Telecom Ramblings

Not the employment kind of jobs – though those are getting scarce too, but the Steve kind of Jobs.  That’s the big news, the man who built Apple with his bare hands and brute force of will *twice* has stepped down as CEO of the company.  He did not give many details, but few doubt it is anything other than the health reasons that have seen him drop out of sight for several periods of time.  It’s the end of an era for many sectors, and because of the impact of the iPhone and iPad, telecommunications is one of them. [Read more →]

zColo, the colo and interconnection division Zayo Group (news, filings), is entering the Pittsburgh market – marking their sixth territorial expansion of the year.  They will be offering services out of a new Meet-Me-Room located within the carrier hotel at 2500 Allegheny Center Mall.  The expansion brings zColo’s footprint to more [Read more →]

According to reports, Reliance Globalcom has upgraded its FNAL cable via 40G coherent technology from Ciena.  That’s the North Asia Loop, connecting Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan of course.  The upgrade also brings 10G LAN PHY interfaces to their portfolio.  Reliance Globalcom has been kind of quiet this year, following last year’s rumors of [Read more →]

Yesterday, the east coast got a small taste of an event it usually associates with the other side of the continent.  An earthquake of magnitude 5.8 struck the eastern seaboard, with an epicenter in the state of Virginia to the northwest of Richmond.  That puts it close enough to the major datacenter market in the northern part of the state to have rattled a few racks and cabinets, not to mention cell towers.  While it wasn’t a very big quake next to the monsters that have [Read more →]

I’ll be traveling today, so if I miss any big news while in transit – I will get to it on the flip side.  In the meantime, here’s a roundup of a few interesting items lately: [Read more →]

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

First it was unrest in the Middle East, then riots in the UK, now it’s reaching that bastion of free speech and human rights, the USA. I am referring here to the relatively new concept of shutting down telecommunications service at the whim of government on the slightest hint of political or social unrest. [Read more →]

The once sleepy world of Kiwi bandwidth has been a bit of a soap opera lately, as the new Pacific Fibre project plans to upset the balance of connectivity.  Yesterday, Vodafone’s New Zealand subsidiary jumped ship at Southern Cross and confirmed plans to move all its international capacity to the new cable by 2014.  Vodafone’s NZ bandwidth needs are estimated to be [Read more →]

Two small M&A deals this morning. [Read more →]

FiberLight (news) won a key contract in the suburbs north of Atlanta on Friday.  The fiber builder and operator is providing a new dark fiber network for the City of Roswell, connecting all municipal buildings including park facilities, fire stations, police station, water management systems, and transportation.  FiberLight’s Atlanta metro network has long had a presence up through Roswell to [Read more →]

On Tuesday, striking Verizon workers will go back on the job, as unions say that they and Verizon have agreed on ‘how to conduct bargaining’.  What that does not mean is that anyone has agreed to a contract or that any of the big issues have been decided at all, just that they’ve agreed on the structure of how to talk about them.  If that sounds less than final, well, it is.

It’s been a great summer on the Ramblings’ Jobs Board, where it’s been a rare week where we didn’t have a half dozen active postings.  This week we have two new ones, posted by the Northwest Open Access Network (Noanet) and by Unite Private Networks.  [Read more →]

If the extent of Integra Telecom’s renewed interest in fiber wasn’t yet obvious, today’s followup to July’s details of their metro buildout progress  should clear things up.  The western CLEC and network operator added some 40 buildings to its network in July alone, suggesting the acceleration in their buildout is continuing.  Their rate lately of over a hundred per quarter places them amongst more aggressive fiber builders out there currently. [Read more →]

According to a Bloomberg report this morning, Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) may finally be preparing to get off the fence on its plans for Clearwire.  Apparently they are in talks with Comcast and the other cable MSO minority shareholders of Clearwire about how to fund the beleagured WiMAX phenomenon, and the possibility of a buyout by Sprint is one of the big [Read more →]

XO’s minority shareholders had their day in court, but last night word emerged that the injunction they had been seeking against majority owner Carl Icahn’s intended purchase of the remainder of the company had been denied.  The billionaire’s ACF Industries and XO wasted no time, and at 4:45pm today they closed the deal at $1.40 per share as promised.  XO is now privately held, and has filed its notice of de-listing with the SEC.  So now what? [Read more →]

In the wake of Windstream’s announced intention to buy super-CLEC PAETEC, much of the media coverage focused on their desire or need to bulk up their presence in the enterprise space like everyone else.  But Windstream’s move is more bold than that in some ways, because they are doing something that the top three ILECs have managed to avoid doing for three decades now:  [Read more →]

Here’s a quick look at some news items from the past few days: [Read more →]

This article was authored by John C. Tanner, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

After the spectacle of watching the Egyptian government shut off the country’s Internet and mobile services in a desperate bid to keep anti-government protesters from using social networks to organize themselves, you’d have thought [Read more →]

The recent rumors and speculation about some sort of combination of the CDN assets of LimeLight and Level has perhaps neglected an intermediate possibility.  The two companies could be exploring a federation of some sort that would allow both companies to move in the differing directions each wishes to go. [Read more →]

The strike by the CWA and IBEW against Verizon is showing no signs of letting up, if anything it’s just getting nastier and both sides seem fine with that.  This morning, Verizon threatened to cut off health insurance including dental, vision, and prescription drug benefits by the end of the month if workers don’t return to the job.  Unions are calling the threat a scare tactic, which is kind of like calling the sky blue – we’re not talking subtle here.  But on the other hand, lots out there are probably scratching their heads and thinking ‘Seriously? [Read more →]

The larger content delivery networks dominate the headlines, but there are still some dynamic challengers to keep track of in the sector.  Yesterday, Highwinds (news) introduced a specialized version of its CDN, the Gaming Delivery Network or GDN.  While many say that CDNs have become commoditized, there is no industry more sensitive to the speed of the overall experience than [Read more →]

In what may be its last report if Icahn’s purchase goes through, XO Holdings (news, filings) posted its second quarter numbers yesterday at the last possible moment – as always.  Unless a judge intervenes, majority shareholder Carl Icahn will probably close the deal in just a few weeks and de-list the company.  But before then, here’s a quick tabular summary in the context of the past few quarters: [Read more →]

Lots of bigger news lately, which tends to drown out the interesting smaller stuff: [Read more →]

According to Dan Rayburn today, those rumors swirling around Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings) a few weeks ago have coalesced into serious talks with Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) about somehow combining their CDN efforts.  That could mean anything from an outright purchase of Limelight by Level 3 to a purchase of the Level 3 CDN business by Limelight with Level 3 maintaining an ownership interest.  Here are a few rambling thoughts: [Read more →]