform and gamification specialist Badgeville is now accessing its public cloud infrastructure via Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings). Deploying initially in the carrier neutral giant’s DC6 IBX in Ashburn, Badgeville is taking advantage of the direct fiber connectivity to the public cloud, which in this case means they’re using AWS Direct Connect. [Read more →]