Telecom Ramblings

Global network operator Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) said today that it is playing an important role in California’s $66.6M Central Valley Next Generation Broadband Infrastructure Project. The buildout, which is partly funded by $46.6M in stimulus funds, is creating 1,300 miles of fiber infrastructure throughout 18 counties in the Central Valley – a.k.a the place they grow everything. [Read more →]

There’s another company out there aiming to partner with network operators on CDN technology. VidScale (news), which until now has had mostly Asian customers, has now moved into the US cable MSO market with a win at Avail-TVN today.  Avail-TVN will leverage the company’s MedaWarp software to integrate both transparent caching and commercial CDN services into their [Read more →]

The Middle East has itself a new cable system today, as TE Subcom and Gulf Bridge International (news) have formally announced the completion of work on the cable system, saying that the whole system will be ‘Ready for Service’ [Read more →]

Following the purchase of PAETEC by Windstream (NYSE:WIN, news, filings) which closed earlier this month, there was obviously going to be some musical chair activity amongst the combined pool of executives. At least two from PAETEC’s leadership have shown up in the past few days in new positions before the Christmas holidays start. Arunas Chesonis has resurfaced in a completely different industry, while Clint Heiden is back in the fiber business. [Read more →]

After a slow few months, the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board is seeing some holiday activity.  We have another job posting, this time from Sirius Telecom – a provider of hosted softswitch partition services.  They are looking for [Read more →]

Apparently the holiday season is treating magicJack VocalTec (NASDAQ:CALL, news, filings) very well.  The company said today that it has sold over 365,000 of its magicJack devices in the past 30 days, and is now expecting $55-60M in sales for the fourth quarter.  By next month, they expect to have [Read more →]

After last year’s orgy of private equity-driven metro fiber consolidation,  2011 has been quite a different story. Public companies did most of the heavy M&A lifting this year, with two [Read more →]

Here’s a quick look at some other interesting news by network operators recently, with items from Transtelco, Telx, Level 3, and Masergy: [Read more →]

TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) raked in yet another of its trademark multi-site, multi-year enterprise contracts yesterday over in the healthcare vertical. Clinica Sierra Vista will be using the company’s Business Ethernet and converged services to connect 46 [Read more →]

Emerson Network Power has a fascinating graphic out as part of their State of the Data Center 2011 report. The most intriguing number on it is the number of data centers in the world, which Emerson pegs at 509,147 covering over 285 million square feet of space. Half a million data centers — that’s a lot of on-net buildings to get to.   [Read more →]

So earlier this week, rumors emerged that Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) was considering buying Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX, news, filings). Well, actually the source was a serial Netflix-buyout speculator who said that the company might consider it, but you know how these things snowball in low news periods. [Read more →]

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

I spent much of last week sorting out a network and ADSL connection in a small rural Buddhist hilltop monastery in the Northeast of England. Ratanagiri Monaster is located in Harnham, a small hilltop community near Belsay, near Newcastle. This should have been an easy, straightforward job, but [Read more →]

Here are a few items of interest over the past few days the metro/CLEC world: [Read more →]

Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) has been the main early adopter of 100G technology in US terrestrial deployments so far, and today they took another step along that path. The telecommunications giant says it will be upgrading its IP backbone in major markets across the country by deploying the CRS-3 from Cisco closer to the edge. [Read more →]

Seems like Phoenix-based IO’s datacenter module business is accelerating into the holiday season, as they have two more announcements out already this week.  Yesterday, ISSQUARED [Read more →]

Telecommunications giant AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) has had enough for the moment, they’ve asked the referee for a one month timeout. The referee of course is the Judge Huvelle, who is overseeing the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit opposing their propowed purchase of T-Mobile USA. She has granted a joint motion giving AT&T one month to decide just what to do next. [Read more →]

Well, it didn’t take too long for Integra to make up its mind about who will lead the company after Tom Casey left for Tronox two months ago. Kevin O’Hara, who has been serving as executive chairman since then has now been formally named Chief Executive Officer.  [Read more →]

WiMAX and now LTE upstart clwr said this morning that its underwriters have exercised their option to purchase those additional 26.25M shares as part of the company’s public offering. That means another $52.5M in cash for the company’s LTE buildout, making the total cash infusion just over [Read more →]

In merger news this morning, ADTRAN (NASDAQ:ADTN, news, filings) has agreed to acquire the broadband access business unit of Nokia Siemens Networks including the associated professional services, network managemeng solutions, and of course the underlying intellectual property.  ADTRAN has a substantial position in the broadband access equipment market already, and this deal will give them some additional heft – especially via [Read more →]

When AT&T withdrew it’s merger application from the FCC, they hoped to simplify their task by temporarily eliminating one battle front so they could focus on the other. They moved very quickly over the long Thanksgiving weekend while the bureaucrats were out of the off so as to stop the FCC from actually taking the action they had been about to put for a vote.  But in that haste for a tactical triumph, they may have forgotten to think about the strategic implementations of pulling their FCC papers. [Read more →]

Two more job postings have popped up on the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board, this time from sidera.  After a brisk summer of job postings, we haven’t seen too many new listings over the past month or two.  I suppose that’s not so surprising given the consolidation related layoffs going on plus that event over at XO in October – more feet are definitely on the street. [Read more →]

TGIF, two weekends to go before Christmas. Here’s a quick rundown of news from the industry that I didn’t get to earlier: [Read more →]

Yesterday a reader left a comment which asked whether the lack of M&A activity by the likes of AboveNet, Cogent, and tw telecom risks being passed by more aggressive acquirers, specifically Level 3 and Zayo. I think that the answer to this question is not so straightforward. It is both human and corporate nature to [Read more →]