Telecom Ramblings

Dueling PRs in the CDN sector this morning, one from the cutting edge of social media and the other a major government website:

Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) won a deal with WeeWorld, which is a global social game that I haven’t yet come across but has 40M or so registered ‘WeeMees’ (I don’t even want to know).  Since using Akamai to cache their content closer to the consumer, WeeWorld’s interactive website has seen an 8-30% reduction in page load times, which is significant in these low-attention-span times we live in.  Interestingly, they revealed [Read more →]

One of the primary undersea cables linking Europe to Asia is getting an overhaul.  SEA-WE-ME-4 is expanding its capacity by moving to 40G along its entire 20,000 kilometer length.  The cable went live in the early part of 2006 (or was it late 2005?), and consists of two fiber pairs whose total capacity will after the upgrade be 2.4Tbps, or 4.8Tbps total.  Here’s a quick snapshot of the cable’s route: [Read more →]

There was an interesting article over on Light Reading yesterday by Craig Matsumoto, citing an industry source who said that sometime last year Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) got into a tiff with three French ISPs, two of which were supposedly Orange and SFR.  As the story goes, Akamai refused to pay more and got the boot and had to serve data from the UK for a while, though the disagreement was later resolved.  An Akamai representative quickly disputed the account in the comments following the article, but without actually [Read more →]

Two interesting developments lately in the southeastern Asian cable market lately.

The first is the end of Reach as we know it.  Remember Reach, the joint venture between Telstra and PCCW that bought the old Level 3 Tiger assets after the bubble bubble and never found its footing?  Well they’ve been restructured yet again, but this time it looks a bit more permanent.  Telstra and PCCW are splitting [Read more →]

The tide has been turning lately against network neutrality, following the FCC’s action.  Over in Europe, the Norwegian incumbent once fully embraced the concept, even voluntarily signing a NN code of conduct back in 2009.  But apparently they’ve changed their mind according to this ArsTechnica article, and want to charge extra for YouTube and other traffic.  Their argument, however gives me pause.  Not because it’s new or anything, but because it’s so obviously wrong at a factual level: [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) reports earnings on Wednesday morning, and therefore it is time for Ramblings’ quarterly earnings primer.  Level 3 spent 2010 recovering from a 2009 that saw churn eat away their revenue and set them back again from positive cash flow.  Since the first quarter of 2010, the company has been growing core revenues steadily, albeit slowly.  Their fortunes in 2010 depend on one thing: solid revenue growth.  They know it, too – you can hear it in every investor presentation they give.  And investors and analysts know it too.  The debt mountain in front of them cannot be scaled any other way.  With that in mind, here are my own detailed [Read more →]

Several items last week that I didn’t get to but were worth noting in the metro fiber arena:

Axcess Ontario signed a master agreement with Iberdrola USA, under which they will supply dark fiber to Rochester Gas & Electric, hooking up 10 facilities in Ontario County, New York.  The name Axcess Ontario always confuses me as to whether it’s up in Canada, but it’s better than the company’s old mouthful of a name: [Read more →]

A few quick notes on the everlasting game of musical chairs amongst executives across the sector:

Mike Manos has resurfaced as the new Senior VP of Technology at none other than AOL.  Manos headed up Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR, news, filings) for many years, and last year was working over at Nokia.  His appearance at AOL suggests that the company is reinventing itself again, this time with data center infrastructure and the cloud in their sights.  In his own blog, [Read more →]

Many, not the least of which being Renesys, have now noted that Egypt appears to have cut off its own access to the internet in the face of unrest.  Not just filtered things they don’t like, or throttled traffic to discourage use.  They’ve shut it down – except perhaps for the stock markets.  There has been no interruption of course to the traffic flowing through the country from Europe to Asia on those critical cable systems, nor is there likely to be since Egypt is clearly doing this at the IP layer via its own ISPs.  Still, one has to wonder just what repercussions [Read more →]

Rich Tehrani has an interesting piece on the the implications of the NAP of the Americas falling into the hands of one carrier (Verizon), following yesterday’s surprise M&A announcement.  It’s not about net neutrality though, but about carrier neutrality which is a very different thing.  The purchase stands to change the landscape of interconnection for a large chunk of the internet in ways that cannot be [Read more →]

In a surprise acquisition, telecommunications giant Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) announced today that it has agreed to purchase colocation and cloud provider Terremark (news, filings) [a subsidiary of Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings)] for $19 per share, or $1.4B.  That’s a 35% premium above Terremark’s $14.05 closing price. Terremark’s board has already approved the purchase, but just to make doubly sure, Verizon is in the midst of acquiring 27.6% of the company’s stock from several large shareholders. [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) is making a move on the European enterprise marketplace.  They will now be offering their Dedicated Internet Access and VPN solutions in several European markets, including France, Germany, and the UK.  These are of course their original markets where they built out their own metro loops etc, and where they earn most of their revenue over there.  As for the expansions to the north, south, and east where they added [Read more →]

Zayo Group and its founder, President, and CEO Dan Caruso have been a rising force in the fiber sector since the company’s founding in 2006.  Dan used to blog over at Bear on Business and was a regular commenter here, but that level of access to his thoughts and opinions became a casualty of his success (and of Zayo’s issuing of publicly traded debt).  Today Dan Caruso returns to Telecom Ramblings, this time on the other side of the microphone, to discuss recent events and future directions at Zayo: [Read more →]

This is a guest post by Paolo Gorgò, who blogs over at Nortia Research and over on Seeking Alpha.  Anyone else who might be interested in a guest post may contact the webmaster.

InterXion recently filed plans with US regulators for a stock market listing on the NYSE, and its IPO is scheduled for Friday, January 28.

One of Europe’s largest data center providers, InterXion competes mainly with Equinix Europe and TeleCityGroup and smaller local providers. These three major European players offer a slightly different coverage of the European region, but all have data centers in the most [Read more →]

Catch-up time for the fiber sector:

Midwestern regional and metro operator US Signal (news) has completed the expansion of its footprint to the south and west.  They have lit 1,000 miles of intercity fiber into southern Indiana and through central and southern Illinois to St. Louis, Missouri.  The expansion also includes metro rings in [Read more →]

Two of the more dynamic companies in the bandwidth infrastructure equipment space generally report earnings in the first week and set the tone for the sector to come:  Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) and Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings).  Last quarter, Infinera led off with guidance that disappointed the street, while Juniper followed up with a nice quarter that allayed fears that it might spread.  So what’s up for Q4?  [Read more →]

Fairpoint has emerged from Chapter 11 proceedings, and is ready to face the world once again.  They’ll do so with just $1B in debt and a $75M revolving credit facility, having shed about $1.8B of their previous debt load along with all their previous shareholders.  The company’s new [Read more →]

With its impending launch of the vaunted iPhone in the wings, Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) still had to go through the motions and report their results for the fourth quarter of 2010.  Overall, a first look says their performance was roughly inline, though the pessimists amongst the media might see it as a hair below.  Overall revenues of $26.4B were down slightly from [Read more →]

There’s a fascinating article about how the Shetland Islands is putting in its next generation of fiber infrastructure.  It’s meant to connect to the new SHEFA2 cable, which is bringing a direct fiber connection to the island, replacing the existing microwave link that has simply not been able to keep up lately.  But the Shetlands have, shall we say, rather few people and thus fiber is hard to justify even with a government grant.  [Read more →]

More of those stimulus funds are being put to work finally.  Today Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) won a bit of that business from the North Florida Broadband Authority with a five year contract.  The NFBA hopes to expand broadband coverage across 14 under-served counties fom south and west of Jacksonville on to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.  They won this award back in February for wireless broadband and middle mile connectivity, and are now [Read more →]

The two international telecommunications giants Telefonica (NYSE:TEF, news, filings) and China Unicom (NYSE:CHU, news, filings) have taken steps to strengthen their relationship.  Each of the two has agreed to invest an additional $500M in the other, China Unicom via a price based on the prior 30 days of trading of Telefonica stock, and Telefonica via a purchase of China Unicom from third parties in the next nine months.  When complete, the deal will bring Telefonica’s ownership in China Unicom up to 9.7%, with China Unicom’s ownership in Telefonica reaching [Read more →]

Billionaire Carl Icahn is trying once again to buy out minority shareholders of XO Holdings (news, filings).  In an SEC filing yesterday, his vehicle ACF Industries Holding Corp has offered to acquire the common shares he doesn’t already own for $0.70 – which is actually below both the close yesterday of $0.75 and the $0.80 he last bid.  That price is going to satisfy absolutely nobody, especially given upbeat guidance and numbers in the fall.  Other than Icahn of course.  This could be the start of the final season of As XO Turns, but there are many episodes yet to go.  The first question to be resolved is [Read more →]

It will come as no surprise that the FCC’s latest network neutrality effort is being challenged in court.  Actually, I’m somewhat surprised it took this long – I guess all the lawyers spent a bit longer in the Caribbean over the holidays.  But it is just a little bit ironic that it is Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) that is making the challenge, because the rules the FCC passed are more than a little bit similar to the principles that Verizon and Google put down on paper a few [Read more →]