Telecom Ramblings

TGIF, let’s close out the week with a quick look at a few more recent items:

Emphasizing the importance of power availability nowadays, Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR, news, filings) today deeded over a parcel of land in its Santa Clara Datacenter Park to Silicon Valley Power.  The utility will build a 65MW general distribution substation, apparently named [Read more →]

Two companies that haven’t really been on my radar made M&A news yesterday.  pmug will be buying arbx in an all stock transaction valued at about $28M.  The purchase will add some $300M+ in annual revenues to Primus’s $800M, bringing their total annual revenues to above $1B and that of their wholesale division to more than [Read more →]

Not willing to be forgotten the Netflix/Level 3/Akamai story, Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings) has also spoken up today.  In a post on their corporate blog, the company noted that there also “a primary CDN provider” for Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX, news, filings), the deal is also a multi-year one that expands in 2011, and they are already storing all 20,000 titles.  Thus, while the information we have is surely incomplete, it does seem to suggest parity between the Level 3 and Limelight contributions toward Netflix’s streaming services in 2011.  Of course, Limelight and Level 3 are very different [Read more →]

It’s a bit anti-climactic now of course, since the news came out on Tuesday already and caused quite a ruckus for the stock prices of the three content delivery networks involved.  But this morning Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX, news, filings) made it official, and offered a few more details on the multi-year contract.  One thing to note is that the PR names Level 3 as ‘primary’ CDN provider for Netflix, which suggests that they may get a bigger share of this than Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings) does and certainly have displaced [Read more →]

While still small in the grand scheme of things, European metro specialist euNetworks turned in another strong quarter of growth – further suggesting that independent metro fiber in Europe is finally coming of age.  Revenues of €10.3M were up 40% from the same quarter last year, and up almost 10% sequentially as well.  Adjusted EBITDA, which reached break-even just last quarter, rose to €0.8M.  During the quarter, they unveiled new low latency routes between London, Slough and Frankfurt, and have apparently signed [Read more →]

Telecommunications giant Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) is planning to take another step down the 100G path.  Last year the company deployed a 100G optical transmission system in Europe on the 893km route between Paris and Frankfurt.  Now, by the end of 2010, they will deploy a standards-based 100 Gigabit Ethernet link on that same route for its IP network.  The solution will use Juniper’s routers and Ciena’s coherent optical transport solution, allowing them to establish [Read more →]

Carrying the tech world on its shoulders must be tiring for Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings), given the thanklessness of the task.  In their fiscal Q1 earnings report today, the equipment giant reported revenues of $10.75B and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.42, both of which exceeded analyst forecasts.   That happy news was greeted by a 13% decline in the stock price after hours, which when you’re as big as Cisco is a $15B haircut in marketcap.  [Read more →]

Not a lot of big news today, which offers us a chance to catch up on some items I didn’t follow up on yet:

Up in Canada, upstart metro equipment provider BTI Systems raised new funds and reworked their balance sheet for the next phase of their growth.  The arrangement includes $11M in new financing from existing investors as well as increases in credit facilities and reduction in long term liabilities.  BTI expects to top [Read more →]

Hmmm, perhaps I’ll have to expand my definition of on-net buildings even further.  Yesterday, Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) announced that it will be working with Stratus Global to improve offshore communications for the oil and gas industry.  Offshore as in oil rigs, platforms, and vessels in the Gulf of Mexico.  The two year agreement is for $5.2M, and will bring reliable voice service, corporate VPNs, high-speed Internet connectivity, and wi-fi hotspots. [Read more →]

Competitive fiber operator Zayo Group (news, filings) is planning a major initiative up north in Minnesota, according to a new PR today.  With the acquisition of American Fiber Systems, the stimulus award they picked up for the area earlier this year, and the regional fiber that came along with the Onvoy assets a couple of years ago, Zayo now has a very solid footprint in and around the Minneapolis/St.Paul metropolitan area.  The new build plans will extend the company’s total Minnesota mileage to 1700 and add service to some 350 wireless towers.  Along with the twin cities, coverage will be added or increased in [Read more →]

There have been several items over the past day or two from fiber operators worth a quick take:

XO Holdings (news, filings) continued its recent series of expansions with another such effort in Phoenix.  The company has added some 130 miles to its metro network on the east side into Chandler, Gilbert and Mesa offering potential access to some 200 more buildings.  They have also deployed Ethernet over copper more broadly in Phoenix as well.  Hanging overhead of course is [Read more →]

That’s the word according to Dan Rayburn, and it matches what I’ve been hearing since my post last week about Level 3’s CDN push.  Multiple sources that are almost certainly independent of Dan’s have now told me that the new content customer won in October for whom Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) is spending $15M in capex is in fact Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX, news, filings).  But that Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) may be the one taking it on the chin is a new one on me, though I doubt we will hear for sure until it’s time for Q4 earnings and 2011 projections.  I somehow doubt that [Read more →]

IP communications specialist Broadsoft (NASDAQ:BSFT, news, filings) put forward its strongest earnings quarter since going public back in June.  According to Yahoo Finance, the company was expected to achieve revenues of $19.6M and a non-GAAP loss per share of  $0.07, which it easily beat with $22.3M in revenues and actual earnings per share of $0.08.  Perhaps they don’t yet have BroadSoft’s measure on Wall Street just yet.  Here is a quick table of the company’s results in the context of the first two quarters of 2010: [Read more →]

Global IP solutions provider glbc announced today that it is providing Office Depot with an MPLS network supporting data and voice services.  The office supply provider will use the connectivity to hook up more than 100 warehouse and distribution centers and large customer sites across the US, Europe, China, and Israel.  This is a three year deal meant to complement [Read more →]

Ever since their merger announcement back in April, CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings) and q have been rather quiet, busily working behind the scenes cutting through red tape to get approval from everyone they need to get approval from.  And that doesn’t just mean state PUCs and federal agencies, as shown by today’s announcement that they have come to terms with the CLEC Integra Telecom.  It’s not that they needed approval from the competition (else none of these would ever go through) but rather that Integra could [Read more →]

On Friday, a wide-ranging group of thinkers filed a statement with the FCC in response to an otherwise unassuming NPRM entitled “Further Inquiry into Two Under-developed Issues in the Open Internet Proceeding“.  What they had to say was not for or against the NPRM itself.  Rather, they simply praised how it separated the concept of the internet from that of specialized services.  Several then followed up with blog posts.  David P. Reed’s was particularly well formed, including this section: [Read more →]

Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings) added to the evidence of a growing CDN pie with its third quarter results.  Revenues of $49.8M were very strong, above its own guidance of $46.5-48.5M and ahead of analyst expectations of $47.8.  For the fourth quarter, they expect revenues of $51.5-53.5M which is roughly inline with expectations, though perhaps [Read more →]

For clwr life has always been a race, but I’m not referring to LTE and WiMAX.  Clearwire’s race has always been against itself and itself.  By that I mean the triple competition between how much cash it can raise, how fast it can spend that cash to build out the infrastructure, and how quickly subscribers sign on to use it.  In yesterday’s earnings release, we saw awesome subscriber growth, steady spending and building, but a faltering effort to raise money to keep it all going.  And unless they fix that last part, the race will soon end – so they took some drastic actions to give themselves some breathing room. [Read more →]

Windstream (NYSE:WIN, news, filings) has been quite busy this year already, but they aren’t done yet. Today the company announced its intention to acquire Hosted Solutions from the private equity firm ABRY for $310M.  Hosted Solutions operates multiple data centers in Raleigh, Charlotte, and Boston.  The acquisition will bring Windstream’s datacenter count up to 12, and will add 65K square feet to their footprint.  Hosted Solutions did $51.7M in revenue in the twelve months ending on September 30, 2010, with $25.7M in adjusted EBITDA.  Those are some pretty [Read more →]

As expected, four metro fiber operators have reported earnings either after the bell yesterday or this morning.  Let’s take a look through the results we previewed yesterday:

TW Telecom – Overall, Q3 results were perfectly inline with my expectations.  Eerie actually, it doesn’t usually work out that well.  Revenues were perhaps a tad [Read more →]

Time to catch up in the metro fiber segment, which will bring me back up to date following the tsunami of sector news this week.

Tops on the list is the departure of Zayo Bandwidth’s President and COO John Scarano.  Scarano and Caruso go way, way back, through several generations of the bandwidth industry all the way to its first metro fiber play at MFS before it was sold to Worldcom.  Citing the end of his original four year contract and an interest in moving to the next phase of his career, Mr. Scarano explained that [Read more →]

Enough of earnings for the moment, and back to raw theoretical traffic consumption.  The pan-European research network GÉANT is taking the plunge into 100G with an upgrade to key portions of their backbone.  They plan to procure the equipment during 2011 with rollout of the upgrade by mid 2012.  No word on whose equipment they will use, I’m sure that will involve some sort of [Read more →]

Occasionally, the planets align in a certain formation or something and everyone in the sector picks the same day to release earnings.  This November 4 is one of those times, with a dozen or so providers deciding that there is strength in numbers, or perhaps just safety.  Four of those providers are operators of substantial metro and intercity fiber that I cover regularly – TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings), abvt, Cogent Communications (NASDAQ:CCOI, news, filings), and PAETEC (news, filings) – and therefore in the interests of brevity I will limit myself to this group when making projections in advance of the announcements. [Read more →]