Telecom Ramblings

Several expansion items in the metro and regional fiber sector in the past few days that are worth a look:

Zayo is on the offensive in Cincinnati, after announcing on Friday their intention to put new money into the market in response to demand from wholesale customers.  Cincinnati hasn’t been one of Zayo’s principle markets, the assets came largely from one (or both) of their two deals for assets from CityNet as well as probably a bit from the Indiana FiberWorks deal. In their new expansion, they will build out new miles of fiber in the city’s central business district and surrounding area, while doubling the company’s local on-net building count – which currently stands at [Read more →]

Hmmm, lots of news in eastern Europe today!  Alongside Level 3’s move on the Balkans, Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) has also announced a significant expansion into the region for the first time.  They will formally move east from Germany into five new countries:  Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. [Read more →]

With its pending acquisition of glbc about to expand its network coverage inorganically, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) has first taken the time for some organic expansion into some European territory neither has been in before.  They announced two new PoPs in the former Yugoslavia, adding Zagreb, Croatia and Ljubljana, Slovenia to their network.  [Read more →]

Private equity firm ABRY Partners has bought itself another networking business to go along with its Sidera purchase last year.  This time though, it’s not on the fiber side but rather on the managed services side.  They have agreed to purchase 100% of Masergy for an undisclosed [Read more →]

For Falcone’s LightSquared venture, the GPS interference issue is looking less like a speed bump and more like a brick wall.  After asking for more time, the company this week said it could perhaps make a few modifications to its plan that would interfere with fewer devices by cutting power and starting with a different frequency range than initially planned, an idea that seems to have pleased precisely no one.  Especially not the House of Representatives, where the House Appropriations Committee has now adopted an amendment prohibiting [Read more →]

According to the news down under, Austalian incumbent Telstra and the country’s wholesale fiber-to-everybody NBN Co venture have finally signed on the dotted line for the $11B deal they have been working on for years.  Of course today’s definitive agreement doesn’t end much of anything, as Telstra’s shareholders still have to agree, as does the ACCC.   Actually, it’s a bit of Yogi Berra’s [Read more →]

More jobs is a good thing right?  Well, the overall economy may be struggling to find them, but we have a bumper crop right now on the Ramblings’ Jobs Board.  This week we have one new posting from 360Networks and two new postings from OCG. [Read more →]

Over in the UK, Colt Group (LON:COLT, news) announced a substantial footprint expansion in Italy.  The company has long been in Rome, Milan, and Turin, but has lately added 1,600 route kilometers to bring the cities of Bologna, Genoa, and Parma directly onto their fiber network.  That will improve latency and resilience for the company’s customers in those cities, who presumably were connected via [Read more →]

Further emphasizing the growing move by cable MSOs into the enterprise segment, Charter Business is apparently going where cable hasn’t traditionally gone – into the longhaul business.  Yesterday they announced two new products aimed at the enterprise space that enable them to address opportunities beyond a single metro area:  [Read more →]

Several interesting items from the datacenter segment in the past few days:

Seattle-based Sabey announced another big east coast venture:  a gigantic new campus in Ashburn.  When complete, the facility will consist of three buildings on 38 [Read more →]

Last month, in the face of disappointing financials that it blamed on customers’ ability to use internet apps in place of SMS messaging and other evils, KPN seemed to declare its intention to impose charges on the interlopers.  I opined that KPN was preparing to piss into the wind, but I didn’t actually expect the politicians to move this fast. [Read more →]

Yesterday, telecommunications giant AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) announced it is re-entering the CDN marketplace, an action which they have been telegraphing for several quarters.   They last did this back in 2008 just before every telecom on the planet started salivating over over entering the CDN space, planning to spend up to $70M to roll their own system that would compete against Akamai, Limelight, and the rest of the field.  Well, we all know that never materialized in any real way, much as the overall telecom threat to the CDN space fizzled out except for Level 3.  This time around AT&T is no longer doing this in-house, but instead is using licensed technology from [Read more →]

Western regional operator 360Networks continues to beef up its portfolio, announcing today a new 640 mile route between Dallas and El Paso.  The company has installed gear from Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) on the new link capable of 100G, which of course will probably have to wait for demand. 360Networks was already in Dallas of course, and they had fiber running through El Paso too.  But there was no direct connectivity between the two except through Denver.  The buildout completes that hole in their network and also brings three new markets on-net for the company: [Read more →]

Back in mid-2009, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) unveiled a new plan to take better advantage of its local assets by decentralizing decision-making power and investing in locally focused personnel.  They went on to take the concept to several dozen markets over the next year or so, and then spent the following year turning those markets into growth engines – and touted the improving results in the mid-Market division that followed.  But those markets were not the only ones it seemed as if Level 3 had the assets to tackle in this way, and so I was pleased to see them [Read more →]

Recent reports that Cable & Wireless was considering a $500M offer from Pacnet for its international division came to a swift end this morning.  Followup reports say the company has issued a statement indicating it had ‘considered and rejected that approach’.  Whether or not the potential sale of its internation division remains (or ever was) on the table is unclear.  But $500M was clearly too [Read more →]

Northeastern fiber operator Lightower Fiber Networks (news) is further increasing its metro depth to the north and east of New York City.  The company announced expansion plans up in Westchester and Connecticut today that will extend the company’s metro and regional coverage further into key suburban regions of its turf – the triangle formed by the Big Apple, Boston, and Albany.  [Read more →]

Several interesting bits of fiber news already this week: [Read more →]

According to Dan Rayburn, Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) is preparing to shake up the CDN space by licensing its software to network operators.  Doing so would enable carriers, CLECs, and ISPs to incorporate Akamai’s technology into their own networks as an alternative to building their own – whether that is [Read more →]

Apparently it isn’t just the US fiber market that is seeing a surge in M&A activity.  According to a report in the Financial Times today, UK-based Cable & Wireless is considering the sale of its international division.  And apparently, there is already a bidder out there – Pacnet apparently has put a $500M bid on the table.  If the rumor is true though, there are probably other bidders out there that would drive up that price.  But first, a bit of perspective from the company’s numbers. [Read more →]

As we saw with VoIP, Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA, news, filings) doesn’t move quickly but when it does move the momentum can be very impressive.  It is the mid-sized business market that is getting a lot of the MSO’s attention right now, and last month they formally announced Metro Ethernet services across twenty markets.  Today we learned that Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) and Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) are supplying the gear powering that effort.  [Read more →]

Here’s another fiber play by private equity, this time up in the Northeast with two providers that I haven’t run into before.  Boston’s Riverside Partners is putting money into segTEL, becoming its largest shareholder.  segTEL operates a fiberoptic network in the upper New England states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine which by September is expected to exceed [Read more →]

It looks to me as if Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) has finally made up its mind about its 4G future.  Over the past year the company has been gradually turning around its 2G/3G business, but not-so private disagreements with clwr and persistent rumors about other options have made it obvious the company has been struggling to decide where to go from here.  Over the weekend, numerous reports have it that the company has signed a network sharing deal with LightSquared, and while not a week has gone by without [Read more →]

Over on the Jobs Board, we have three new job postings from Lightower, which operates one of the most extensive metro and regional footprints in the northeast.  That Lightower is hiring is another telling sign that last year’s metro fiber M&A binge was not about synergies but rather about assembling a platform for accelerating growth.  In 2010 and into the beginning of 2011, the company purchased Veroxity, Lexent Metro Connect, and Open Access, and then went and did a deal for NSTAR’s remaining fiber capacity as well.  After all that, they are looking for [Read more →]