Telecom Ramblings

Before the bell today, we had Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) issuing its Q2 2010 earnings report, which I offered a preview of yesterday.  The company did succeed in delivering on its promise of a return to core network services growth excluding the $7M asset sale last quarter.  EBITDA of $209M was roughly what I expected, and was achieved via pretty decent cost controls.  However, the market will surely be looking for a bit more than that in the second half.  Here is a quick summary of the company’s relevant metrics alongside prior quarters: [Read more →]

As expected, glbc issued its Q2/2010 earnings report this afternoon after the market closed.   The top line revenue number of $630M was lower than the street had it pegged at, but this was due to a $20M reduction in the company’s low margin wholesale voice business after the company raised prices in an effort to improve those margins.  Much of the rest of the company’s numbers weren’t too far off from the guesses I made yesterday, though I was a bit too optimistic on GCUK revenues.   Here is a quick tabular summary putting the company’s quarter in the context of the past four quarters: [Read more →]

Tomorrow before the bell Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) will report earnings, which means it is time for a quick earnings preview.  Analysts expect total revenues of $910M, flat with the prior quarter and a loss of $0.11 per share.  As is often the case, I am slightly more optimistic.  But when it comes to Level 3, the details are more important than those overall numbers.  The key right now for Level 3 is to demonstrate tangible growth in their core network services.  They know it, the street knows it, everyone knows it.  Here is a quick table of my own projections in the context of the prior few quarters: [Read more →]

Colocation, hosting, and cloud operator Savvis (news, filings) [a subsidiary of CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings)] issued its earnings report for the second quarter, during which they acquired Canadian provider Fusepoint.  That deal, which closed on June 16, added $1.5M in revenue and $3.5M in M&A-related costs to the company’s results, skewing things only slightly.  Overall, the company saw reasonable growth over the prior quarter that was roughly inline with expectations. [Read more →]

International network operator glbc will hold its earnings CC on Tuesday morning, which means that if past behavior holds they will release their earnings PR on Monday after the market closes.  Hence it is time once again for a preview, the idea being to help frame our expectations in context beforehand.  The biggest feature for Global Crossing is its 2010 guidance, which suggests a hefty ramp through the remainder of the year for the company’s core revenues and OIBDA.  Analysts, however, expect total Q2 revenues in the neighborhood of [Read more →]

While Zayo has been certainly active on the M&A front for metropolitan fiber networks, they have also been making moves to build unique regional fiber routes in underserved areas as well.  Two announcements this week highlight that trend, with one project in partnership with rural ILECs, and the other receiving broadband stimulus funding.
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The economic overhang is greater right now over on the other side of the Atlantic, and it shows in the results of pan-European network operator Colt Group (LON:COLT, news).  Revenues for the first half were €794.2M, down from €817.4M last year.  For several years now, Colt has fought steadily declining voice revenues with increasing data and managed services revenues, but thus far in 2010 data revenues haven’t grown, and in fact were down slightly from €398.4M to €396.8M.  Looking deeper, the weakness was rather specifically with the large enterprises, whereas data revenues for mid-sized enterprises and wholesale customers both advanced.  Managed services revenue was [Read more →]

After the markets closed, DWDM specialist Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) reported its Q2 earnings, easily trumping analyst expectations.  It has been my position for several quarters now that Infinera positioned itself very well during the recession by widening its customer base despite the meager carrier spending at the time.  Those efforts are now, perhaps, beginning to tell, as Infinera’s Q1 results were also ahead of expectations and the company seems to be accelerating now [Read more →]

Telecommunications giant AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) reported its Q2 earnings this morning.  On the wireless front, the company activated another 3.2M iPhones and added a net 1.6M wireless subscribers to reach 90.1M in service.  Revenues of $30.8B were slightly under analyst projections, but entirely within the normal range.  Earnings per share were $0.68, of which $0.07 came from a stock transaction with Telmex.  Even excluding that, however, [Read more →]

Several news items went by that deserve a mention:

We don’t often hear about the data center business of XO Holdings (news, filings), but it does exist.  Yesterday non other than Thomson Reuters agreed to lease colocation space in the competitive provider’s Minneapolis facility.  The space will become [Read more →]

For Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) and its CDN division, it’s been quite a summer for live sports.  It seems like every week there is an event somewhere they are handling the streaming for.  Some of them are the big events like the World Cup and the Tour de France, but others are lesser known but with an online following.

This morning the company announced that it is providing its end-to-end Internet Broadcast services to FUEL TV, serving live HD both online and to their iPhone application.  FUEL TV’s events are things like [Read more →]

So Harbinger finally launched its wireless juggernaut yesterday.  The idea is to take a pile of spectrum previously assigned to satellite communications, and build a ‘truly open and net neutral wireless network’ based on LTE which will be wholesaled to other industry participants and change the rules of the game.  It’s a grand vision of course, and one which will no doubt spur its share of interesting news over the next few years. [Read more →]

Both Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) and Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) picked up wins with regional fiber operators yesterday:  

Ciena went south of the border yesterday for a contract with TransTelco.  TransTelco operates a 2,500 mile fiber network spanning the US-Mexico border, helping to hook up two very different markets.  They have announced the implementation of [Read more →]

Router maker Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) reported earnings yesterday after the bell, as the Q2 earnings season begins in earnest.  Revenues of $978.3M was just above the range the company guided to back in April, and beat analyst expectations which weren’t much different than guidance.  Likewise, non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.30 topped guidance of $0.27-0.29 and the street’s expectations of [Read more →]

Aside from the NTELOS/FiberNet deal, there were several other interesting news items from companies with a substantial metro fiber orientation:

Optimum Lightpath, the metro fiber division of Cablevision, has now established a connection with CENX’s Carrier Ethernet Exchange.  To the equation they bring some 4000 route miles of fiber connecting some 4000 lit buildings to date throughout the New York City metropolitan area.  CENX boasts some [Read more →]

In a further development in the metro and regional M&A rumble that has been developing all year, regional operator nTelos (NASDAQ:NTLS, news, filings) has agreed to buy FiberNet, a division of One Communications.  For a price tag of $170M in cash, NTELOS will be gaining some 3,500 miles of metro and regional fiber throughout West Virginia and extending into the surrounding states of [Read more →]

Hosting and cloud provider Navisite (NASDAQ:NAVI, news, filings) [a subsidiary of Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC, news)] got itself a buyout offer yesterday.  According to an SEC filing, Atlantic Investors LLC is offering to purchase all outstanding common shares that it doesn’t own for $3.05 – they currently own over 36%.  What makes this buyout offer special is that its CEO Arthur Becker and the chairman of the board Andrew Ruhan, have [Read more →]

Intellifiber, the independently operated fiber network owned by Cavalier, has won a substantial contract with Telecom Transport Management for wireless backhaul.  Intellifiber will provide backhaul service from some 500 wireless towers across the state of Virginia, including cities such as Richmond, Norfolk, Lynchburg, Roanoke, Williamsburg and Petersburg.  For Intellifiber, the addition of [Read more →]

The rumors last week were true: Nokia Siemens has indeed agreed to purchase Motorola’s wireless equipment business.  The price tag for those $3.5-4.0B in revenues is apparently $1.2B.  For that price, Nokia will gain greater scale in the US and Asian marketplaces, including ‘incumbent [Read more →]

Back in March, plans by Harbinger Capital Partners became public to take spectrum formerly intended for the satellite business and repurpose it into a national wireless network based on LTE via the vehicle SkyTerra.  The prospect of a brand new 4G network in the US that stands independent of the large established players is of course enticing.  However, there are still some hurdles that must be cleared first it seems. [Read more →]

Ethernet based products have seen rapidly accelerating growth across the sector over the past several years, which has in the past three quarters led to the public unveiling of a new business entity:  the Ethernet Exchange.  The first such exchange to go live was CENX, and the company has since reported rapid growth in the breadth of the total endpoints available to its partners.  With us today to help illuminate the subject is Nan Chen, who [Read more →]

One of the oldest names in VoIP, VocalTec, has merged with one of the greatest disruptive forces today in VoIP, YMAX which is the parent company of both consumer VoIP company MagicJack and Stratus Telecommunications which markets the underlying VoIP network technologies.  The combined company will trade on the Nasdaq starting on Monday July 19 under the symbol CALL.  The combined company pegs its own enterprise value currently [Read more →]

You had to know that Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) was handling a big pile of World Cup traffic, considering their dominant position in the content delivery sector.  But until today’s announcement, we didn’t know too many details.  Akamai handled streaming for some 24 global broadcasters into 65 countries, with key major customers including [Read more →]