Telecom Ramblings

While lately I have been looking at potential fiber M&A outside the US, it has been in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. But last week it became clear that there is a substantial fiber asset availble a bit closer to home, as the alternative Canadian operator MTS said it would be formally reviewing strategic options for its Allstream business.  [Read more →]

We have another new job listing on the Ramblings’ Jobs board this weekend, this time from the profitable, steadily growing national metro fiber operator tw telecom.  TW is looking for a [Read more →]

Before everyone heads out for the weekend, here’s a final roundup of news from fiber operators in the last few days: [Read more →]

Zayo Group finished off its fiscal fourth quarter with its usual steady growth in revenue, EBITDA, and footprint expansion.  Zayo has had a very busy M&A year already.  During the quarter, Zayo closed the purchase of Arialink, and after the quarter ended they closed the purchases of AboveNet and FiberGate.  They still have the USCarrier deal to finish later this year as well, and they started off the year buying MarquisNet.  Here’s a quick table with the relevant data for the quarter ending June 30, 2012.  [Read more →]

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

The wholesale sector may be suffering, with prices plummeting and volume growth slowing, but you wouldn’t know it by the 1,200 executives who spent the better part of last week in Cebu, Philippines, ironing out bilateral deals with their many partners. [Read more →]

Cloud and CDN giant Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) made another technology M&A move today, announcing the acquisition of FastSoft. FastSoft provides content accelertion software that optimizes TCP, one of the protocols that underlies the internet, called FastTCP. [Read more →]

Today Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) announced that its board has approved a plan to convert the company into a real estate investment trust, or REIT. They have been flirting with the idea for years now, as the REIT structure has tax advantages. But I don’t think it will surprise anyone that they decided to pull the trigger and join Digital Realty Trust, Dupont Fabros, and CoreSite amongst others.  Yet it will be a bit different for Equinix, as [Read more →]

When you’ve lit more than 5,000 buildings with fiber in one metro area, where do you expand to next? Why indoors of course. Optimum Lightpath is taking to WiFi to expand its fiber-based service portfolio. Managed WiFi, that is, for mid-market and large organizations that have in-building wireless networks and could use help keeping them running properly. [Read more →]

Lots of news items to look at for colo and the cloud, here’s a quick review: [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Paul Savill, SVP Core Product Management and Andrew Dugan, SVP Network Architecture & Engineering, both of Level 3 Communications.  You can find more of their thoughts on Level 3’s blog Beyond Bandwidth.

This year, Level 3 delivered a 15,000-mile, nationwide 100Gb private network for a customer and, recently, we’ve started to see other carriers announce their 100Gb network deployments. So, have we finally reached the cross-over to broad adoption of 100Gb? Maybe not just yet. Why? Because of why carriers are deploying it. [Read more →]

Here on Telecom Ramblings I have for some time been trying to figure out how to add more voices to the conversation from within the industry beyond the wonderful but often anonymous comments we receive. To that end, today I am introducing a new type of article: the Industry Viewpoint. [Read more →]

Quick takes on recent news items from Inteliquent, XO Communications, GTS CE, IO, and Integra Telecom [Read more →]

Satellite bandwidth has always been a bit of a separate subject from terrestrial bandwidth. But today’s launch by Laser Light is looking to change that by taking laser connectivity into Medium Earth Orbit in a big way, while interconnecting with our planet’s terrestrial and submarine fiber networks. [Read more →]

According to a piece over on Vision2Mobile, the FCC will soon grant cable MSOs relief from regulations that limit their ability to buy CLEC assets. A petition by the NCTA is pending, and the FCC has until next Wednesday – with at least one analyst expecting forbearance to be granted. So if this happens, then might we see a wave of cable/CLEC mergers? [Read more →]

A quick look at a few interesting items from the datacenter and cloud front, featuring CyrusOne, Equinix, Verizon, and CDNetworks. [Read more →]

Earthlink (NASDAQ:ELNK, news, filings) is planning another foray into wireless services, this time with 4G. This morning they and clwr announced a wholesale 4G agreement that will help power Earthlink’s wireless internet service. By 4G here, they mean WiMAX for now, with an eye toward LTE services in the future. [Read more →]

Battle lines continue to firm up amongst the wireless carriers. This morning the Rural Cellular Association decided to drop the Rural and go with Competitive instead. Under its new name, the Competitive Carriers Association will seek to represent the interests of the rest of the wireless carriers against [Read more →]

In this economy there’s no such thing as too many job listings, and we have another new one on the Ramblings’ Jobs board this week from the Midwestern-based fiber builder and operator Unite Private Networks. [Read more →]

Hibernia Media, the video transport arm of Hibernia Atlantic, made its second M&A move in two weeks yesterday, announcing a merger with Montreal-based Aldea. They are clearly looking to consolidate part of the industry and gain an inorganic boost toward [Read more →]

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

Another year and another 1,000+ wholesale executives flock to Cebu to work out bilateral deals on voice and data. Judging from discussions with a number of telcos, that’s a lot of voice and a bit of data. A common question when people would meet was “do you handle voice OR data?” So much for convergence.   [Read more →]

Tata Communications (news, filings) won a global network services contract with the international cargo handler Cargotec. They’ll be serving WAN connectivity to over 150 sites in 50 countries across the globe, from the developed world to emerging markets.  [Read more →]

Apparently, Brazil’s Telebras is quite serious about its plans to build the multi-link system hooking up South America to three continents with big bandwidth. The latest news is that they have found a European partner in the Spanish operator IslaLink. The two have signed a [Read more →]

They may have had a rough fiscal Q3 report in the eyes of the market, but Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) has spent the week on offense, at least in terms of PRs. Along with yesterday’s win at XO, on Tuesday they signed Vimpelcom and today it was Janet6. [Read more →]