Telecom Ramblings

Midwestern fiber operator US Signal is taking the 100G plunge.  Leveraging Cisco’s 100G coherent solution, they have completed a successful trial on a link between Chicago and Kalamazoo, Michigan on existing 10G infrastructure with no re-engineering.  The successful trial has emboldened US Signal to enable the technology across [Read more →]

Yesterday Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings) expanded the geographical scope of their SaaS offerings into the Far East, offering their mobile delivery and content management products in Japan and Korea. That includes their [Read more →]

My sympathies to the rank and file over at ftwr, this has been a disastrous week.  Following the news yesterday of a missed interest payment and potential default, the wireless backhaul provider said it has reduced its workforce by 40% and suspended all capital spending in an effort to conserve the cash they have left.  At the end of Q2, the company’s headcount stood at [Read more →]

Indian-based telecommunications giant Tata Communications (news, filings) announced today the upgrade of its TGN-Atlantic cable to 40G. The transatlantic market has only in the past several years worked through the overcapacity that was left over after the bubble. But now that they have finally done so, this upgrade by Tata surely won’t [Read more →]

You knew it couldn’t be good when ftwr filed an NT 10-Q last week, delaying its quarterly report. Today the company not only continued that delay, but also had its chairman and two directors resign from the board as the company acknowledged that it elected to not make a $1.3M interest payment on its 9% converts yesterday.  The debt in question comes due in November of next year, but I guess they’re going to make their stand now. [Read more →]

There has also been a spate of interesting news from the major international carriers lately:

Another new submarine cable went into service in a distant part of the world yesterday. India’s Tata Communications (news, filings) and Oman’s Nawras formally launched the [Read more →]

Here are several interesting items in the metro space lately that are worth a quick look: [Read more →]

Carribean subsea network operator Columbus Networks has been busy upgrading its systems lately. Earlier this month, they added capacity to the ARCOS-1 system, and today they announced a key upgrade to their complementary CFX-1 system.  They have brought in TE Subcom to add 40G service, which will bring the capacity to [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of some news bits over the past few days: [Read more →]

European colocation provider InterXion (NYSE:INXN, news) has been making lots of expansion plans for 2012, and added another one today.  They will be building a sixth facility in Amsterdam, featuring 4,000 square meters of space and 10MW of power.  I’m guessing we’ll soon be hearing about a seventh too, as they say this one is already 50% filled.  It will cost [Read more →]

Yesterday TelePacific issued a release highlighting their headcount growth this year, saying that growth in demand has led to what will be an additional 200 employees by the end of the year for the western CLEC.  That seems to be in addition to the company’s acquisitions of OCiX and Tel West, though since TelePacific is private we don’t have much independent data to work with.  However, it got me thinking – just where are the jobs in the sector these days?  Headcount is a fairly widely reported metric, why not collect it and see what we can do with it?   [Read more →]

Continuing its integration of the Latin American assets of Global Crossing, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) today announced capacity upgrades as well as additional service deployments in Mexico.  That means waves, private line, IP transit, Ethernet WAN, IP VPN, and Ethernet local access – the core of [Read more →]

One of the more ambitious terrestrial fiber projects in Africa is starting to go online.  Liquid Telecom says that the first phase of its buildout in Zambia has now been lit, connecting the capital Lusaka with the Copperbelt.  Phase 2 will bring the rest of the route on line, connecting Chirundu on the Zimbabwean border with Chiliabombwe on the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  A map or two are definitely in order here, found over on TechZim: [Read more →]

A few weeks ago, there was speculation that abvt might be shifting toward a buyer’s stance in the M&A arena and I gave some thought to a few possibilities.  But there is one other candidate that I didn’t even look at, but which on second thought may make the most sense of all:  Cogent Communications (NASDAQ:CCOI, news, filings).  No, I’m not kidding – think about it: [Read more →]

TGIF, and Happy Veterans Day for those in the US. Here’s a quick look at other news this week that slipped past my nets the first time around: [Read more →]

European independent metro fiber operator euNetworks (news) reported substantially higher revenues and adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2011, boosted by the company’s inorganic efforts over the summer.  The acquisition of LambdaNet and TeraGate on top of organic growth in the company’s network sales has more than doubled their revenues.  Here’s a quick table of the company’s results in context: [Read more →]

Mitsubishi Electric says that it has signed a contract to upgrade the Asia America Gateway to 40G. The job entails upgrading installing submarine line terminal equipment in eight countries, which will take the total design capacity up to 5.2Tbps. One would think it might take longer to chew through the capacity of a new state of the art cable, but [Read more →]

With their acquisition of 360networks waiting in the wings, Zayo filed their fiscal first quarter earnings today.  They added another 740 route miles and 149 buildings to their network during the quarter.  As usual, most of those buildings were towers, which is still one of the fastest rates around although it has been slowing a bit in the last two quarters as some of their [Read more →]

As if the US wireless market didn’t have enough oddness to go on about, it’s about to have another player, this time from the Far East. None other than China Telecom is planning to take the MVNO route into the country. China Telecom is one of the country’s dominant telecommunications companies of course, but it is the smallest of the [Read more →]

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

Remember the cold war, the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union? Each side was amassing and developing more and more powerful nuclear weapons. Not that either side really expected that they would be used as one bomb was enough to destroy humanity. The point was never to [Read more →]

Has it really been 11 years since an undersea cable was built within Europe?  That’s what they’re saying as a new effort raised money today for one between England and Ireland, though perhaps that depends on whether Hibernia Atlantic’s Project Kelvin extension counts.   But regardless, Sea Fibre Networks will hook up landing sites in Dublin and Anglesey, which lies just 131km due east on the Welsh shore.  From there it will connect overland to London and onward from there.  Here’s a snapshot of their map: [Read more →]

Zayo is expanding organically innto Birmingham Alabama, according to a press release today. They will be adding 12 miles of fiber that will be the start of a metro presence in the central business district and out into Homewood and Lakeshore. The expansion should be in place by [Read more →]

It’s easy to get lost during earnings season in who missed what by a penny per share or whatever.  When you step back and take a look at a few competitive fiber operators results side by side, there is a common trend that has been very obvious this year.  Packet-based data products and services have been the source of nearly all the growth, and nothing else is even close.   [Read more →]