Telecom Ramblings

Metro network operator abvt may be for sale, but that hasn’t slowed down their fiber building ways.  This week the company announce the buildout of its network into two substantial data centers.  In New Jersey, they added the brand new modular i/o facility in Edison, where things have been moving very quickly since it was announced just over two months ago.  And down in Texas, AboveNet has hooked up the Westland Data Center, better known by its more creative nickname – The Bunker.  Located 45 miles north of Houston and 60 feet straight down, the facility is a former [Read more →]

With its fiscal Q2 results today Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) finished off its first full year since its acquisition of Nortel’s MEN division, which doubled the company’s size and gave it a huge to-do list over the last year.  The company says it has achieved all critical milestones now, including the transition to the Ciena back office systems.  From here they hope to continue to optimize business operations and gain operating leverage, which sounds like [Read more →]

As it’s World IPv6 Day, it seems like a good subject for an industry spotlight.  Not long ago I caught up with Teri Francis, NTT America’s executive director of customer solutions for the Global IP Network Business Unit.  NTT runs one of the world’s largest backbones, ranking #4 according to Renesys in 2010 and given trends since is surely #3 by now and will likely be #2 when the LVLT/GLBC deal goes through.   The company has been pushing the transition to IPv6 for a decade now.  With no further ado: [Read more →]

Datacenter and interconnection provider Telx Group (news, filings) is making its move this week on the cloud, or more specifically on how clouds connect with their users, with each other, and with their own distributed components.  That’s a very hot subject right now with both network and datacenter operators, as optimizing and managing such connectivity is not a trivial problem when you try to scale this sort of thing.  [Read more →]

With all its recent restructuring news lately, Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) could use a break.  So what better time for a big new product upgrade?  That’s Cisco’s medicine today, as it unveiled a new ASR 9000 router.  The new gear will deliver 96Tbps and promises up to 70% savings on operating expenses.  Embedded within is the company’s new nV network virtualization technology.   96Tbps is a lot of bandwidth to be needing in a single box, but [Read more →]

Since news broke that abvt has brought in JP Morgan to advise it on a potential sale, speculation has centered on who might buy them and for how much.  A recent note from BWS agrees with my thinking though: that they’re probably only going to sell if offered some serious money.  But I think another dynamic is on the rise as well: that AboveNet is increasingly well positioned to do the buying rather than the selling.   The line between hunter and prey can be [Read more →]

Rumored for months, Apple today unveiled the iCloud, which is designed to serve as the central hub for data and content downloaded from Apple for various devices.  The intent is to replace the PC as the place you go to synchronize everything, which has been annoying for quite a long time IMHO.  The iCloud is free, and updates will supposedly be daily over WiFi in order to not clog [Read more →]

On their corporate blog, Orange Business asks “Are the IT department’s days numbered?”    The idea is that with the rise of cloud computing and a proliferation of IT resources being offered as a service, will corporations even need an IT department?  Well, Orange Business isn’t exactly a neutral observer here, as they do big business in IT and network outsourcing, and their chief competitor is often [Read more →]

As longtime readers know, in addition to map links I keep track of metro route miles and fiber-fed building counts for all companies in the sector for whom I can find such data, which is most of the competitive providers but thus far not the ILECs and the cable MSOs (with one or two exceptions).  I last updated my list over the Christmas break, and thus it is time to do it again.  Thus if you know of fiber out there that ought to be on my list but isn’t, or of inaccuracies that could be corrected – please [Read more →]

Hmmm, I think they’re serious about this cost cutting thing.  clwr has signed with Telech to outsource its customer support.  Some 700 Clearwire employees will immediately switch companies, although Clearwire is keeping about 180 of them for the back office.  Most of the company’s 6M+ subscribers are wholesale through Sprint, and therefore won’t notice of course.  This follows Clearwire’s move a couple of weeks ago to outsource its network operations to Ericsson, which similarly moved [Read more →]

TGIF.  A few more fiber-network-related items this week to catch up on:

In Texas, regional and metro fiber operator Alpheus Communications expanded its Metrolocity offering, adding Ethernet peering capabilities.  They have 31 customers amongst the competitive wireless and wireline operators in the state, and the new service is available immediately.  Alpheus is one of the only fiber assets that was [Read more →]

There are few companies out there giving off as many contradictory signals as wholesale wireless carrier-to-be LightSquared.  This week, we had no less than three news items that just left me generally puzzled.  First there was the news that the company was talking with AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) about leasing 4G network capacity.  The fact that it was one 4G network that doesn’t yet exist talking to another 4G network that also doesn’t exist about was dissonant enough, but [Read more →]

Making friends is a valuable skill, and northeastern fiber operator sidera has been working overtime lately to get it right.  Last week they teamed up with the UK’s Exponential-e, and this week it was the turn of Colt Group (LON:COLT, news) and Spread Networks (news). [Read more →]

Back in February, Milan-centric metro fiber company Metroweb was said to be up for sale, and that Telecom Italia was the frontrunner.  Well the wind must have shifted since then, because Bloomberg is reporting that infrastructure fund F2i and Intesa Sanpaolo’s IMI Investimenti unit have won the auction for some €436M, or $628M.  Given the impressive price tag, they must have been doing rather well – this was obviously not [Read more →]

As you may have noticed by now, a lot of fiber appears to be on the market, with AboveNet, Sidera, Fiberlight, and others rumored.  But prices are high and some of the historically more active buyers aren’t looking that eager.  Notably, in the past week or two both PAETEC and Level 3 have indicated they aren’t likely to be out there bidding.  Here’s a quote from PAETEC’s CEO Arunas Chesonis from the company’s recent investor day: [Read more →]

Lots of news this week from the colocation sector: [Read more →]

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) has never been shy about making bandwidth projections, and today they issued some new ones.  Their fifth annual Visual Networking Index Forecast says that in 2015 global internet traffic will reach 966 exabytes per year, just shy of a zettabyte.  Remember when people worried about (or praying for) the exaflood?  Yep, it’s time for the zettaflood now, and the culprits are [Read more →]

This is a guest post by Paolo Gorgò, who blogs over at both Nortia Research and Seeking Alpha.  If you might be interested in a guest post may contact the webmaster.

21Vianet Group (NASDAQ:VNET, news, filings), the largest carrier-neutral Internet data center services provider in China, will be reporting Q1 2011 earnings today, after market [Read more →]

Three deals closed earlier today, let’s take a quick look: [Read more →]

Nothing burns bandwidth like video, and so when Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) announced two television-related contracts it certainly can’t be a bad thing.  The first is for bandwidth at Information Television Network (ITV) down in Florida, which produces ‘health and wellness broadcast programming’ which must be on the channels I usually skip over.  ITV will be initially leveraging a fiber build into their studio to support their production needs plus a [Read more →]

The US may pause on the last Monday of May, but the rest of the world still goes on.  Here are a few things that happened since: [Read more →]

Last week, news broke across various media outlets that abvt has hired JP Morgan Chase to advise it on a potential sale of the company.  Since then, I have seen lots of speculation about who might actually do the buying if such a deal came to pass.  My own opinion is that CenturyLink probably has the most optimal combination of means, motive, and opportunity, but I am hardly the last word on the subject and others make solid cases for private equity, Verizon, TW Telecom, Level 3, and even Sprint.  So here’s a poll of Rambling’s readers to help clarify the waters a bit, or perhaps muddy them further: [Read more →]

To those of you in the US, stop reading this and go outside for Memorial Day!  Unless you’re in the Midwest, in which case you should probably hide because Mother Nature still seems to be pissed off about something.  But if you’re still here, let’s take a moment and contemplate Google Wallet.  Because I just don’t get it. [Read more →]