Telecom Ramblings

One of those big Atlantic submarine cable projects we’ve heard about in the last six months is getting closer to reality. The WASACE Cable Company said yesterday that it has begun the procurement process, aiming to select a cable system supplier for the actual construction of its very ambitious three leg, four continent 100G plans. [Read more →]

I have long expected Pacnet (news) to become a consolidation target, and that future seems to have arrived. According to a Reuters report, PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia has in fact submitted a bid for the Pacific regional cable operator that is said to value the company at about $1B. [Read more →]

Here are some quick takes on some of the news from network operators that has built up already this week: [Read more →]

Reports this morning are that America Movil has offered €2.6B in cash for a bigger stake in the Netherlands’ KPN. The Latin American mobile giant already owns a 4.8% stake, but if this bid is successful that will rise to 28%. That’s just under the 30% that in the Netherlands would oblige them to offer to buy all outstanding shares, meaning it’s the most they can buy without actually [Read more →]

When Comcast first unveiled its plans to not count XfinityTV traffic towards bandwidth caps, it said that this was permissible since it is a service separate from its high speed access, with the Xbox acting as another set-top box and with traffic travelling over its own separate IP network.  But the closer the scrutiny gets, the less separate it all looks. [Read more →]

Northeastern fiber operator Lightower Fiber Networks (news) is expanding deeper into New Jersey. They plan to add another 100 route miles both in the northeast and down into the central regions of the state. Moving further down the I-95 corridor is their most obvious geographical expansion territory, maybe they’ll make it to Philadelphia in a year or two. [Read more →]

Fresh off its rebranding of the former Neutral Tandem and Tinet names, Inteliquent (NASDAQ:IQNT, news, filings) posted a steady first quarter.  At the end of the quarter, the company formally launched its hosted UC product line, however the revenues for this year will come primarily from their voice and IP/Ethernet product lines.  Here’s a quick table of the company’s numbers in context: [Read more →]

International fiber operator Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) has had its big DISA contract award finalized according to a release this morning.  Of course if you read this site regularly you saw this one go by almost four months ago, but government contracts do tend operate in their own parallel temporal existence.  We do have a few more details now though. [Read more →]

Broadsoft (NASDAQ:BSFT, news, filings) has been making a habit of easily beating estimates, and did so again with this morning’s first quarter results. The telecom infrastructure industry’s migration toward cloud communications has been boosting the [Read more →]

Two privately held companies bent on shaking things up in the optical market have taken their case under the Mediterranean Sea. Gulf Bridge International (news) and Xtera (news) said this morning that they’ve completed the first 100G repeatered subsea link. The connection delivers 100G wavelengths between Italy and Egypt, and follows through even further on GBI’s earlier promises to take 100G commercial. [Read more →]

After a surge in March and April, listings on the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board have ebbed a bit, but we have a new one this weekend from Texas-based Logix Communications.  BTW, this week will be Telecom Ramblings’ birthday – four years and still going strong, [Read more →]

TGIF.  There’s been a lot of news this week, more than I’ve been able to keep up with.  Here’s some quick looks at a selection of interesting items: [Read more →]

It was just two weeks ago that Vodafone Group (NYSE:VOD, news, filings) agreed to purchase C&W Worldwide after a two month competitive sale process.  But the deal may already be on the rocks according to the UK’s Guardian. While the board agreed to the purchase and several large shareholders supported it (RBC, Sky, and Cyrte), one major shareholder did not and seems ready to stand in the way of the deal. [Read more →]

There’s an interesting piece over on Seeking Alpha railing against Limelight, but not for the usual reasons. Apparently the CDN and value added services provider has been cutting back on its peering with ISPs, offering a paid peering replacement to puzzled former peers. While the article goes on to suggest that this is crazy for a CDN and therefore doom is imminent, I think it’s a logical consequence of their de-emphasizing of  [Read more →]

This article was authored by Tony Poulos, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

“The Great Indian Spectrum Scandal”, as I choose to call it, shows no signs of abating. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recommended to the government that holders of cancelled 2G licenses should not be compensated for their loss. [Read more →]

We’ve all heard how Comcast is exempting its own IP video traffic from its bandwidth caps.  But by doing so, it’s not just the FCC’s Net Neutrality rules they are taking on, but the terms of the consent decree that allowed them to buy NBC Universal just last year. And as some others noted at the time, it’s actually in there rather explicitly.  [Read more →]

As they have been saying they would, EdgeCast Networks (news) [a subsidiary of Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings)] yesterday announced that its OpenCDN federation platform is now in operation, exchanging production traffic between independent CDN operators.  [Read more →]

Cogent Communications (NASDAQ:CCOI, news, filings) took a rather public hit back in January when filesharing giant MegaUpload was shut down by an international law enforcement action, but the company was undaunted enough to take the opportunity to declare a quarterly dividend of $0.10 for its shareholders as part of its report today.  Here’s a quick summary of their results for the first quarter. [Read more →]

The most complicated earnings report among competitive telecoms always comes from Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings), and this one is no different.  Actually, I take that back, it is different this time.  Even as wholesale revenues flagged a bit, enterprise revenues surged mightily to more than compensate – something I’ve never seen from them before.  Here are the numbers in the context of last quarter – the only other comparable one we have since the GLBC deal closed: [Read more →]

cbey has been transforming itself away from its T1 origins for a while now, but today they announced a major new initiative to reach their customers via fiber alternatives. They hope to light 1,000 buildings and bring Metro Ethernet to 50% of their cstomer base by the end of next year. Two companies that feature here regularly will be providing much of the dark fiber to get there: Zayo and FiberLight.  [Read more →]

A few more quick items from the colocation segment already this week that are worth a look: [Read more →]

Time for a quick look at a few stories from the metro and regional fiber space over the past few days from Fibertech, Zayo, Syringa, and Lumos: [Read more →]

ArsTechnica has a detailed piece out asking this question about the future of bandwidth, but really it’s the wrong question. Of course bottlenecks *can* be averted, the real question is: who will make oodles of money on it this time. [Read more →]