Telecom Ramblings

It has been quite a year for consolidation in the fiber/CLEC space, with more than twenty deals of various types taking place.  But with the exception of the CenturyLink/Qwest deal, nearly everything that has been bought has been in the $500M range or smaller – usually much smaller.  Back in September, I put together a tally of the deals that had happened until then.  Of course, there’s still room for a few more before the end of the year, but let’s dare fate and update that list here with the various deals that have been announced since. [Read more →]

Time to catch up some recent news of interest.

Metro fiber operator abvt announced another strategic expansion, but this time it isn’t into a new market but rather deeper into a more familiar space.  They are expanding their sales efforts within carrier neutral datacenters across their footprint, both those they are currently connected to and new ones which they will bring on-net.  Sounds like a no-brainer to me.  But actually, word has it that Abovenet has [Read more →]

In what was one of the less definitive notes of December, Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) offered the markets an update on its relationship with WiMAX protagonist clwr.  I say ‘less definitive’, because their update was mainly to tell us what they might or might not do: [Read more →]

I don’t know how I missed it at the time, but last week Zayo Group (news, filings) unveiled yet another investment into its Fiber-to-the-tower program.  While the supra-regional fiber operator had already put money into FTT projects around Memphis, this new deployment will add another 34 cell sites both in Memphis and now across the southern border into northern Mississippi, including such towns as Southaven and Olive Branch (see map snippet below).  [Read more →]

Over on the Ramblings’ jobs board, we have two new listings from Zayo Bandwidth.  Zayo always seems to be expanding on multiple fronts, and it’s nice to see a bit of hiring just a few months after closing the AFS purchase and as winter is about to officially begin (someone remind Minneapolis that winter hasn’t started yet!).  First, Zayo is looking for a Sales Engineer, responsible for providing coaching and development to Carrier Account Executives, and providing technical support throughout the sales process.  Second, Zayo is looking for [Read more →]

I had thought the fiber M&A frenzy would ebb for the holidays, but no.  Following closely on the heels of Sidera’s purchase of LIFE, Lightower Fiber Networks has struck again, making its third acquisition this year.  This morning the northeastern regional and metro fiber operator announced the acquisition of Open Access Inc.  Open Access is based in Farmingdale, NY, and operates a fiber network across Long Island and into Manhattan, with over 400 route miles and 230 fiber-fed buildings as well as a tier-2 colocation facility at their headquarters.   [Read more →]

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to talk once again with AboveNet’s Chief Executive Officer, Bill LaPerch, who today makes a return visit to Telecom Ramblings’ Industry Spotlight series.  Few companies have weathered the economic storms of the last several years better than AboveNet, which resurfaced from near oblivion about two years ago and has been one of the best turnaround stories in the sector ever since.  This year, they have eschewed (thus far) the spasm of M&A that has engulfed the metro fiber sector in favor of expansion into new markets, very solid organic growth, and a recently announced special dividend.  With no further ado: [Read more →]

sidera announced today that it has agreed to purchase the Long Island Fiber Exchange (LIFE).  In doing so, they and their new owners, ABRY Partners, have made a down payment on their promise to use the former RCN Metro assets as a platform for consolidation in the metro fiber space.   [Read more →]

Earlier this week, Bloomberg and others reported that a group of European wireless operators are renewing their call for Google, Apple, and others like them to help pay for network upgrades.  France Telecom, Telecom Italia, and Vodafone say that they need content providers to pay fees based on usage, lest the cost of upgrades outstrip revenue growth.  That’s the general concept, but what exactly are they asking for?  Because the details are everything. [Read more →]

Time to catch up on a few of the goings-on with clouds and data centers this week:

Yesterday saw two cloud wins for Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) from opposite sides of the globe.  In Amsterdam, the longtime Dutch ISP Cyso has moved into Equinix’s brand new AM2 facility in Amsterdam.  From there Cyso will [Read more →]

Telecommunications equipment maker Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) reported fiscal Q4 and 2010 earnings this morning, bringing what they correctly call transformative year to an end.  Revenue of $417.6M were up 7% from the prior quarter and were solidly above expectations for the period ending on Oct 31.  Of that, some $255.6M came from the Nortel MEN assets, meaning that the original Ciena business managed $161M or so, down sequentially from $168M in the prior quarter.  In other words, the Nortel assets outperformed, while Ciena’s original business lagged somewhat.  However, from here on out it’s the aggregate [Read more →]

Back in September, privately held CLEC One Communications threw its hat into the M&A ring, hiring Blackstone to help it explore strategic alternatives following its sale of its FiberNet business.  According to a Reuters article, final bids were due on Tuesday (Dec 7), exactly ninety days later.  The sale process is described as lukewarm, however the sellers appear motivated and hence I [Read more →]

Following closely on the closing of its acquisition of FiberNet from One Communications, nTelos (NASDAQ:NTLS, news, filings) has revealed just what it plans to do with the assets.  They plan to split the combined entity into two independent companies, separating the wireless and wireline businesses into two public companies.  The transaction will be structured as a tax free distribution of shares in the new, still un-named [Read more →]

Several other items came out yesterday that are worthy of a quick look:

IPC Systems has expanded its presence in the UK, moving into Telecity’s Sovereign House in the Docklands area of London.  IPC specializes in communications services for the financial sector, which means they are very involved in the low [Read more →]

AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) has had a bit of an up and down week in the press.  Their wireless network got very low marks in a satisfaction survey put out by Consumer Reports.  While US Cellular earned top honors and Verizon and Sprint earned some bragging rights, AT&T’s iPhone owners remain decidedly unimpressed with their network service.  I suspect some of this is perception – if you’ve got the phone of your dreams, then the thing holding you back from the full bandwidth nirvana experience must be [Read more →]

Ok, I’m a sucker for data stories in outer space, luckily they don’t come around all that often.  Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) offered an update on its Internet Routing in Space (IRIS) testing.  They achieved two goals,  First, they remotely upgraded an IP router aboard a commercial satellite while in orbit.  And second, they completed the first VoIP call made without any terrestrial help – no ground based hubs along the way. [Read more →]

The whole Sprint/Clearwire thing has been a complicated dance for years now, and while it never gets any simpler the future of both seem to be gaining a bit of clarity this week.  For its part, Sprint unveiled its upgrade plans for its wireless business, awarding no less than three equipment contracts for their plans to consolidate their many separate networks onto one platform, the heart of which is a multi-mode base station supporting CDMA, iDEN, and WiMAX.  The new gear also keeps the option of LTE available, while the iDEN portion will be phased [Read more →]

SubtelForum reports that WFN Strategies has won a subcontract from ARINC for continued development of a terrestrial broadband network between McMurdo Station and Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which sits, as its name suggests, directly on the geographical south pole.  Specifically, the plans are for a broadband link following a recently developed 1600km overland traverse.  They didn’t say so explicitly, but I think they mean the one pictured to the left here, which points to a wikipedia image. [Read more →]

Over the weekend I read this piece by StreamZilla’s Stef van der Ziel taking Comcast’s side of last week’s public dispute with Level 3, and it got me thinking about just how it affects them.  The obvious temptation is for pure CDNs see Level 3 as a competitor who uses its ownership of a tier 1 backbone to lower its costs and thus gain the advantage of a lower cost structure.  And that Level 3 seeks to do this is not in question, owning the network is a key ingredient of their whole approach.  But I think that pure CDNs also have something to fear from a last mile provider bending transit networks over a barrel.  Why?  Because the rates that major CDNs pay to companies like Comcast for paid peering are intertwined with the fortunes of the IP transit marketplace. [Read more →]

Now that some of the dust has settled and all the pundits have had a chance to weigh in, it’s time for a poll.  However, instead of a straight vote for Level 3 or Comcast which would turn into a popularity contest, I thought it would be more interesting to look at the many actual points of dispute that have been raised either by the two companies or by various opinionators (myself included).  I’ve given you my take, what’s yours? [Read more →]

Apparently, December 1 was the target date for many of the fiber M&A’s of 2010 that had remained outstanding.  Along with the completion of the Lightower/Lexent and Windstream/Hosted-Solutions deals I mentioned already there were no less than three more.

Largest amongst them was of course the Windstream purchase of KDL/Norlight for $818M, which furthers its evolution into something more than a [Read more →]

Seeking the financial firepower to keep its buildout rolling, clwr announced today that it intends to raise more than $1.1B in cash through the sale of debt securities.  That they are raising cash will surprise absolutely no one, as they still need lots of it to continue their buildout and stand a chance many years down the line of achieving the scale necessary to fund themselves.  Is $1.1B enough?  Probably not in and of itself, but it would get the train back on the tracks for another year – assuming they are able to find [Read more →]

With the Comcast/Level3 dustup dominating the news this week, lots of other items worth attention haven’t gotten any.  

SDN communications, which supplies bandwidth to South Dakota and the surrounding region, has deployed the ATN metro gear of Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) as part of the $20M stimulus project it won.  SDN has had a longstanding relationship with Infinera, even showing up as a top 10 customer [Read more →]