Telecom Ramblings

Over the past week or two there have been several news items in the metro space that managed to slip past my nets, so let’s play a bit of catch-up.

NYC area metro specialist Lexent Metro Connect is expanding further into New Jersey.  First they are planning to pull fiber into Telx 100 Delawanna facility in Clifton, which has emerged as a key link in the low latency financial networking chain.  But Lexent is also heading further south, [Read more →]

Rumor has it that company-wide layoffs are about to hit XO Holdings (news, filings), an event which would put the COO Wayne M. Rehberger’s announced departure earlier this week in an entirely new light.  The company may actually announce the workforce action publicly on Friday, but I’m not holding my breath given that XO usually only tells the outside world what it is legally required to.  The full scope of the layoffs are not yet clear, but internal rumors peg them as high as [Read more →]

A few news items in the metro fiber space:

Optimum Lightpath continues to expand its network into key financial centers.  Today at the CBX event they announced that they have pulled fiber into the Telx colocation and interconnection facility in Clifton NJ, 100 Delawanna Avenue.  The expansion will help [Read more →]

Colocation and interconnection provider Telx is formally unveiling its Ethernet Exchange platform today at its CBX event.  Over the next nine months, the company will open interconnection points in seven datacenters nationwide, with the first customers as part of a charter program in the third quarter.  The first locations will be [Read more →]

I love the outrage.  I mean, for the media and blogosphere to act shocked and hurt when they’ve been preparing for over a year for some wireless carrier to try this – it’s hard man, real hard.  So AT&T is finally going to try its hand at bandwidth caps for its 3G wireless plans, and unsurprisingly they are deflecting the blame onto the people who love their product the most err I mean waste the most bandwidth.  Lower prices for the good, decent users who love having bandwidth at their fingertips but use it sparingly, and higher prices for the evil, gluttonous, bandwidth hogs who ruin it for the rest.  Ok, well maybe they didn’t quite say it that way, but still…   [Read more →]

Several news items lately that are worthy of note:

Clearwire continues to advance, and this week they formally began service in Kansas City and central Washington DC, and they extended their Baltimore coverage to 725 square miles.  In DC, coverage for the wider metro area will apparently follow over the next few months.  Once complete though, WiMAX will be available [Read more →]

In a $725M deal, datacenter REIT Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR, news, filings) has agreed to purchase the datacenters managed by 365 Main from joint ventures controlled by Rockwood Capital.  In total, the properties cover some 919K square feet of built out space, which is leased out to some 200 tenants right now.  For them of course, the ownership change probably won’t mean much more than a new place to send the rent checks.  The portfolio also includes another 250K square feet of potential space in Arizona waiting for development, as well as [Read more →]

Today we will cross the Atlantic and take a closer look at euNetworks, which operates a metro and intercity footprint stretching across 15 markets in 6 countries in Western Europe.  Their metro assets derive from the European buildout of MFN a decade ago, and are connected by intercity fiber that came from a deal with Viatel a few years ago.  Given the recent successful resurgence of the [Read more →]

Datacenter, hosting, and cloud services provider Savvis (news, filings) [a subsidiary of CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings)] has agreed to acquire Fusepoint, a Canadian based company with a rather similar portfolio of colocation and IT services.  The price tag is $124.5M in cash, which will buy annualized revenue of about $47.4M and EBITDA of $12M.  That’s a 10x EBITDA multiple, but there are likely to be [Read more →]

Internet Initiative Japan has signed an agreement to purchase the Japanese domestic outsourcing business of AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings).  The $100M deal will see some 1,600 customers change hands, as well as approximately 250 AT&T employees.   AT&T is not leaving Japan of course, they are just going to focus mainly on the [Read more →]

International online game publisher UTV True Games will be leveraging services from both Level 3 and its solutions partner Solid State Networks.  UTV True games offers massively multi-player online games (MMOGs), and will use Level 3’s caching and download services, origin storage, and Content Analytics reporting service alongside Solid State Network’s integrated game publishing software. [Read more →]

The consolidation wave in metro fiber continues to grow.  First there was AGL, then there was Veroxity, and Fibertech and NStar are known to be seeking bids as well.  But in the past few days I have heard from no less than three independent sources that the next to go very well may be Intellifiber, which is  of course the metro and regional fiber arm of Cavalier Telephone.  If true, it would surprise me a bit as Cavalier’s [Read more →]

Over on the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from CENIC, which is seeking an Infrastructure & Facilities Engineer.  The primary responsibility will be to will provide support for the design, acquisition, installation and maintenance of CENIC’s telecommunications fiber and colocation facilities.  For more information or to apply, [Read more →]

In my post earlier this week about dark fiber and unintended consequences, I looked at the new longhaul buildout by Allied Fiber from the point of view of other longhaul fiber operators.  But that made it sound as if Allied Fiber is an unwelcome entrant to the sector, which would be true only for a small subset of the industry.  Allied Fiber has many allies that hope to see it succeed: [Read more →]

Datacenter and cloud specialist Terremark (news, filings) [a subsidiary of Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings)] reported earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2010, which ended March 31.  Revenues for the quarter were $82.5M, up 11% sequentially and up 20% over the same quarter last year.  Likewise, adjusted EBITDA of $26.5M was up strongly from $19.8M in the prior quarter and $22.1M in the same quarter last year.  As strong as that was, it was mostly expected:  slightly [Read more →]

Several interesting items today under the waves that don’t involve oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

Pacnet and Gulf Bridge International have sealed a partnership agreement, whereby both network operators will be able to extend their footprints.  Pacnet will have extra connectivity with the Persian Gulf and on to Europe, and GBI will have access to the new [Read more →]

RCN Metro, the metro fiber division of RCN Business (NASDAQ:RCNI, news, filings), has decided to join the growing Ethernet exchange movement.  Which exchange, you ask?  Why all of them of course!  In New York and Chicago, RCN Metro is adding connections to the exchanges operated by Equinix, CENX, and Neutral Tandem, and possibly other companies and markets as well in the future.   [Read more →]

Another day, another few hundred thousand square feet of colocation space to be constructed.  This time it’s Data Foundry, which operates in Texas and is planning to build a brand new 250K square foot facility in Austin.  It will be able to deliver 100MW of power using feeds from two independent substations in order to handle.  The facility will cost about $150M and Phase 1 (the first 130K square feet) is expected to be finished in Q2/2011.  Here’s what it will look like: [Read more →]

It’s not often we hear about an expansion from Sprint’s Wireline division, as the company has been run to maintain cash flow rather than revenue and capex has been amongst the lowest in the sector.  But yesterday Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) they announced that they have added the Stockton CA, Central and Northern New Jersey, and Baltimore MD markets to their Ethernet footprint, bringing their comprehensive coverage now to 28 markets. Additionally, the company is expanding its presence in [Read more →]

Not a week seems to pass without another aggressive move in the datacenter space.  Today Quality Technology Services took another swing.  The company announced the addition of another 70,000 square feet in its Santa Clara facility, along with 15MW of power and SAS-70 type II certification.  If there was any doubt there is more expansion down the line, QTS’s Chairman and CEO Chad Williams had this to say:  [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) announced today that they have signed a multi-service agreement with GlobeNet aimed at improved service capabilities to and from the rapidly growing South American marketplace.  GlobeNet is a division of Oi, formerly known as Brasil Telecom, and operates undersea cables connecting New York and Miami to Venezuela and, you guessed it, Brazil.  Under this mutual arrangement, both carriers will be able to offer bundled [Read more →]

Allied Fiber’s formal announcement on Monday of its national dark fiber buildout rankled more than a few readers.  The conventional wisdom has been that following the dot com crash, no new national intercity conduit level network builds were even remotely feasible.  Prices had fallen too far, rights of way were too contentious, too much fiber remained untapped in the ground between major markets, and financial backers would simply never go for it.  Whether Allied Fiber succeeds or not in its venture, they may have already blown a fatal hole in that wisdom.  There are many factors that have contributed to this, but for a moment I’d like to focus on how the industry’s view of intercity dark fiber in the USA has changed, and may be changing again. [Read more →]

Lots of news today, here’s a rundown of some of the announcements by larger companies:

Verizon Global Wholesale says that its VoIP minutes grew by 200% in 2009, as the service turns 10 years old.  Of course, ten years ago Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) actually wasn’t pushing VoIP services much, but rather it was [Read more →]