Telecom Ramblings

Rising competitive metro and regional fiber operator Zayo made several major moves last week, following up on last month’s purchase of AGL Networks.  First, of all they have accessed the credit markets, selling $250M in notes due 2017 at a rate of 10.25%.  They will use the money in part to refinance their existing credit facilities, but $250M is quite a bit more than they need for that purpose.  The remainder will go into the ‘general corporate purposes’ war chest, which in the case of Zayo always includes possible additional strategic M&A.   [Read more →]

Yesterday’s blockbuster M&A deal between CenturyLink and Qwest brought in a whole lot of readers looking for answers.  I don’t pretend to have them all, but of course that has never stopped me before and won’t today either.  However, please do not hesitate to correct my ramblings in the comments below! [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) has two interesting announcements out this morning.

First is a nice contract  with the television network ABC.  They will bring ABC’s Broadcast Operations Center on-net, and install its Managed Video Network Servics (MVNS) at the New York, Washington, and Los Angeles bureaus of ABC News.  The offering includes [Read more →]

In big M&A news today, CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings) and q have announced their plans to merge.  There have been lots of rumors crossing my desk lately, but I have to admit this wasn’t one of them.  That doesn’t mean it’s surprising, it’s just the mother of all RLEC consolidation deals, with the Qwest longhaul network tagging along for the ride.  So what will the combined company look like?   [Read more →]

Competitive fiber operator TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) has been rather quiet of late, but in the past two days has announced a couple of interesting contracts.

Today it was a 12 location deal with Covenant Church, which ministers to some 15,000 people in North Texas.  It’s an expansion of an existing relationship in which they will supply co-location, voice, data and Internet services, enabling Covenant Church to stream [Read more →]

The industry’s 800lb gorilla AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) reported Q1 earnings today, with few surprises.  Revenues of $30.6B were in-line, and earnings per share of $0.59 was a nickel above expectations after discounting that non-cash health care charge everyone was talking about last month.  AT&T’s earnings releases always amaze me.  For a company that seems to report quarterly revenue in a tight range of $30.5-30.9B quarter after quarter after quarter after quarter, they always have such a long list of high growth segments to highlight [Read more →]

ftwr won a key Ethernet backhaul deal helping MetroPCS (NYSE:PCS, news, filings) build out their LTE network, the initial launch of which is scheduled for sometime in the second half of this year.  FiberTower uses a hybrid approach to its backhaul networks, leasing or building metro dark fiber where it makes sense and using wireless backhaul to extend coverage where it doesn’t.  The relationship is not a new one, FiberTower has been supporting MetroPCS’s wireless footprint in several markets since 2005.  With this new deal, MetroPCS will be able to scale backhaul from its towers from a few megabits per second up to 1Gbps or more if the need arises – thus meeting the needs of the bandwidth-hungry [Read more →]

Both Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) and Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) reported earnings after the bell.  Both beat their guidance, and both exceeded published analyst estimates by a bit, but both stocks had been up in the past couple months in anticipation of such an event and thus beating expectations was a formidable task.  That being said, [Read more →]

A coalition of eight service providers specializing in nextgen hosted IP voice and data communications have announced the creation of the Cloud Communications Alliance (CCA).  As the consortium name suggests, the idea is to take the new architectures and approaches of cloud computing and apply them to IP voice service platforms.  It’s easy to get lost in the definition (or lack thereof) of what the cloud is when trying to envision [Read more →]

Today after the market closes, two of the most dynamic telecommunications equipment companies will kick off the Q1/10 earnings season:  Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) and Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings).  Together, they will give us a pretty good first look into how the equipment sector has been faring, as well as offer an initial view into carrier spending.   Here’s a quick look at each company’s guidance and current analyst expectations in the context of their 2009 performances.  Q1/09 was at the very bottom of the recession, so of course all trends point upward sharply right now.   But Q1 isn’t [Read more →]

In a release today, Force10 Networks revealed its plans to run with 40GbE in the near future.  The 40GbE and 100GbE standards are now (finally!) pending, and in its preparations to roll out gear they have for now chosen the slower but more affordable speed.  Force10 will be adding the higher speed to its 10GbE top-of-rack access switch for converging Fibre Channel and Ethernet fabrics, and its E- and C- Series switches are already [Read more →]

Ah the perils of depending on a few lines of communication.  For the Middle East, international bandwidth and the rather long acronym SeaMeWe are almost synonymous.  When SeaMeWe-4 goes down, lots of countries see degraded service (or worse), and the Mediterranean is just a tough place for undersea cables overall – lots of activity and not much route diversity.  This time there is a fault between Marseilles and Egypt, and a cable ship is of course en route to the scene – which by now we perhaps should start calling a patrol. [Read more →]

Regional fiber operator Intellifiber has opened its low latency route between the New York and Chicago metro areas.   Readers of this site will have heard about it before, since Telecom Ramblings first mentioned it not long after New Years.  Raw speed simply dominates the financial vertical right now when it comes to bandwidth, and the NY-Chicago route is very competitive.  Therefore it is not a surprise that several financial institutions are already on board.  [Read more →]

I have been battling a cold over the past few days, so it’s time to catch up a bit on the news items that slipped past my nets last week.

Western regional service provider 360Networks announced further enhancements to its wholesale VoIP platform.  They now offer support for SMS/MMS and a new metered inbound pricing model.  I keep wondering what lies in [Read more →]

Last month, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) announced that it had quintupled the Ethernet switches in its core network.  After discussions with the company it is clear that what was just phase 1 of an Ethernet offensive that is now well into phase 2, which entails offering Ethernet Switched Access (ESA) via new equipment that is being deployed across its entire network footprint.  By being able to offer ESA, Level 3 can offer more flexible products and pricing to the [Read more →]

The metro fiber sector has of course been remarkably strong for several years.  However since much of it is in private hands, public data points are sparse and many don’t realize just how good business is these days.   One of the more dynamic private companies out there right now is FiberLight, which operates metro and regional fiber across 21 markets with especially deep coverage in Texas, the Washington DC and Baltimore metro area, Atlanta, and in Florida.  FiberLight was previously the division of Xspedius that built the company’s more recent fiber networks, but it followed a separate path when [Read more →]

Content delivery network Edgecast has found itself another carrier partner, this time in the southern Hemisphere.  Today they are announcing an agreement with Australian service provider AAPT, who will join Global Crossing and DT in partnering their way into the CDN business.  Australia tends to be a tough place for outsiders to distribute content due to the low population density and long distances both to and within the region.  Therefore, such a partnership is probably the ideal [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) today announced enhancements to its low latency services between major financial destinations in New York and Chicago.  Along with improved performance, they now offer two different levels of SLA’d service.  Level 3 has specialized routes serving this market segment between DC and Chicago, Chicago and NYC, NYC and London, and London-Frankfurt.   They are now also able to offer protected configurations in which *both* [Read more →]

First AGL sold to Zayo, then Fibertech began looking, and now reliable sources tell me that NSTAR Communications is actively seeking bidders.  In the metro fiber business NSTAR flies largely under the radar, without even a website to point to.  Nevertheless, the company has a valuable footprint in Boston and out into the suburbs that covers over 250 high fiber count route miles, and a couple hundred or so on-net buildings.  Apparently, their energy utility parent NSTAR is looking to monetize the asset in a favorable market just as [Read more →]

We may be waiting for Google to show fiber operators how it’s done with its 1Gbps community fiber project, but over in Hong Kong it’s already becoming reality.  Today HKBN, a subsidiary of City Telecom (NASDAQ:CTEL, news, filings), introduced a residential 1Gbps symmetric service for the equivalent of just $26/month.  That’s just double the price they charge for their 100Mb/s offering, which just came out in November.  [Read more →]

Seems like this story isn’t going to go away any time soon and I’m curious what this site’s well-informed readers think of the business models being unveiled by the likes of Equinix, CENX, and Neutral Tandem.  Is the hype ahead of reality, or behind it?  Cast your vote: [Read more →]

Following quickly on yesterday’s European expansion, CENX has drawn another network operator into its carrier Ethernet Exchange.  Today XO Holdings (news, filings) announced it has now connected to the community, bringing its extensive Ethernet footprint to the table.  XO has quite a bit of metro fiber and more than three thousand on-net buildings, but it also has a substantial Ethernet over copper footprint. [Read more →]

Several news items recently on the multinational front:

Hibernia Media and Tata Communications (news, filings) have teamed up for media services, pooling their respective network assets for greater coverage.  Hibernia Media is the new name for MediaXstream, the video networking provider led by industry veteran Del Bothof that Hibernia Atlantic purchased over the winter.  The combination of [Read more →]