Telecom Ramblings

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

After the spectacle of watching the Egyptian government shut off the country’s Internet and mobile services in a desperate bid to keep anti-government protesters from using social networks to organize themselves, you’d have thought [Read more →]

The recent rumors and speculation about some sort of combination of the CDN assets of LimeLight and Level has perhaps neglected an intermediate possibility.  The two companies could be exploring a federation of some sort that would allow both companies to move in the differing directions each wishes to go. [Read more →]

The strike by the CWA and IBEW against Verizon is showing no signs of letting up, if anything it’s just getting nastier and both sides seem fine with that.  This morning, Verizon threatened to cut off health insurance including dental, vision, and prescription drug benefits by the end of the month if workers don’t return to the job.  Unions are calling the threat a scare tactic, which is kind of like calling the sky blue – we’re not talking subtle here.  But on the other hand, lots out there are probably scratching their heads and thinking ‘Seriously? [Read more →]

The larger content delivery networks dominate the headlines, but there are still some dynamic challengers to keep track of in the sector.  Yesterday, Highwinds (news) introduced a specialized version of its CDN, the Gaming Delivery Network or GDN.  While many say that CDNs have become commoditized, there is no industry more sensitive to the speed of the overall experience than [Read more →]

In what may be its last report if Icahn’s purchase goes through, XO Holdings (news, filings) posted its second quarter numbers yesterday at the last possible moment – as always.  Unless a judge intervenes, majority shareholder Carl Icahn will probably close the deal in just a few weeks and de-list the company.  But before then, here’s a quick tabular summary in the context of the past few quarters: [Read more →]

Lots of bigger news lately, which tends to drown out the interesting smaller stuff: [Read more →]

According to Dan Rayburn today, those rumors swirling around Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings) a few weeks ago have coalesced into serious talks with Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) about somehow combining their CDN efforts.  That could mean anything from an outright purchase of Limelight by Level 3 to a purchase of the Level 3 CDN business by Limelight with Level 3 maintaining an ownership interest.  Here are a few rambling thoughts: [Read more →]

Cross-border bandwidth operator Transtelco moved today to expand its presence in Texas.  The company announced today that it is completing its route between El Paso and Dallas by adding a 50% share of PAETEC’s fiber route between Temple and El Paso.  Transtelco will also be purchasing other routes from PAETEC (news, filings) hooking up other key locations in central Texas.  Transtelco already operates a more southerly route between El Paso and San Antonio, but is beefing up its diversity on both sides of the US/Mexico border, as you can see from this snapshot of their network map: [Read more →]

Moving solidly into the device space, Google pounced this morning and announced an agreement to purchase Motorola Mobility for $12.5B in cash, or $40 per share.  That’s a premium of 63% above the close on Friday.  Motorola Mobility makes a variety of smartphones, tablets, and other devices – the key being its focus on [Read more →]

As suggested in reports over the weekend, Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC, news) announced this morning that it has agreed to purchase smaller cable rival Insight Communications.  The reported price tag is $3B, with which TW Cable will increase its customer rolls by 5%.  The nation’s second largest cable company will also boost its presence in the markets of Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio where Insight serves most of its [Read more →]

The content delivery arm of international fiber operator Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) added to its string of European victories with a win at the Russian video portal RuTube.  RuTube has been using their CDN services to improve the quality of its video delivery in Russia, Europe, and internationally.  Level 3 has found substantial success in the CDN market over in Europe, but I hadn’t realized their presence had taken hold so [Read more →]

Three more job postings have popped up on the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board, two from Rochester-based metro fiber builder Fibertech and another from Northeastern regional operator Sidera Networks. The overall economy sure isn’t going that well right now, but this little corner over here [Read more →]

Telecom Egypt and Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) have put 40G undersea technology to work in the Mediterranean.  The TE-NORTH Cable system’s 40G upgrade is now in service, hooking up Abu Talat, Egypt to Marseille, France with extensions to Cyprus.  That doubles the design capacity of the system to [Read more →]

Some other items from the datacenter space this week worth a quick look:

QTS (news) is expanding its Kansas City footprint by [Read more →]

TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) picked up an important state government contract expansion today.  The State of Texas has awarded the fiber operator a five year contract under which it will supply a comprehensive suite of network solutions to all state agencies and departments.  Texas and its capitol Austin have long been tw telecom strongholds, and the state government was [Read more →]

Time to step back from the domestic market, and take note of a fiber build off in one of the more remote places in the world.  Rostelecom is in the process of building fiber to 34 markets in the Trans-Baikal region.  Ok, markets might be a bit of a stretch there, as I see other reports call them ‘settlements’ or ‘agglomerations’ but still.  The Russian telecommunications giant is adding 450km of fiberoptics on the Amur highway, bringing Amur Oblast online.  If you didn’t know where that was until today, here’s a map from Wikipedia: [Read more →]

The once and future 800lb gorilla of the telecommunications equipment sector, Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings), has done something it hasn’t managed to do in about a year: make investors smile.  Not a big smile, but still, a smile is a smile.  Fiscal Q4 revenues of $11.2B came in a few hundred million dollars above analyst forecasts, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.40 was likewise a positive [Read more →]

A quick look at some of the other news this week: [Read more →]

According to a report today over at CNET, Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) is planning to enter the cloud computing race later this year. They plan to leverage their existing data center footprint and their substantial enterprise customer relationships to kick start cloud-based ‘hosted collaboration services’.  Those will apparently start with [Read more →]

clwr has a new CEO, again.  The wireless upstart has promoted its Chief Operating Officer Erik Prusch to the positions of both President and CEO.  The current CEO, John Stanton, will return to his chairmanship on the board of directors as Executive Director.  The change comes five months after Stanton took over the job from Bill Morrow in an interim role, at which time Prusch was promoted from [Read more →]

Ok, earnings season is coming to a close except for the usual stragglers that will finish up shortly.  Time to check on what else went by that got missed: [Read more →]

The evolution of the Ethernet Exchange business continues, as we are seeing each of the early participants taking the idea in their own unique directions.  Today it was CENX’s turn, as they unveiled the expansion of their wireless backhaul offering, as well as a major customer in LightSquared for whom they will be helping the buildout of that 4G LTE network that is planned to start later this year.  For CENX, this means taking more of an active [Read more →]

In parallel with their Q2 earnings report this morning, tndm unveiled a new HD Voice Interconnect product. As they have done with VoIP in general, the company is seeking to connect up islands of HD Voice, which offers greater call clarity via a wideband connection.  The service requires a SIP interconnect, and then will connect via HD Voice if the desired endpoint supports it or else via regular voice as usual. Independent VoIP provider 8x8, Inc (NASDAQ:EGHT, news, filings) has [Read more →]