Telecom Ramblings

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 →]

That’s the word coming out of Washington right now.  Unsatisfied with the more obvious choices left to them in the wake of the Comcast decision, FCC Chairman Genachowski has decided to get creative.  He won’t use the Title II sledgehammer to kill a mosquito, by reclassifying broadband.  But he’s also not going to just take his ball and go home.  According to the FCC: [Read more →]

WiMAX operator clwr needed to demonstrate real traction with consumers in its launched markets, and they did so quite powerfully.  They added some 283,000 net new subscribers, of which 172,000 were retail additions, and 111,000 were via their wholesale partners.  That was more than double their Q4 surge of 133K, and well ahead of the sub-200K that most analysts had been looking for.  They finished the first quarter with [Read more →]

Our newly betrothed ILEC couple, q and CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings), both reported Q1 earnings today, telling similar stories of improving performance amidst the usual declines in access lines.

q continued its [Read more →]

Apparently tndm had a bit of a rough first quarter, something that its shareholders are unaccustomed to after years of steady strong growth.  Neither revenues of $44.8M nor earnings of $0.25 was what the markets were looking for.  EBITDA of $20.6M fell sequentially from $22.4M in the prior quarter, although the company did just barely manage sequential revenue growth again.   The company laid the blame on both [Read more →]

The Rural Nebraska Health Care Network announced yesterday a network build that will connect 9 primary care hospitals and dozens of affiliated clinics.  The new fiber will help bring state of the art medical technology networks to underserved areas.  These facilities are currently fed by T1’s – fiber will make a big difference.  They will be partnering with Zayo Group, which will put up a share of the funding, supplemented by some $19M in funds from the FCC’s Rural Health Care Pilot Program.  This was interesting to me, because as far as I know Zayo has no fiber in Nebraska yet.   [Read more →]

Another piece of the puzzle of what CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings) will become is falling into place.  Jointly with Sonus Networks (NASDAQ:SONS, news, filings) today, they announced the successful implementation of a large scale VoIP network that will bring substantial amounts of the largely rural ILEC’s TDM voice traffic onto its core IP backbone.  The new voice network, which was built in under four months, includes [Read more →]

On Thursday morning it will be Level 3’s turn to reveal its Q1 earnings report.  The company has changed the way it will break down its revenues, and we therefore will not be getting information on the four customer facing market groups this time, but rather by customer grouping: Wholesale, Large Enterprise and Federal, Mid-Market, and Europe.  That will make things read a bit differently, but it doesn’t change the basic dynamic of what Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) needs to do this year:  return to revenue growth.  Here is a quick tabular rundown of what I am expecting in the context of the prior two quarters in the new reporting format: [Read more →]

A few more expansive notes from the metro and regional fiber providers:

Intellifiber is celebrating its 500th circuit turned up for the Department of Defense, I hadn’t realized they had that much business with the Feds.  However, given their dense coverage in the mid-Atlantic region and especially [Read more →]

Reporting earnings this morning in advance of this week’s tidal wave of announcements was Savvis (news, filings) [a subsidiary of CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings)] , which last quarter warned of some churn ahead in its colocation business from the financial vertical.  Indeed, revenues of $216.6M were down sequentially for the fourth quarter, but nevertheless that was a couple million above analyst expectations.  The story was similar for EBITDA of $54.0M, down sequentially but a bit higher than expected.  Loss per share of $0.21, however, was slightly larger than anticipated.  Overall though, [Read more →]

WiMAX operator clwr has expanded its coverage again, this time into central Pennsylvania.  Now formally under the WiMAX umbrella are the cities of Harrisburg, Lancaster, Reading, and York.  Total coverage area across these markets adds up to 271 square miles and some three quarters of a million people.  This coverage goes well with the company’s existing Philadelphia and Baltimore markets, and looks like this across the region: [Read more →]

Last week, a lesser known network operator made a further move on the low latency, high speed trading marketplace, and unlike most is including actual numbers in its PR.  First Communications announced that it has cut 1.4ms off its route between the New York and Chicago metro areas.  More specifically, they can now offer just under 17.2ms latency connectivity between the major facilities at 350 E Cermak in Chicago and 165 Halsey in Newark.  The reduced latency number is attributed to the implementation of recent [Read more →]

Earlier this month, I took a look at one of the more exotic broadband stimulus applications – XO’s proposed Northern Lights from Washington to Illinois.  As it turns out, 360Networks isn’t too pleased with this concept, as detailed in an open letter to Congress.  Their own network covers a largely similar route, which derives from the old Touch America build back in the bubble that many may have forgotten about.  Just how similar is it?  Here is a 360Network’s map of the overlap: [Read more →]

Here are several small equipment deals lately that caught my eye:

Mexican provider MetroNet is claiming to have turned up the first 10GbE MPLS metro ring in Mexico, using Orckit-Corrigent gear.  I am just beginning to learn a bit about the Mexican market.  With the 40GbE and 100GbE standards about to come out, I was a bit surprised to hear that until now Ethernet services were so limited south of the border.  I wonder how long before they turn up a [Read more →]

Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) surprised the market yesterday with a its second sequential truly powerful earnings report, exceeding even that of the seasonally high fourth quarter.  The stock closed up some 19% on the day at 39.63.  That’s about four times the low it hit back in November of 2008 at the height of the fiscal crisis when everyone was worried about the company’s ability to fend off a gaggle of competitors.  The company’s change in pricing policy in the second half of 2009 has been a huge success thus far.  What do the numbers look like, you ask?  Here’s a table putting them in context: [Read more →]

There has been quite a flurry of interesting bandwidth and fiber deals in the past few days, let’s take a quick look at each in turn:

360Networks announced that it is providing the fiber connectivity underlying the rural broadband wireless solution being rolled out by Frontier Telenet.  Frontier TeleNet is [Read more →]

As anticipated, international network operator glbc reported Q1 earnings today after the market closed, with seasonality slowing them down a bit.  Guidance for the full year was reiterated, which necessarily implies a substantial ramp in performance over the balance of the year.   [Read more →]

Well, perhaps ‘sprints’ is a bit too strong but it has been such a long time in coming…  Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) finally returned to sequential revenue growth in the its earnings report for the first quarter of 2010.  Revenues of $8.085B were up 3% sequentially and a bit better than the consensus estimates.  Loss per share was also a bit better than expected at $0.17 not including a $0.12 non-cash charge related to valuation of deferred tax assets.  The pain still isn’t over at Sprint, but perhaps they have finally [Read more →]

On Thursday morning, Global Crossing will host its earnings conference call, which means that they will likely release their results today after the market closes.  As the first of the nextgen carriers to report and as one of the larger competitive telecoms that is frequently covered here on Telecom Ramblings, it is time to offer is a quick tabular preview of what to expect in the context of 2009 and guidance. [Read more →]

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When the FCC lost its court case against Comcast over the ability to enforce network neutrality, it turned much of last year’s efforts to define the rules into something of a moot point.  The commission is now getting all sorts of advice on how to handle things and reimpose the authority it thought it had before, but it’s of little use. [Read more →]

Nobody talks much about Earthlink (NASDAQ:ELNK, news, filings) anymore, but they’re still out there and they’re still generating quite a bit of cash.  Their first quarter seems to have gone particularly well.  Revenues of $157.3M were above both guidance and estimates, as were earnings per share of $0.25 and free cash flow of $54.2M.  So much so that the company raised full year EBITDA guidance to $194-$202M and increased their quarterly dividend by 14%.  Hopefully some of that good cheer will [Read more →]

The media is reporting that the cable industry is now looking beyond Docsis 3.0 to a new standard that can support as much as 5Gbps, which on the surface would seem to allow their coax to keep up and perhaps even surpass fiber.  But the situation is far more complicated than this.  Actually, cable is already offering this speed, it’s just that most of it is already carrying traffic that we call cable TV.  The 64 billion dollar question here is what happens to that cable TV traffic if all the spectrum is dedicated toward broadband. [Read more →]