Telecom Ramblings

Along with XO, two other service providers waited until the last minute to file their quarterly reports.

Lightyear of course is still consolidating its status as a public company, following its reverse merger with Libra Alliance.  Therefore, while trends are in flux and out of context, we can at least note just where the company is just now from its 10-Q.  Revenues were [Read more →]

The US arm of Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Communications (NYSE:NTT, news, filings) is expanding the scope of its managed security services.  In partnership with Integralis, NTT America will now be offering strategic security planning, policy development, vulnerability assessment, penetration testing, and other professional services alongside its hosting and network services.   Integralis offers managed security solutions on a global scale that matches up very well with NTT’s international network infrastructure, in fact the two have already apparently [Read more →]

Competitive fiber operator XO Holdings (news, filings) reported its Q1/2010 earnings today after the market closed, which was as usual at the very last possible minute.  Revenues fell sequentially to $369.5M for the quarter as legacy revenues leaked away faster than the company’s Broadband operations could grow.  Adjusted EBITDA was $30.6M for 8.3% adjusted EBITDA margins, which is of course not a particularly inspiring number but par for the course for XO in the first quarter over the years.  Here are their results in the context of the past 4 quarters in tabular form: [Read more →]

For a sector that has been on fire for several years now, the colocation and data center space has had relatively few companies available for investment by the general public in the US marketplace.  And with Switch and Data now part of the growing Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) empire, there are suddenly fewer still.  There are of course the two REITs: Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR, news, filings) and Dupont Fabros Technology (NYSE:DFT, news, filings), and there are Terremark (news, filings) [a subsidiary of Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings)] and Savvis (news, filings) [a subsidiary of CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings)] , but nevertheless there has been a common perception amongst some that Equinix is the only big game in town.  That era seems about to end as a group of dynamic companies are rapidly moving to restore [Read more →]

Cox Business is making further moves in the southwest, announcing a partnership with Phoenix NAP in an effort to help them further serve the SME marketplace. Cox has built dual fiber entries into the 148,000 square foot facility, supported by redundant switching centers.   According to Cox VP Hyman Sukiennik, “Cox Business is significantly expanding our fiber [Read more →]

Lately there have been various research reports hinting or outright speculating about a consolidation event between Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) and glbc.  Additionally, I hear new rumors almost daily about talks between the two, and the frequency of Google searches on the subject that reach this site have been spiking for weeks.  Whether or not there is fire under all that smoke or not, there is a steady buzz of speculation going on right now.  I have written in detail about the strategic attractiveness of this combination before and the hurdles it faced, but it was quite a while ago – almost 2 year now and prior to the recession we are now recovering from.  Does such a deal still make sense?  Oh yes, and I feel that it is more [Read more →]

Yesterday, Cincinnati Bell (NYSE:CBB, news, filings) announced that it will purchase high density datacenter specialist CyrusOne from ABRY Partners for $525M.  The acquisition will add seven data centers in Houston, Dallas, and Austin to their portfolio which already included facilities in Cincinnati and Chicago.  In total, they will have 609K square feet across 17 facilities, which is becoming a rather substantial footprint.  CyrusOne was growing rapidly, rising 86% in 2009 to $58M in 2009 and apparently was already [Read more →]

Here are a few comments on some of the news in the metro fiber space today:

European metro fiber operator euNetworks reported earnings this morning.  Revenues climbed to €8M, up 14% over last year which is quite a reasonable clip considering the economic headwinds.  Gross margins of 80% reflect the company’s increasing focus on its fiber assets, as the percentage of revenue derived from network services rose from 75% last year to [Read more →]

When political blogs collide with the technical world, strange things happen.  It apparently all started when the ThinkProgress blog revealed what it described as a secret powerpoint presentation from April in which corporate and ideological conspirators mapped out a plan to mug network neutrality.    CNET’s Declan McCullagh quickly debunked it as a student project from a Florida competition, however ThinkProgress doesn’t seem to be buying it and the furor seems to be spreading.  The whole thing has me scratching my head, wondering just what could possibly be secret about [Read more →]

They may still be private, but metro and regional fiber operator Zayo Group is acting more and more like a public company.  Today they released an actual fiscal Q3/2010 (Jan-Mar) earnings report for Zayo Group LLC, which consists of Zayo Bandwidth, Zayo Enterprise Networks, and zColo but does not include the Onvoy voice business which was spun off to the parent corporation in March.  Today’s report wasn’t just a quick summary of results; the amount of detail Zayo offered into the operations of its various groups was rather staggering and I’m still digesting much of it.  [Read more →]

Datacenter developer Dupont Fabros Technology (NYSE:DFT, news, filings) has announced that it will sell some 11M shares of stock plus the customary extra 15% that underwriters can sell to cover overallotments.  That will raise more than $250M+ for the company when all is said and done, and will be roughly 25% dilution for shareholders – representing a substantial move.  What will they do with the money?  Well, build more datacenters obviously.  The cash will fund the construction of a new facility in Ashburn, to be called ACC6, and to restart progress on its Silicon Valley project SC1.  That project was put on hold back when [Read more →]

This is a guest post by Alasdair Grant.  Alasdair is Principal of AC Grant & Associates, a Hong Kong based telecoms consultancy.  He is currently finalizing a 4th edition of Australian Telecommunications Regulation and preparing a research report on the NBN initiative.

Last week the Australian Government, bowing to public pressure, released the McKinsey/KPMG implementation study it had commissioned into the initiative it announced just over a year ago to build [Read more →]

Lots of interesting news items today, here are a few with some brief comments:

Covad has joined CENX’s carrier Ethernet exchange, which will broaden the company’s distribution capabilities for its Ethernet offerings.  Covad’s presence in some 4000+ central offices across the country allows them to address more than 10 million businesses in 240 metropolitan statistical areas, which is a lot of potential endpoints to add to CENX’s inventory.  Frankly, the company’s participation in the Ethernet exchange marketplace is something I figured [Read more →]

At the SubOptic tradeshow in Yokohama Japan today Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) and Apollo Submarine Cable System, which is jointly owned by both Alcatel-Lucent and with Cable & Wireless, demonstrated transatlantic speeds totalling 3Tbps.  The feat utilized 72 40Gbps wavelengths on Apollo’s northern cable, crossing some 6221 kilometers. That nearly quadruples the original design capacity, and would double the capacity available on a live system from today’s 10Gbps implementations.   [Read more →]

International service provider glbc has been upgrading its AC-1 transatlantic cable in stages over the past year, and today it was announced that Xtera gear has been powering the effort.  Xtera announced a contract to upgrade Network Segment C between Brookhaven, NY and White Sands, UK.  Last year it also supported the upgrade of Network Segments A and B2, as well as a capacity upgrade on Global Crossing’s PAC cable between Panama and California.   [Read more →]

Competitive services provider TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) has released its first quarter 2010 results, turning in yet another solid performance. Revenues and earnings per share (not including debt extinguishment charges) were both above estimates. Here is a quick table summarizing their results in the context of the prior four quarters: [Read more →]

Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) has integrated 40G coherent technology into its CN4200 platform, bringing higher capacity to metro and regional applications.  The new module will allow customers to use DPQPSK modulation, coherent detection, and electronic dispersion compensation to send four times as much data on a 10G wavelength.  The solution will apparently work over impaired fiber and without network redesign. [Read more →]

I have been reading the various analyses of the FCC’s ‘third way’ to implement network neutrality with some mystification.  Following the Comcast decision, the agency obviously had to make a choice.  While the last mile providers pushed pretty hard to get them to drop the whole thing, I don’t think that was ever realistically going to happen even though there were rumors to that effect.  But reclassification of broadband under Title II would have been overkill with all sorts of side effects.  Their ‘third way’ makes strategic sense, but it isn’t really a third way but simply [Read more →]

Fiber M&A activity may be heating up, but the first such deal to be announced this year won’t be going forward.  In January Cinnabar Ventures announced it was moving to acquire US Metro, a small metro and regional fiber operator with lines crisscrossing the southwestern Florida, with special focus on Fort Myers, Naples, and the surrounding areas.  The idea was a vertically integrated southwest Florida technology company, offering cloud-based services in the region over its own fiber.  Apparently though the details didn’t work out, and [Read more →]

DWDM specialist Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) announced on Friday that its submarine solutions have been deployed on a 6000+ km transatlantic route for a major global telecommunications provider.  In all, the deployment offers 1.76Tbps over a single fiber pair.  Infinera’s gear uses a 25Ghz channel grid, whereas other deployments use a 50Ghz grid.  That allows them to fit more 10Gbps wavelengths onto a single fiber.  Infinera has seen pretty good success in the submarine market given that they entered it less than a year ago.  The provider itself is unnamed but we can take a stab at it via the process of elimination.   [Read more →]

Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings) had a tough act to follow, after its larger competitor Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) surprised the markets.  The question hanging in the air was whether it came at the expense of its smaller rivals or was the CDN pie growing?  With its Q1 report, Limelight suggests that the latter was the case in Q1 as revenues exceeded both guidance and estimates.  Here is a quick table placing their financial results in context with recent performance: [Read more →]

Today is a telecom earnings deluge, it’s raining fiber & data out there today.  Here is a quick summary of the more metro fiber oriented companies in the sector that reported today. [Read more →]

Network operator Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) reported earnings this morning, and their first quarter was a pretty challenging one.  The company is coming off a rough 2009 in which it saw some stabilization in the fourth quarter.  However, the first quarter is seasonally weaker and they were unable to maintain that overall.  Earnings per share of $0.11 were in-line, however EBITDA fell sequentially to $200M, which frankly is not a happy number.  There were some bright spots, especially in the Large Enterprise and Federal grouping and signs of life in the Mid-Market segment.  Here is a quick table summarizing their numbers: [Read more →]