Telecom Ramblings

Later this year, a new player will formally emerge onto the bandwidth scene in the Middle East.  Gulf Bridge International (GBI), the region’s first privately owned and operated carrier neutral submarine cable will go into service, adding substantially to the diversity and overall connectedness of the Persian Gulf and surrounding areas.  With us today is the co-founder and CEO of GBI, Ahmed Mekky: [Read more →]

Yesterday Akamai offered up its State of the Internet report for Q2, and seeing as there’s not much going on today unless you enjoy the ‘pile on Netflix’ mediapalooza, let’s take a look at a few tidbits: [Read more →]

TeliaSonera AB (ETR:TLS, news, filings) International Carrier said this morning that it has won an expanded agreement for IP transit and colocation throughout the US and Europe with CDNetworks. The Korean-based CDN and managed services company entered the US and Europe in force via its acquisition of Panther Express two years ago, and remains one of the largest CDNs internationally. [Read more →]

Fibertech, which operates metro networks across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest, has picked gear from Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) to power a mobile backhaul network. They are building out to 250 cell towers across the state of Connecticut for [Read more →]

Today Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) introduced a new Marketplace service designed to help its thousands of customers do business amongst themselves. That means not just interconnection, but any of the many data and infrastructure services eac [Read more →]

The other news over the weekend came from Google’s David Drummond, who suggested that the internet giant is ‘looking very closely’ at another fiber project, this time in Europe.  Such a buildout would parallel their ongoing FTTH project in Kansas City, Kansas, which is of course still [Read more →]

There’s a Reuters interview out over the weekend in which Bill LaParch, CEO of AboveNet, sounds eager to make his company’s first M&A move. Most of that is via the word ‘keen’ in the title rather than actual quotes, but still.  He also suggested $600M in debt as a level that AboveNet could support to make a deal happen.  I have long thought that AboveNet made a better buyer than seller in the M&A arena, despite the rumors over the summer.  Let’s take a quick survey of what they might want to buy: [Read more →]

Finally, last week’s rumor balloon has finally been shot down.  Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, said earlier today:  “We’re not buying Akamai; we don’t have any plans to do that.”  So that settles that, right?  Until next quarter perhaps – or maybe just until the earnings call on this coming Wednesday.  But either way, what seems certain is that Akamai’s future seems to be in flux, though nobody’s quite sure in what direction.  That’s the subject of today’s Friday poll: [Read more →]

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

Mobile operators in the US, after dragging their feet for years and resisting pressure from the FCC for 18 months, have finally agreed to send customers alerts when they near their limits on voice, SMS and data usage. [Read more →]

As one might have anticipated following Icahn’s final takeover and the appointment of CFO Laura Thomas as interim CEO, the company is now cutting expenses. That means downsizing, headcount reduction, layoffs, whatever you want to call it.  It is not yet clear how extensive the event is, nor which departments have been most affected.  But since the company is fully private now, I doubt they will be telling us anything officially.   [Read more →]

Everyone’s favorite telecommunications giant reported earnings today. Revenues checked in a $31.48B, just slightly below analyst expectations. Earnings per share of $0.61 was right on the button though. Total wireless customers were up 2.1M, slower than when they had exclusive iPhone rights but apparently losing those still hasn’t led to utter disaster.  The iPhone 4S will likely make for an interesting Q4. [Read more →]

Several interesting news items recently on the metro side: [Read more →]

A few days ago when I talked about the possiblity of Sprint selling off its wireline division to pay for its LTE buildout, I focused on only two potential suitors: Level 3 and CenturyLink. But a regular commenter brought up a third bidder that I neglected to mention but which may be just as likely: TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings). [Read more →]

The folks at Zayo and 360Networks have put together a fiber map reflecting the combined assets of the two companies when they close their deal in a few months.  Of course, longtime readers know that maps are my weakness!  There are two ways to look at this map though.  The fit is very complementary, and will make Zayo a truly transcontinental provider for the first time with most of its metro assets connected together.  On the other hand, it also makes clear what pieces are still missing from the puzzle.  Here’s the map (click to enlarge, [Read more →]

It is fitting that along with Telegeography’s recent report detailing lower vacancy rates, we have a spate of colocation-related infrastructure expansions hitting the news.  Here are a few more today: [Read more →]

Chinese equipment maker Huawei and Russian incumbent RosTelecom have teamed up for yet another 100G test. The trial featured coherent 100G and ePDM-QPSK over a 1,033km stretch of Rostelecom’s live network between Moscow and Samara. They also tested [Read more →]

Telecommunications equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) says it has a received a binding offer for its Genesys business.  A company owned by the Permira funds will be paying $1.5B in cash for the privilege of owning the customer service solutions business. The deal will see $500M or so in annual revenue and 1,800 employees transition off Alcatel-Lucent’s books, once it gets past [Read more →]

Both Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) and Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) reported their third quarter 2011 earnings after the market closed today.  The equipment makers tend to be quite sensitive to economic trends, and if these two are any indication then the third quarter was pretty smooth but everyone is feeling a bit cautious going into Q4.  Here is a quick look at each company’s results: [Read more →]

Following a series of quiet acquisitions, a new colocation and interconnection company has formally opened its doors. Cologix, headed by Level 3 alumni Grant van Rooyan, starts off in life with 9 Meet-Me facilities in the markets of Dallas, Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, as well as [Read more →]

European fiber operator euNetworks (news) completed a rights issue today in which it raised €72M. More than half of that money goes toward repaying shareholder loans in connection with the LambdaNet and TeraGate acquisitions, but it does leave them with something of a war chest for further M&A as well as to finance the capex required for their growth. [Read more →]

The early part of this week has seen more forward progress from Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings), which has been blanketing the newswires since the closing of the Global Crossing deal. [Read more →]

According to an article put out today by the industry research group TeleGeography, the vacancy rates for colocation in major markets fell markedly in the past year. Vacancy has fallen from 30% in September of 2010 down to 16% in Washington DC in September of this year for instance.  Here’s their full graphic: [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of several interesting datacenter and colo items already out this week: [Read more →]