Telecom Ramblings

Interoute (news) said today that it has partnered up with Turkcell Superonline to add a second route into the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul. They first arrived in the city almost exactly two years ago as part of their eastward push.  [Read more →]

A few interesting items already this week in colocation: [Read more →]

Internap Network Services (NASDAQ:INAP, news, filings) seems to be making a bid to further expand its customer focus. The colocation and transit specialist has historically been most visible serving the niche of smaller web-centric enterprises for whom connectivity is everything. Today they are highlighting the addition of two more traditional retailers to their customer rolls. [Read more →]

Yesterday’s announcement of the intended purchase of abvt by Zayo Group (news, filings) included a “go-shop” provision under which AboveNet has 30 days to seek a higher offer. The followup question therefore is who might make a bid? There are several strategic buyers who have the means and the motive to go after these assets, but for each [Read more →]

Ok the initial surprise of the Zayo/AboveNet announcement has worn off, so here are a few additional thoughts on the implications of the deal. [Read more →]

Well, they managed to keep this one secret from me.  In a blockbuster announcement this morning, privately held metro fiber operator Zayo Group (news, filings) is buying its larger publicly held neighbor, abvt.  The purchase price will be approximately $2.2B, or $84 per share.  That’s a 13% premium above AboveNet’s closing price on Friday. [Read more →]

According to a Reuters report this morning, the submarine cable unit of Reliance Communications has filed for an IPO — but not in the US, but rather in Singapore as was rumored two months ago. This is of course the FLAG group, which is part of Reliance Globalcom. It is not yet clear precisely what parts of Reliance Globalcom will go into the IPO and what parts won’t. [Read more →]

Some quick takes on news items that fell through the cracks during the week: [Read more →]

In a thoroughly unsurprising move, Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) has now formally ended its wholesale partnership with LightSquared. While LightSquared remains publicly committed to finding a way to use its spectrum, the FCC’s decision to revoke the conditional approval they had granted a year earlier has left them without many options. Sprint had given the company extra time, but is now formally giving up on the project and returning some $65M in prepayments they had received but not yet used. [Read more →]

The equipment vendor ADTRAN (NASDAQ:ADTN, news, filings) decided not to keep the bad news to itself, and revised its first quarter revenue guidance. Two months ago, the company had projected revenues to remain roughly flat sequentially, or in the $170M range – which is where analysts had placed their bets too. But the company is now forecasting something more like $130-135, a shortfall of more than 20%.  Ouch. [Read more →]

For several years now, I have been tracking fiber-fed building counts for competitive operators, but for a couple years now I have been missing a recent datapoint for one of the largest metro fiber footprints out there, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings). The Global Crossing merger only muddied the waters further, because I never had any datapoints for them and Level 3 had to reconcile the two footprints first. They have now done so, and given me the new data point I have been seeking – a bigger one than I had expected. [Read more →]

TGIF everyone.  Here’s a quick look at some interesting news from the international markets this week: [Read more →]

After a decade or so of endless deliberations that only the FCC can match, the Canadian government has finally gone and done it. They have now announced the lifting of foreign investment limits on telecommunications firms, or at least the smaller ones with less than [Read more →]

M&A rumors aside, cw is still on the move throughout its footprint. [Read more →]

According to multiple sources, metro fiber builder and operator FiberLight is reining in spending. A round of layoffs hit late last week (ugh), focused on sales and marketing. FiberLight had been one of the most aggressive builders around for some time, and has recently announced a major buildout in West Texas. That effort continues, but for about a year now the company has been quieter than normal and has obviously been undergoing an internal transition of some kind. [Read more →]

Fresh off its rebranding, Inteliquent (NASDAQ:IQNT, news, filings) closed out 2011 with a nice revenue push but higher spending as it prepared its new hosted UC product line.  Here’s a quick table of their Q4 results and 2012 projections in context. [Read more →]

Optimum Lightpath, the metro fiber arm of Cablevision (NYSE:CVC, news, filings), expanded its product set yesterday to include dedicated managed bandwidth. The new Private Fiber Service is aimed at the growing segment of the industry with a big bandwidth appetite that justifies owning dark fiber but no interest in operating such an infrastructure. [Read more →]

For Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings), the balance sheet work never ends, although it has been getting easier. Yesterday the company took another step toward erasing some very expensive money from the books. They have signed an agreement with major shareholder Southeast Asset Management to exchange $100M in senior converts for 5.4M shares of stock. [Read more →]

Several interesting bits of news from the data center front today worth a quick take: [Read more →]

South America is the home of this year’s submarine cable protagonists, without any doubt.  Today we learned of yet another giant cable aimed at bringing big bandwidth to the growing Latin American marketplace.  SeaBorn Networks is planning a brand new cable system connecting Miami directly to the commercial center of Sao Paolo, with a branch to Fortaleza where so many other cables also land of course.   [Read more →]

UK regulators gave Vodafone Group (NYSE:VOD, news, filings) more time to decide whether to bid for Cable & Wireless Worldwide yesterday, pushing back its deadline until March 29. That’s the same day Tata is due to make its own decision on a bid, and thus we are set up for a bit of a showdown. [Read more →]

One last look at some post-Q4 numbers, specifically the ratio of enterprise value (EV) to adjusted EBITDA across the sector. This ratio isn’t perfect of course, but it has more inherent comparability than other metrics, as it incorporates net debt (via EV) and alongside the capex/revenue plot gives a decent relative picture of the sector’s various operating models.  This plot incorporates not only data for the end of 2012, but includes a real time estimate as its last data point.  One can clearly see a recovery in valuation in progress, following the sharp drop in Q3. [Read more →]