Telecom Ramblings

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

Broadband over powerline is dead. Again.

At least it is in the US, where BPL service provider International Broadband Electric Communications (IBEC) – backed by IBM – announced this week it was shutting [Read more →]

Yesterday I asked readers the annual January question of which US network operators were most likely to get bought this year, and while the poll will remain open for a few days yet let’s take a look at the trends thus far. [Read more →]

Another new job openings was posted to the  Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board this week, the first of 2012.  I have plans to change the jobs board over from the current limited, hosted system to something a bit more extensive, but that will be for next year.  Today’s job posting is another from sidera. [Read more →]

The start of the year has been a bit murky when it comes to telecommunications equipment vendors, with two pre-announcements from Acme Packet and Juniper citing spending delays by North American carriers. But there are bright spots too of course, here are a few nice contracts announced this week: [Read more →]

Ok, one last January poll – the inverse of last week’s poll, which I also asked last year.  Which of the same list of service providers is most likely to be a target of M&A in 2012?  Last year we only got one out of the top 10 – Global Crossing, which came in second and in fact did get bought by Level 3.  PAETEC wasn’t seen as a likely target last January, gaining just 3% of votes.  Consolidation seems likely to continue this year, but who will be the targets? [Read more →]

While there hasn’t been a PR on the subject yet, a helpful reader came across this little item detailing a 10 year DISA/DITCO contract worth up to $410.8M apparently won by Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) over the holidays: [Read more →]

Let’s take a quick look at some news on the international front: [Read more →]

Northeastern regional and metro fiber operator Lightower Fiber Networks (news) has deployed 100G gear and is offering the resulting wavelengths to customers across its footprint. That’s the first New England intercity deployment of 100G I have seen, or at least I assume the primary focus is the NYC-Boston route from various endpoints in each city.  [Read more →]

Well, that didn’t take long. Apparently, there’s already a rumor out there that two companies have bid for T-MobileUSA in the wake of AT&T’s decision to drop its attempt to buy the company. SNL Kagan quotes a source claiming that both DISH and Google have already submitted offers, and Gary Kim has chimed in with his thoughts.  [Read more →]

There were several interesting items from the datacenter space yesterday worth a quick look: [Read more →]

This morning Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) said it was looking to raise $350M in a private offering of senior notes due 2020.  By the end of the day though, the offering seems to have grown just a bit as a Bloomberg note now says they are raising a refinancing war chess of $900M at 8.625% — an extra mere $550M. Apparently while the stock market has not been treating the company well lately, the debt markets are quite happy with them. [Read more →]

Telehouse added another big piece to its growing data center footprint yesterday, entering the Frankfurt market in force.  The subsidiary of Japanese giant KDDI has purchased Databurg GmbH to gain its first foothold in the key German financial center and data center market.  [Read more →]

Pan-European network operator Colt Group (LON:COLT, news) is bolstering its network assets in the British Isles, according to an announcement this morning. They are buying fiber capacity on the new CeltixConnect cable launched by Sea Fibre Networks (news) just last month.  [Read more →]

Router giant Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) offered up a preannouncement yesterday afternoon, lowering guidance for the fourth quarter.  That’s already the second vendor to say that carriers didn’t break open their wallets for Christmas. Last week, Acme Packet kicked off the New Year with similar news. [Read more →]

The content world is spawning all sorts of video and music providers globally these days, so many that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with. Today Level 3 picked up a deal with iMusti, which provides Indian content worldwide – think Bollywood.  Well, their site currently looks like mostly music rather than video, but it looks like they have plans to ramp up the bits. [Read more →]

In its quest to put a real dent in Akamai’s dominance of the CDN space, EdgeCast Networks (news) [a subsidiary of Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings)] has spent much of its effort in the past two years figuring out how best to work with carriers.  Today those efforts culminated in the formal launch of their licensed CDN program and the transfer of control  to a tier 1 US carrier of a fully functional CDN they built based on it. [Read more →]

In December Optimum Lightpath crossed a substantial milestone, connecting its 5,000th building in the New York City metro area – the most I know of by any non-incumbent provider in a single market. The company, which is the independently run metro fiber arm of Cablevision, has been very actively building out its network and has been steadily taking share in the mid-market from the incumbents. With us today is Optimum Lightpath’s President, Dave Pistacchio, to offer his viewpoint on the where the company is now and where it is headed. [Read more →]

A quick look at a few items from the big guys before you leave for the weekend: [Read more →]

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

Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Intel have devised a technique to speed up data traffic between servers inside a data center by bouncing it off the ceiling – literally. [Read more →]

No not the university, it’s actually about metro fiber getting hotter across the Atlantic. Yesterday, French-based competitive network operator Neo Telecoms announced the acquisition of the MIT group. The MIT Group operates in the Languedoc Roussilon region of France, which is basically the half of the country’s Mediterranean coast that is closer to Spain.  Their main focus was on the metro area of Montpellier.  Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are three of them: [Read more →]

On Tuesday, I ran this poll asking readers to choose the companies most likely to be aggressive in M&A this year.  I’ll leave the poll open for a while yet, but the results are clear enough already to discuss a bit.  Zayo, tw telecom, Level 3, Earthlink, and Windstream make up the top 5, in that order. My own votes were only partially overlapping with that list. [Read more →]

The network business swiftly returned to work this week, so here is a quick look at several interesting items already out there this week: [Read more →]

According to Business Insider, Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) has in fact killed off the Umi, the consumer-targeted telepresence offering they unveiled a year and a quarter ago.  At least, they aren’t selling any more of them.  It was inevitable – $600 up front and $24.99/month to make video calls from your living room couch in 1080p, hope you shaved first. [Read more →]