Telecom Ramblings

National CLEC PAETEC (news, filings) said yesterday it has picked up another federal contract. DISA has awarded them a three year contract to supply Fort Drum at the foot of the Adirondacks with fiber and DWDM services.  Fort Drum trains 80,000 troops annually and is the home of [Read more →]

Last week it was the city of Seattle looking to unload a public fiber asset, and now apparently it is the state of Iowa according to an article in the Quad City Times. A special committee authorized by the Governor and the Legislature is putting together a process by which the state would solicit offers for the Iowa Communications Network.  [Read more →]

In the aftermath of the AT&T-Mo deal kerfuffle over the past week and a half, lots of commentary has focused on what alternatives Deutsche Telecom AG (ETR:DTE, news, filings) has if it all falls apart – as seems more likely than ever. Yesterday, one piece has DT looking to buy Sprint for $30B in what has to be one of the more loony possibilities.  But why do we have to make things so complicated?  DT has an obvious way forward. [Read more →]

Back at the start of Q3, competitive network operators were seeing strong valuations following a quarter of good press, M&A activity, and lots and lots of rumors. But in the third quarter and on into the fourth now, the market has turned decidedly ambivalent toward the sector despite continued margin gains and solid results. [Read more →]

According to various reports, AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) is considering the possibility of divesting up to 40% of T-Mobile USA in an effort to salvage its intended acquisition following the FCC’s decision to pile on. It would be an expected yet bold revision to the original deal, but honestly I rather doubt it’s going to work. [Read more →]

The M&A story that has been brewing over the weekend has Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) making a serious bid for Cotendo. Cotendo plays at the high end of the content delivery market, offering dynamic site acceleration, application acceleration, and mobile content acceleration, and has been making rapid inroads all year with several hundred customers already.  The supposed deal has been pegged by various reports at around [Read more →]

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

Paranoia reached new heights with news out that a US government committee has launched a full investigation into the potential security threat of Chinese telecom equipment companies operating in the United States. [Read more →]

The legal team at AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) didn’t get much of a Thanksgiving break. Following the FCC’s bombshell earlier this week moving to oppose the merger, the AT&T and Deutsche Telecom AG (ETR:DTE, news, filings) have formally but temporarily withdrawn their applications to the FCC. AT&T now also says it will take a $4B charge in Q4 to account for the likelihood that the deal won’t happen and they’ll be on the hook for that hefty breakup fee. But both companies say [Read more →]

Who knew that Seattle had 500 route miles of dark fiber lying around? The University of Washington and the city’s mayor Mike McGinn last week announced a partnership aimed at leasing access to this fiber infrastructure to private companies. According to the mayor’s [Read more →]

May your turkeys be juicy, and your pies warm. [Read more →]

Or maybe that’s axes. Nokia-Siemens Networks said today that it will be cutting 28% of its workforce. That’s 17,000 paychecks worldwide that are now highly endangered, although the downsizing will take place over the next 8 quarters.  But 28%?  That’s just brutal. [Read more →]

Both of the independent pan-European network operators Colt and Interoute have been working very hard this year to position themselves for the cloud revolution. Each has [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) finally sold its coal mining business today, meaning we won’t have to distinguish between communications revenues and total revenues anymore – hooray!  Financial terms were not disclosed, which means they probably weren’t material.  Ambre Energy Limited will take on the business, including those pesky [Read more →]

Yep, for a few days anyway the FCC’s temporary motto has been less talk, more action. [Read more →]

There’s another transtatlantic cable system in the works, according to a rather quiet launch announcement over the weekend. The effort is aimed not at connecting a mere two continents, but four, and will feature 100G technology from the start.  I’m still trying to figure out just what they’re aiming for, check out this proposed network map: [Read more →]

Here’s another quick roundup of news in metro and regional networking: [Read more →]

Orange Business Services, the global division of France Telecom (NYSE:FTE, news, filings), offered insight today into their expansion plans in the Asia/Pacific region. It’s part of their not particularly subtly-titled “Conquests 2015” strategy, under which they plan to be generating €1B in annual revenue from emerging markets in 2015.  Here is a quick summary: [Read more →]

AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) and its Latin American cousin America Movil have signed a strategic accord to expand their relationship. The two have been working together for a long time of course, giving both deeper penetration outside their own footprint without having to do all the work itself and allowing each company to focus on those all important wireless assets. [Read more →]

tw telecom says its Board of Directors has authorized an expansion of its share buyback, and not a token one either. The plan allows for up to [Read more →]

This morning, Hibernia Atlantic added Dublin to the short but growing list of transatlantic low latency targets. They announced a direct route route between North America and the Dublin 2 facility of Interxion, where they have opened a PoP. They’ll be using the new PoP and direct connection to target North American corporations with Irish facilities, amongst others of course. [Read more →]

There’s a post over on Seeking Alpha from this weekend provocatively entitled “Level 3 Communications: Is It Time For A Change In Leadership?” that I feel an urge to respond to. Now, one can argue whether Level 3 investors ought to be frustrated enough with the past decade to demand such a change, but it seems to me that actually making such a move at this particular moment would be an odd bit of lunacy. [Read more →]

Following up on my look at relative headcount growth among competitive fiber operators, let’s take a quick look at two metrics one can derive from it along with the other data I have collected over the years for my competitive telecom trends section.  First, here’s a plot of annualized revenue (in thousands of $) versus employee headcount at the end of each quarter, or in some cases year: [Read more →]

NTT Europe, a subsidiary of the Japanese telecommunications giant, said today that it is expanding its IP network into eastern Europe. They have expanded into Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, adding new PoPs in the usual spots: Budapest, Bucharest, and Sofia.  The expansion will let NTT better serve carriers in the region, and give them better access to what is a growing slice of the bandwidth market. [Read more →]