Telecom Ramblings

This is a guest post by Paolo Gorgò.  If you might be interested in a guest post, then contact the webmaster.

This morning, Telecity Group, one of Europe’s leading provider of carrier-neutral data centers, and listed on the London stock exchange, announced its results for the first half of 2011 and also the acquisition of [Read more →]

Several weeks ago, XO Holdings (news, filings) announced its vehement opposition to the pending merger of Level 3 and Global Crossing, citing the combined entity’s likely outsized influence on the IP transit marketplace.  Today however, according to this joint filing with the FCC, XO no longer objects. Here’s the text of the letter: [Read more →]

Don’t look now, but this weekend might just see a strike break out on telecommunications land.  Verizon and its wireline employees are on the brink, with the current contract expiring at 12:01am on Sunday.  The CWA and IBE have already voted to authorize a strike, which would impact 45,000 Verizon workers on the east coast.  I’d like to think this one will be short or even that they could work something out at the last minute, but it could be that the situation is ripe for [Read more →]

When the summer started, abvt was apparently for sale and the bidding was fierce.  But as I suspected, nothing came of it (or has come of it yet) and the speculation has died down and the surge in stock price has ebbed.  So now we get back to business, which in AboveNet’s case is the business of rock-solid, high margin organic growth – as demonstrated by the company’s Q2 report this morning.  Here’s a quick summary of the relevant metrics alongside the prior four quarters: [Read more →]

Two more job postings have popped up on the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board, this time from sidera. With layoffs hitting the news much too often of late accompanied by more ugly macro economic news, it’s refreshing to see much of the competitive fiber sector still hiring. [Read more →]

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

I continue to be perturbed by headlines from the telecoms industry declaring staff cuts to reduce costs and improve profitability. Is there no other means to placate investors than to resort to such radical and life-disrupting means for people that have not necessarily failed in their jobs? [Read more →]

Cogent Communications (NASDAQ:CCOI, news, filings) has been eerily quiet this year on the press release front, with nothing other than earnings releases, event announcements, and debt sales going over the wires.  But their Q2 results filed this morning show more of the same, by which I mean steady, solid growth across the board.  Here’s a quick summary of a few relevant metrics in the context of the prior four quarters: [Read more →]

News has been thick this week, time to catch up on a few items that are worth a quick look.

MegaPath has been running a Tech Talk video contest this summer, in which IT professionals are invited to submit videos turning high tech jargon into humor.  They are taking submissions through August 12, but they have a nice crop of videos already available to peruse.  My favorite, hands down is [Read more →]

clwr today reported its usual subscriber positive and earnings negative quarterly results, and finally made a commitment toward building out LTE.  That is, when they get the financing for it of course.  The WiMAX provider demonstrated both solid revenue growth and cost savings, though how much is enough remains open to question. [Read more →]

Perseus Telecom, which specializes in ultra-low latency connectivity, has unveiled a new such route to Brazil.  Leveraging GlobeNet’s submarine cable systems, they are claiming the low latency title between Sao Paolo’s BM&F BOVESPA and New York’s NASDAQ OMX.  The sustained interest in low latency connections for the trading community is definitely spilling over from the Chicago-NYC-London-Frankfurt access and onto other continents, and the Brazilian bandwidth market is red hot these days.   [Read more →]

While its acquisition of Savvis recently has dominated its news for the past few months, it was those pesky details of the merger with Qwest that slowed down CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings) in the second quarter.  Revenues of $4.41B were just slightly below expectations, while earnings per share took a $0.20 non-cash hit amidships as Centurylink’s fair value assessment of the Qwest assets led to an additional $200M in depreciation and amortization.  Without that contribution, earnings per share of $0.64 were within guidance but still [Read more →]

What to do to distract everyone from the pain of a giant restructuring?  Find a new way to publicly demonstrate your coolest technology of course!  Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) today said that its telepresence technology will be featured at the 2011 Rogers Cup.  The womens and mens tournaments will be held simultaneously in Toronto and Montreal, respectively, and Cisco’s telepresence will be there to [Read more →]

As expected, Earthlink (NASDAQ:ELNK, news, filings) is not done with its inorganic push to build itself into a comprehensive business services provider.  This time, however, they didn’t buy a CLEC, but rather a managed services provider with a data center.  Earthlink announced yesterday that it is buying Business Vitals, a Columbia, South Carolina firm specializing in managed IT, security, and professional services.   [Read more →]

European independent metro operator euNetworks (news) reported its second quarter earnings today.  The story lately has been inorganic growth, with the acquisition of Lambdanet in May and Teragate AG a week ago.  However, while these numbers include one month of Lambanet, euNetworks also saw organic growth in the period.  Here is a quick tabular review of the company’s results in the context of the prior four quarters: [Read more →]

Ok, a bit of the dust has settled on yesterday’s purchase announcement of PAETEC by Windstream, so let’s check the temperature out there:
[Read more →]

Zayo Group (news, filings) is expanding its presence in West Virginia, according to a press release this morning.    The supra-regional fiber operator is building out metro network in and around Fairmont, a city to the south of Morgantown.  The new network aims at bringing online the I-79 High Tech Corridor and I-79 Technology Park, home to many federal agency facilities such as [Read more →]

According to a report out this morning over at Telegeography, transpacific wavelength pricing pressure has been very substantial over the past twelve and twenty four months.  Between Q2 2009 and Q2 2011 the median monthly lease price for a 10G wave between LA and Tokyo has fallen from $98,500 to $36,000.  Pricing on other routes routes has fallen similarly, with twelve month declines of 33% and 39% for [Read more →]

The Windstream/PAETEC deal sort of pushed other news aside this morning, however other things did happen today that are definitely worthy of note: [Read more →]

This morning’s M&A announcement certainly caught me off guard – although perhaps it shouldn’t have -and I’m still trying to get my brain around it.  Windstream’s activity lately in targeting the business marketplace outside its ILEC territory has been very aggressive.  But until now geographically they were still very much a regional company even as a CLEC, just as the NuVox and KDL/Norlight footprints were.  Buying PAETEC takes what was already a rather radical hybrid [Read more →]

In a deal that came as a complete shock to me, Windstream (NYSE:WIN, news, filings) has agreed to purchase PAETEC (news, filings) in a deal worth $2.3B.  Windstream will assume or refinance PAETEC’s net debt of $1.4B and PAETEC shareholders will receive 0.460 shares of Windstream common stock for each PAETEC share they own.  That appears to peg the deal at about $5.61 per share based on Friday’s close, and if one guesses PAETEC’s current run-rate EBITDA at about $380M, the EV/EBITDA multiple of the deal would be in the neighborhood of [Read more →]

A short time ago, Dan Rayburn posted an article indicating that something big is about to happen over at Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings) with the likeliest outcome being an acquisition by the likes of Verizon or perhaps MicroSoft.  Certainly such rumors have come and go regularly over the past few years, but Dan has rarely been wrong when he makes these calls.  So, let’s do a few quick takes on those potential acquirers and a few others: [Read more →]

European independent metro fiber operator euNetworks (news) isn’t messing around with its efforts to attack the German market.  Today they announced their second acquisition in three months with the purchase of TeraGate AG Storage Optical Network.  TeraGate offers nextgen corporate WAN solutions, including Ethernet products and cloud-based storage networks.  They operate both nationally and internationally, but their primary focus lies in Germany across seven [Read more →]

Zayo Group (news, filings) said yesterday that it has begun construction of a metro fiber ring in the central business district of Los Angeles that will provide data center connectivity for CoreSite (NYSE:COR, news, filings).  CoreSite has two existing data centers in Southern California totaling 600,000 square feet, with a third on the way that will add another 25,000 square feet of an eventual 145,000 when it opens later this quarter.   [Read more →]