Telecom Ramblings

The Wall Street Journal and others are reporting that FCC Chairman Genachowski is siding with Comcast in its dispute with Level 3 over all that Netflix traffic.  He is quoted as saying that his agency’s new net neutrality rules don’t “change anything with existing peering arrangements” and that the dispute is a ‘private business dispute’.  But I’m always a bit leery of quotes that don’t actually consist of full sentences, and Level 3 of course disputes this interpretation.  Level 3 SVP Robert Yates says: [Read more →]

Over on the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board, we have two more job listings, one from Zayo Group and another from Level 3, to go along with the one posted a few days ago from Mapcom Systems.

Zayo Group (news, filings) is looking for [Read more →]

More Middle Eastern hijinks from Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) today.  Working with Mobily, they announced the activation of the first commercial 100Gbps network in the region.  So Mobily’s Riyadh metro network now has the fastest bandwidth money can buy.  The company has some 40+% of the mobile market in Saudia Arabia, and selected Ciena gear for an upgrade just last month. [Read more →]

Since Icahn made yet another bid for the rest of XO Holdings (news, filings) he doesn’t already own, there has been little news.  XO handed the task of evaluating the offer over to its special committee of ‘independent’ directors of course.  But yesterday we heard from the largest minority shareholder R2 Investments in a letter to those independent directors, and of course they came out firing.  It’s always a fun read, so here’s the text of the letter: [Read more →]

Gary Kim has an interesting piece over on TechZone 360 on the new term that has been making the rounds to describe the evolution underway on the internet: “Splinternet”. With the iPad, the Kindle, all sorts of smartphones and whatever new devices 2011 brings, each with their own app stores, limitations, and walled gardens, effectively marketing to the world is rapidly becoming a lot more complicated than buying a few Adwords impressions from Google.  I have to say, I love the term Splinternet, it’s very descriptive.  However, I take issue with [Read more →]

Since their purchase of Genesis Networks back in the fall, I have wondered what sort of contracts Global Crossing would be competing for with its new video services division.  Well, it turns out they handled the Australian Open feeds last month for no less than three broadcasters:  the Tennis Channel in the USA, Fox Sports Australia down under, and NTV-PLUS in Russia and the Ukraine.   In the case of NTV-PLUS, it was the third year running they had this contract. [Read more →]

It may seem like Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) has datacenters just about everwhere, but until this morning there were two entire populated continents they had not penetrated.  But today that number has fallen to just one, as in an SEC filing today Equinix revealed its route into South America by participating in a joint venture buyout of ALOG Data Centers do Brasil S.A.  The purchase price is R$211M, which works out to about [Read more →]

Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings), the largest pure-play CDN challenger to Akamai, posted its Q4 and full year 2010 results after the market closed, easily besting both their own guidance and analyst projections which were on the high end of that.  The fourth quarter is generally strong for this sector, but Q4 revenues of $55.2M were up 11% sequentially whereas analysts had averaged around 7%.  Adjusted earnings per share were $0.01, which a penny higher than expected, and EBITDA checked in at $8.1M.  Projections called for [Read more →]

Middle Eastern telecommunications giant Etisalat has deployed gear from Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) to upgrade its transport network in the United Arab Emirates.  The new 40G backbone hooks up more than 40 locations in the UAE, which is Etisalat’s home turf of course.  Etisalat needed the upgrade to support all the bits that came with its transition to packet/IP and of course the ever-present growing wave of mobile traffic.  Still though, does the UAE have [Read more →]

TeliaSonera AB (ETR:TLS, news, filings) International Carrier announced another gaming win this morning.  The company’s managed data center services were selected by Masthead Studios to deliver the new Earthrise MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game).  The package includes IP connectivity, colo, leased servers and management in TeliaSonera’s New York data center, as opposed to the carrier’s usual European haunts.  It’s an interesting strategy, choosing the US assets of a [Read more →]

Early this Valentine’s Day morning in Barcelona, Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) and Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC, news, filings) have announced an exclusive strategic alliance focused on mobile cloud acceleration solutions.  That’s sort of the buzzword-du-jour trifecta there, tying together three of the most powerful tech memes of early 2011 into a tight little bundle.  The two will focus their efforts on things like mobile e-commerce, enterprise applications, and internet content – which pretty much covers [Read more →]

Over on the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from Mapcom Systems.  Mapcom is looking for an IT Specialist to assist customers with the configuration and implementation of their GIS software solutions, amongst other IT tasks.  Mapcom is based in the Richmond, Virginia area, and supplies mapping solutions for fiber, telephony, and [Read more →]

Zayo has reported its fiscal Q2 earnings, turning in a profit of $1.9M on total revenues of $77.9M.  While Zayo remains privately held, it has publicly traded debt as well as a general outlook on openness, and has since last Spring issued very detailed information on its progress.  On October 1, they acquired American Fiber Systems, which as expected supplied most of the revenue boost over the prior quarter.  Here is a quick chart of Zayo’s earnings in the context of the prior three quarters: [Read more →]

For all the talk about the desperate need for speed in the consumer last mile, there doesn’t seem to be much action yet.  At least, not if you’ve got to pay more for it. According to SureWest CEO Steve Oldham, it’s not exactly a hot product.  From [Read more →]

Quite a bit of news lately in the colo segment that didn’t have to do with telcos buying cloud capabilities:

Yesterday, i/o Data Centers opened another facility in Phoenix, but this time it’s not  a giant colocation center but rather a 221K square foot factory.  They’re gearing up to build data center modules for their i/o ANYWHERE product line, as many as 18MW per month initially.  The first such modules will be ready in the first [Read more →]

Here’s some news from fiber operators out there that deserves a look:

Out west, 360Networks followed up last month’s introduction of a Layer 2 Ethernet service and a recent upgrade to their IP backbone with a Virtual Internet Exchange offering.  What that means is that rather than selling simple IP transit, they are selling a direct Ethernet connection to various internet exchanges.  That make sense since nobody makes oodles of cash off of basic IP transit anymore, so why not [Read more →]

Following the recent Verizon/Terremark and TWCable/Navisite deals, there has been lots of speculation that other large telcos or cable MSOs might follow up with similar moves to bulk up their cloud and managed services capabilities.  Of the list of public companies that seem the likeliest targets, Savvis (news, filings) [a subsidiary of CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings)] has been the most frequently mentioned.  But who would be the buyer?  Actually, nobody seems to mention that part in much detail.  So here’s a Ramblings’ poll to help things along: [Read more →]

Two next generation pillars of the internet world, Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) and Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) are taking a beating after hours following their Q4/10 reports.  In each case, their Q4 numbers were ahead of expectations but their forward guidance was, shall we say, not well received.  Of course, it doesn’t help that Cisco’s miss has cast a shadow over the whole market – it would have taken a lot to overcome that.  First let’s take a look at [Read more →]

International operator glbc offered two more announcements this morning, both on an expansive note:

First, the company has added Cisco’s Telepresence solutions to its own offering, which is of course now Cisco-certified.  Global Crossing first directly entered the telepresence arena over the summer with an agreement with Teliris, but of course Cisco has been at the forefront of the this technology from the beginning and supporting their technology is a no-brainer.  They have installed the Cisco gear in several key locations in the U.S., UK and Brazil.  While these kind of products [Read more →]

International giant Telefonica (NYSE:TEF, news, filings) and pan-European network operator Interoute (news) announced a major strategic partnership today.  Telefonica International Wholesale Services will use Interoute as its core fiber optic network provider for Western Europe, and on the flip side Interoute will be able to leverage TIWS’s transatlantic connectivity and its footprints in the USA and especially [Read more →]

Cox Business is now offering a product that is largely new for MSOs: managed IP PBX services.  The new service is based on Cisco’s Small Business Communications System, and has been launched in their Oklahoma and Las Vegas markets.   If it goes well, no doubt that geographical reach will be expanded.  They also expect to launch [Read more →]

Following up on its acquisition of Genesis Networks, glbc today announced the expansion of the unit’s broadcast and media services into Central and South America.  The services can now leverage Global Crossing’s transport and IP assets in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela and the Caribbean region.  That makes tons of sense, as those assets give them a competitive advantage in Latin America, whereas in North America and Europe there is more competition with substantial fiber/colo assets. [Read more →]

Amidst speculation it might attract buyout interest from larger providers, colo and cloud provider Savvis (news, filings) [a subsidiary of CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings)] turned in some pretty nice Q4/2011 results this morning.  Total revenues of $252.7M were up 4% over the third quarter, easily eclipsing the expectations of the market which was looking for less than 2%.  Likewise, the company’s EBITDA of $67.8M and loss per share of $0.06 were quite powerful and exceeded [Read more →]