Telecom Ramblings

The federal government’s broadband stimulus awards continue to roll out, albeit slowly.  Following Zayo’s success in Indiana, today it was Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings), itcd, and RCN Business (NASDAQ:RCNI, news, filings) who will be seeing funding for middle mile expansion in rural areas.

Level 3’s stimulus wins today totaled $13.7M, alongside which it will put $4.2M of matching funds.  Level 3’s strategy of offering to crack open the huts along stretches of its network that run through rural communities appears to have seen some success.  That means their awards came in small chunks [Read more →]

According to an S-1 filing with the SEC today, Force10 Networks is finally preparing to take the plunge and go public.  There was speculation for several years prior to the recession that Force10 would go public, but they never did.  Last winter the company bought fellow equipment maker Turin Networks, and has been rather quietly integrating the assets and playing defense for a year while carriers cut back on their network spending.  Now they plan to IPO, which frankly isn’t [Read more →]

According to the website Hacking Netflix, the possibility of a Netflix iPhone app has moved beyond the theoretical stage.  Apparently the company is testing the waters via an online survey to see if such a beast is viable.  That doesn’t qualify as a formal announcement of course, but the wheels do [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) added a new gaming client for its CDN business with a win at Icarus Studios.  They are providing caching and download services for the game Fallen Earth, a MMOG or massively multiplayer online game, scaling the available capacity by a factor of twenty and supporting peak usage of 4Gbps so far.  The gaming industry has long been one of the CDN sector’s best clients, and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. [Read more →]

Expansion continues to be the early theme of 2010 amongst network operators of all types, here are a few lesser known items that crossed the wires recently.

Regional network operator Pinpoint Network Solutions is apparently lighting new fiber between Chicago and Denver, using packet-optical gear from BTI Systems.  The expansion will add some 700 miles to that part of their network, along with an initial 80Gbps of capacity.  Omaha-based Pinpoint has a rather unique [Read more →]

Well, the telecom M&A season is open already, but the first target was not in the fiber business, nor was it in the CLEC, data center, VoIP, or equipment sectors.  It was an energy company.  Competitive telecommunications provider PAETEC (news, filings) announced today that they are buying US Energy Partners, which sells electricity to 3500 customers in western New York state.  PAETEC had given indications before that it was interested in the energy sector, apparently they meant it – and what better place to start than [Read more →]

We WANT it certainly, but why do we need it?  On ConnectedPlanet, Rich Karpinski makes a compelling case that 1Gbps demonstrations like the one Google is trying to put together are basically irrelevant to the development of the internet.  Amongst his points is this quote:

“Higher speeds aren’t a panacea in and of themselves. If bigger pipes just end up getting eaten up by HD, rather than regular resolution, video, have we really gained that much?”

And that, I think is a key insight to think about.  Just what is it that 1Gbps enables us to do that creates the value to society that will justify (and pay for) [Read more →]

The news this week over in Italy has been surreal to say the least.  According to papers justifying the arrest warrants, the Calabrian Mafia infiltrated or otherwise corrupted senior management figures in two of Italy’s largest telcos:  Fastweb and Telecom Italia Sparkle.  Silvio Scaglia – the founder of Fastweb, Stefano Mazzitelli – former CEO of Sparkle, and Nicola Di Girolamo – a Senator from the prime minister’s party were at the head of the list, while additional top figures currently at the company are also under scrutiny.  You can almost hear the pens in Hollywood scratching away [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) had a pair of announcements in the past few days.  Yesterday they revealed their role in delivering the Vancouver Winter Olympics for France Télévisions both to the web and to the iPhone.  Level 3’s CDN business continues to demonstrate strength in Europe where they have greater advantages – especially over the smaller providers.  The service has been managed out of the Level 3 broadcast operations center in Dublin – I didn’t know [Read more →]

Two very similar wireless operators had very different days yesterday.  MetroPCS (NYSE:PCS, news, filings) enjoyed some real sunshine, reporting revenues of $930M, adjusted EBITDA of $251M, and earnings per share of $0.09 – all three of which were above analyst estimates.  Net customer additions and ARPU were both up.   [Read more →]

In December, Genband became the stalking horse bidder for Nortel’s carrier VoIP business with a bid of $282M.  But there was still the auction yet to go, right?  It seemed quite likely, but apparently not.  Nobody else stepped forward with a better bid, and thus Genband won without a fight.  The final price was $282M, and after the obligatory regulatory and court approval process it will all be over.  Genband looks like a good fit for [Read more →]

Consumer VoIP specialist Vonage (NYSE:VG, news, filings) announced its Q4 earnings this morning, turning in earnings per share of $0.02.  That’s down a penny from the third quarter but up nine cents from last year.  Revenues of $224M were up a little less than 1% sequentially and about 0.5% above the same quarter last year.  That of course is in keeping with Vonage’s strategy lately, which has been to completely revamp its cost structure while treading [Read more →]

IP and data services specialist Cogent Communications (NASDAQ:CCOI, news, filings) reported their Q4 and full year 2009 earnings this morning, showing continued strength.  Revenue was slightly above estimates, EBITDA grew at normal rates, and earnings per share were in line after taking out a deferred tax adjustment.   Here is a quick table summarizing Q4 in the context of the rest of 2009: [Read more →]

Last week, privately held west coast CLEC TelePacific apparently raised some $395M via a new senior credit facility.  They will use the funds at least partially to refinance existing debt that is maturing over the next two years.  The new debt consists of a $370M term loan and a $25M revolving line of credit that they did not draw on initially.  Telepacific also offered some information on its financial state, pegging 2009 revenues at [Read more →]

WiMAX operator clwr reported its Q4 numbers this morning, giving us another window into the progress of their buildout.  Total subscribers reached 688K, up 133K from the prior quarter.  Making up that number was an additional 90K retail subscribers in its twenty seven 4G markets plus 46K wholesale subscribers from its partners Sprint, Comcast, and TW Cable, less the usual churn in the company’s pre-WiMAX business.   [Read more →]

Several contracts crossed the wires over the past few days, let’s take a quick look:

TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) continued with its seemingly never-ending string of wins at multi-site regional enterprises. This time it was ProHealth Care, which will use the metro networking provider’s business Ethernet and integrated LAN services to hook up some 21 locations in southeastern [Read more →]

Content delivery networking challenger Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings) reported its fourth quarter numbers after the bell.  Overall, revenues of $33.6M were roughly inline with expectations or perhaps a touch above, which extended their sequential growth following revenue pressure during the height of last year’s fiscal crisis.  EBITDA of $3.3M and adjusted EPS of -$0.04 were a bit light due to higher costs.  Higher cost of service came from [Read more →]

Pacific fiber and data operator Pacnet announced a new initiative today.  They plan to convert their Cable Landing facilities into ‘Data Landing Stations’.  Pacnet of operates an extensive submarine cable system in Asia and has such cable landing systems in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines amongst others.  Leveraging unused space to address the data center market is indeed an attractive concept.  In the words of Pacnet’s Bill Barney: [Read more →]

Equipment provider Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) made a few financial moves today, putting some cash to use.  First, they announced the JunOS Innovation fund.  That’s $50M of venture capital they will use to spur investment in new networking technologies.  Essentially, they want to encourage lots of outside development on their own JunOS operating system so that their customers will have more choices than they themselves can provide. [Read more →]

Lightyear snuck under my radar went public on Friday, following a reverse merger with Libra Alliance – a former ISP whose shell continued to trade OTC under the ticker LBAL.  As a part of the transaction, Lightyear’s debt to its owners was exchanged for a combination of common and preferred stock in the new public entity.  So suddenly we have a new public telecom company to keep track of.  Lightyear’s revenue for the first three quarters of 2009 was $44M, which puts them at an annual run rate in the $60M range.  Their plan apparently involves substantial inorganic growth, [Read more →]

Applications service provider Navisite (NASDAQ:NAVI, news, filings) [a subsidiary of Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC, news)] today divested itself of its Lawson and Kronos business lines, selling their customer base to Velocity Technology Solutions for some $56M.  Velocity will also take over the lease for the Minneapolis data center from which these products are run.  With this transaction, NaviSite says they will be better able to focus on their core business and further their entry into the cloud services market.  Of course, $56M added to the balance sheet (currently at $4M in cash & equivalents) doesn’t hurt either. [Read more →]

There’s a fascinating article over on Ars Technica suggesting that the problems faced by AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) by iPhone-induced congestion aren’t actually due to insufficient bandwidth capacity at all.  Rather, the issues may stem from the design of the iPhone itself.  No, not the part that makes it easy and fun to burn bandwidth and thus leads to higher data usage rates, oddly enough they mean the part that saves [Read more →]

On Friday, there were reports that Oppenheimer’s Timothy Horan issued a research note suggesting that Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) return to its acquisitive ways.  Hmmm, given that I have beaten this drum more than once over the past year or two – I can’t really let that pass without commenting, right?  Horan picks glbc as the top target, followed by XO Holdings (news, filings), and then on to Sprint wireline and Qwest longhaul.  Very familiar targets obviously, they’re always on the list and from a relative likelihood perspective I don’t disagree.  Each is likely available at the right price, though nobody’s quite sure what Icahn’s [Read more →]