Telecom Ramblings

Carribean subsea network operator Columbus Networks has been busy upgrading its systems lately. Earlier this month, they added capacity to the ARCOS-1 system, and today they announced a key upgrade to their complementary CFX-1 system.  They have brought in TE Subcom to add 40G service, which will bring the capacity to [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of some news bits over the past few days: [Read more →]

European colocation provider InterXion (NYSE:INXN, news) has been making lots of expansion plans for 2012, and added another one today.  They will be building a sixth facility in Amsterdam, featuring 4,000 square meters of space and 10MW of power.  I’m guessing we’ll soon be hearing about a seventh too, as they say this one is already 50% filled.  It will cost [Read more →]

Yesterday TelePacific issued a release highlighting their headcount growth this year, saying that growth in demand has led to what will be an additional 200 employees by the end of the year for the western CLEC.  That seems to be in addition to the company’s acquisitions of OCiX and Tel West, though since TelePacific is private we don’t have much independent data to work with.  However, it got me thinking – just where are the jobs in the sector these days?  Headcount is a fairly widely reported metric, why not collect it and see what we can do with it?   [Read more →]

Continuing its integration of the Latin American assets of Global Crossing, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) today announced capacity upgrades as well as additional service deployments in Mexico.  That means waves, private line, IP transit, Ethernet WAN, IP VPN, and Ethernet local access – the core of [Read more →]

One of the more ambitious terrestrial fiber projects in Africa is starting to go online.  Liquid Telecom says that the first phase of its buildout in Zambia has now been lit, connecting the capital Lusaka with the Copperbelt.  Phase 2 will bring the rest of the route on line, connecting Chirundu on the Zimbabwean border with Chiliabombwe on the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  A map or two are definitely in order here, found over on TechZim: [Read more →]

A few weeks ago, there was speculation that abvt might be shifting toward a buyer’s stance in the M&A arena and I gave some thought to a few possibilities.  But there is one other candidate that I didn’t even look at, but which on second thought may make the most sense of all:  Cogent Communications (NASDAQ:CCOI, news, filings).  No, I’m not kidding – think about it: [Read more →]

TGIF, and Happy Veterans Day for those in the US. Here’s a quick look at other news this week that slipped past my nets the first time around: [Read more →]

European independent metro fiber operator euNetworks (news) reported substantially higher revenues and adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2011, boosted by the company’s inorganic efforts over the summer.  The acquisition of LambdaNet and TeraGate on top of organic growth in the company’s network sales has more than doubled their revenues.  Here’s a quick table of the company’s results in context: [Read more →]

Mitsubishi Electric says that it has signed a contract to upgrade the Asia America Gateway to 40G. The job entails upgrading installing submarine line terminal equipment in eight countries, which will take the total design capacity up to 5.2Tbps. One would think it might take longer to chew through the capacity of a new state of the art cable, but [Read more →]

With their acquisition of 360networks waiting in the wings, Zayo filed their fiscal first quarter earnings today.  They added another 740 route miles and 149 buildings to their network during the quarter.  As usual, most of those buildings were towers, which is still one of the fastest rates around although it has been slowing a bit in the last two quarters as some of their [Read more →]

As if the US wireless market didn’t have enough oddness to go on about, it’s about to have another player, this time from the Far East. None other than China Telecom is planning to take the MVNO route into the country. China Telecom is one of the country’s dominant telecommunications companies of course, but it is the smallest of the [Read more →]

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

Remember the cold war, the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union? Each side was amassing and developing more and more powerful nuclear weapons. Not that either side really expected that they would be used as one bomb was enough to destroy humanity. The point was never to [Read more →]

Has it really been 11 years since an undersea cable was built within Europe?  That’s what they’re saying as a new effort raised money today for one between England and Ireland, though perhaps that depends on whether Hibernia Atlantic’s Project Kelvin extension counts.   But regardless, Sea Fibre Networks will hook up landing sites in Dublin and Anglesey, which lies just 131km due east on the Welsh shore.  From there it will connect overland to London and onward from there.  Here’s a snapshot of their map: [Read more →]

Zayo is expanding organically innto Birmingham Alabama, according to a press release today. They will be adding 12 miles of fiber that will be the start of a metro presence in the central business district and out into Homewood and Lakeshore. The expansion should be in place by [Read more →]

It’s easy to get lost during earnings season in who missed what by a penny per share or whatever.  When you step back and take a look at a few competitive fiber operators results side by side, there is a common trend that has been very obvious this year.  Packet-based data products and services have been the source of nearly all the growth, and nothing else is even close.   [Read more →]

The economy may be sluggish, but if you’re in the data center business you probably wonder what all the hubbub is. Here’s another quick rundown of interesting items lately: [Read more →]

Data Foundry’s giant, brand new Texas 1 data center picked up a nice customer win today. Golden Frog will be using their high density colo space in Texas 1 to house a new cloud-based web service entitled ‘Dump Truck’, a personal online storage service for keeping all the media files and such we seem to accumulate these days. It’s not available publicly just yet, but will feature [Read more →]

tndm reported its Q3 earnings this morning, posting revenues slightly above expectations as their per minute voice pricing held steady and pricing pressure in the IP transit stabilized somewhat.  Earnings per share were below expectations, but mainly due to several one time events including a currency loss on an intercompany loan (i.e. Euros to Tinet I presume) else they would have been roughly in line.  Here’s a quick summary of the company’s numbers in context: [Read more →]

We have seen 100G trials all over the world over the past quarter or two, but today saw the first Transatlantic implementation of 100G. Hibernia Atlantic and Huawei successfully demonstrated coherent 100G on the 5,570km cable between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Southport, England. And beyond the successful demonstration, the two intend to move forward on commercial deployment next year. [Read more →]

Two interesting items over the last week or so from hybrid satellite/terrestrial operator Segovia, both in the federal [Read more →]

Bandwidth needs down in the Carribean have been growing steadily, and regional cable operator Columbus Networks has now upgraded the ARCOS-1 cable system.  Columbus has deployed additional Xtera gear to upgrade capacity on the repeatered segments, whereas they had already done so in 2008 for the unrepeatered segments. From the map, I’d guess the repeatered segments would be between [Read more →]

There was no let up in the torrid pace at which TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) has been adding buildings to its network during the third quarter.  According to the company’s  Q3 earnings report today, they added another 561  through September 30, meaning the past twelve months have seen 2,179 buildings brought on-net.  Overall, the company’s financial results went by like clockwork as usual.  Here’s a quick table: [Read more →]