Telecom Ramblings

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

Indonesia’s PT Telkom has confirmed it has submitted a preliminary bid for subsea cable operator Pacnet, and that it is on track to deciding whether to make a final offer in June. [Read more →]

The strangest bit of news this week comes bubbling up from the submarine cable sector, where people are wondering just whatever happened to that new ALBA-1 submarine cable system between Venezuela and Cuba. Alcatel-Lucent finished it more than a year ago, after which it seems to have vanished from sight.  [Read more →]

Here’s a quick survey of some news items, the first two of which are from companies new to me (and hence to Telecom Ramblings): [Read more →]

Windstream has been blazing a new path over the past few years, assembling a unique blend of ILEC, CLEC, fiber, and cloud assets to take on the enterprise market from a unique angle.  With the addition of the PAETEC assets over the winter, they have become a major player in the fiber business.  With us today to look at  company’s plans for all that fiber is Sean Baillie, Senior Vice President of the company. [Read more →]

With Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) obviously kicking off its DTN-X launch, you knew there had to be a research network in there somewhere. And so there is. DANTE has picked the Infinera’s new gear to help power GÉANT’s next generation Multi-Terabit pan-European optical network upgrade. Nothing creates big data like big science nowadays. [Read more →]

This morning saw a new Infrastructure-as-a-Service company formally leave the launch pad.  Backed by private equity firm Grey Mountain Partners, Ajubeo (news) is quickly building out while taking aim at the rapidly evolving space with on-demand compute, storage, and network resources. Their first node is in Denver, with additional locations in New York and London waiting in the wings for the rest of the year. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick survey of some recent news from the colocation front: [Read more →]

Pacific regional operator Pacnet has an interim leader in place following the sudden departure of longtime CEO Bill Barney. The current CFO, Brett Lay, has taken over CEO duties while the board seeks a permanent replacement. However, given the recent rumors about a bid from [Read more →]

But just a little bit. When last we heard, Google had promised to launch its initial 1Gbps fiberoptic service to some Kansas city, Kansas neighborhoods by the end of June. The company has now pushed that further out, albeit with the less concrete deadline of ‘this summer’. I take that as to mean sometime before Labor Day or thereabouts. [Read more →]

Dueling router upgrades this morning from Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) and Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings), both of which are boosting the raw capacity of their core systems. The equipment sector is a bit edgy right now, both from macroeconomic effects over in Europe and from stiffening [Read more →]

The Pacific regional operator Pacnet (news) and the DWDM protagonist Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) have collaborated in a demonstration Infinera’s new flagship DTN-X gear in Asia. They tested the 500Gbps PICs on 4500km of the C2C undersea cable network, successfully transmitting more than [Read more →]

I have updated my competitive telecom trends pages with all Q1 data, and also adding Inteliquent to the list of companies tracked.  Except for companies with significant short term news driving their numbers in some way, both EBITDA margins and EV/EBITDA were relatively stable during the quarter.  Here’s the current relative valuation chart: [Read more →]

For many years, when we talked of global fiber networks, it was the US, Europe, and then go to the oceans to get to Asia. But Russian network operators are finally becoming relevant outside of Russia, both by building viable trans-Asian connectivity and expanding internationally in their own right. Today Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) helped Russia’s TTK add capacity in Asia and Europe and add new nodes in the US. [Read more →]

Monday’s early news comes from across the Atlantic from Interoute, Alcatel-Lucent, Digital Realty, NTT, and Eutelsat: [Read more →]

What to make of the scary statistics put out by Infonetics Research last week? According to the outfit’s Optical Network Hardware report, spending on optical gear dropped 23% globally over the fourth quarter, mainly outside North America.  Meanwhile, year over year European spending on WDM fell even faster than on legacy SDH. Yikes, so that’s why Cisco’s John Chambers was sounding the poor visibility alarm.  [Read more →]

A quick look at a few more interesting items from competitive service providers to finish off the week: [Read more →]

Yesterday, Zayo Group (news, filings) announced another expansion market for its fiber-to-the-tower initiatives.  With an unnamed customer contract in hand, Zayo is planning to add an additional 165 route miles of fiber and 123 new towers to its network in Phoenix, Arizona. That will expand their route miles in Phoenix [Read more →]

This article was authored by Don Sambandaraksa, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Rail operators run their own communications networks for data signalling and for voice communications.  There comes a point when the cost of maintaining these networks is such that [Read more →]

Looks like the public pressure Comcast has been under over its exemption of Xfinity TV traffic from traffic caps has had an effect. Comcast said today that it was suspending enforcement of its cap and trialing a usage-based plan. Of course Comcast says this has nothing to do with the argument currently raging. [Read more →]

Well, you’ve heard me ramble on in several directions on this subject already, so now it’s time to find out how readers feel.  Comcast is excluding traffic generated by Xfinity TV for the Xbox from its bandwidth caps when it comes to internet service.  Are they playing fair or aren’t they?  The FCC and DOJ will weigh in someday, but in the meantime let’s try a poll: [Read more →]

TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) goes about its business in such an understated way that it’s too easy to miss the interesting bits. This week they had some luck to the west, picking up both a solid enterprise and federal wins. [Read more →]

Time to survey some news this week in the datacenter and cloud sector from IO, Telx, Terremark, Earthlink, and Equinix: [Read more →]

Is Comcast prioritizing its packets? Are they running over a network separate from their internet service? Are they violating the terms agreed to as part of the NBCU purchase? Lots of stuff out there right now that contradicts itself, but the underlying problem is perhaps the that the industry’s vocabulary is just not up to the task. [Read more →]