Telecom Ramblings

Over on Infoworld there is a long article extolling the virtues of a merger between Google and Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) that is worth a read.  The basic argument is that by getting its hands dirty with an actual mobile network, Google could bring about the change that it so clearly wants.  What change is that?  Why an open, data-centric, mobile future for everyone of course.  In the past I have come down on the skeptical side regarding Google’s likely M&A hunger in Telecom, I generally feel that Google is much more interested in prodding others than in taking ownership itself.   [Read more →]

Apparently, q is choosing to embrace the long awaited flood of over-the-top video rather than try to enter the content markets itself.  A Light Reading article details comments by Qwest’s Neil Cox, which include gems like this:

“We are seeing ASV — ad-supported video — and Blu-rays and new TVs hooked up to the Internet, and we at Qwest are not going to stand in the way.  We want to make sure [OTT content providers’] video works better on our network than on anyone else’s network.”

I’m sure that’s music to network [Read more →]

An administrative note.  Apparently, readers who attempted to contact me in the past few days at info@telecomramblings.com had their email bounce back with a message saying my mailbox was full.  And so it was, a particularly gifted spammer decided to pay a visit.  The situation has now been rectified, hopefully permanently.  So for those who may have tried, my sincere apologies for the inconvenience – please do try again.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

Pacific network operator Pacnet has announced its intent to build a submarine cable that will connect India to its EAC/C2C cable systems.  The new system, to be called West Asia Crossing, will run between Chennai and both Singapore and Malaysia, with possible additional landing points in Mumbai as well as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.  The new cable will be initially designed to carry as much as 6-8Tbps.  It will cost some $150M and would be ready in 2 years, assuming liftoff is successful. [Read more →]

Over on the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from Vonage, which is seeking a Traffic Engineer in Holmdel NJ.  I have been running the jobs board for a while now, but the timing hasn’t been there – in the midst of a recession there hasn’t really been a huge demand.  However, there are some hopeful economic signs out there, and traffic growth isn’t slowing down so spending will have to recover sooner or later regardless.  And hopefully this website can do its part in helping along [Read more →]

Last winter when it seemed like every telecommunications company was making plans for a CDN of one kind or another, British Telecom (NYSE:BT, news, filings) was said to be building its own rather than buying, reselling, or partnering with one.   Now it has emerged that their plan is a bit different than we might have expected from earlier comments.  BT Wholesale apparently wishes to build a CDN in collaboration with its ISP competition. [Read more →]

Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings),the 800lb gorilla of content delivery, raised guidance this morning for the fourth quarter and fiscal year.  Revenue is now expected to be $230-235M, up quite substantially from the earlier projection of $217-224M.  Earnings per share of $0.42-0.43 are likewise expected to exceed the previous range of $0.39-0.41.  Mid-quarter increases in guidance have been rare in this recession to say the least, and so this is very welcome news.  Does this mean the CDN industry has shifted back into gear? [Read more →]

I have added two more lists of competitive metro fiber maps to my collection:  one for the Maryland, Delaware, and Washington DC Metro area, and one for the southwestern states of Arizona and New Mexico. There is of course lots of fiber around Washington DC, and a major part of it is in northern Virginia out in Reston, Herndon, McLean, etc.  I chose to follow the lead of politics and lump that part of Virginia with DC, the rest of the state will be grouped with the Carolinas.  Why?  I had to divide [Read more →]

On Thursday, Benoit Felten over on Fiberevolution and Herman Wagter of Dadamotive issued a joint challenge to last mile providers to offer proof that that bandwidth hogs exist.  Well, not so much whether they exist, but more whether or not they cause congestion and thus hurt the internet experiences of everyone else.  After all, proof of existence is easy.  Take a bell curve of bandwidth usage, choose a point a few standard deviations to the right, and you’ve defined yourself a hog.  But although Felten’s title was a bit dodgy, it was quite catchy and thus it did its job well and has gotten a great deal of attention.  The article did the remainder of the job, which was to put a finger precisely on a logical [Read more →]

Italian carrier Tiscali has chosen Infinera for its backbone.  They will be deploying both Infinera’s DTN in the longhaul and its ATN in the metro across their footprint.  That includes more than 80 metro areas or most of the substantial cities in the country.  Infinera has been relatively quiet since formally rolling out its new metro gear, but it seems clear that the ATN had a lot to do with this win.  With its 40G gear still about a year away Infinera’s growth in 2010 will lean heavily on its new metro and submarine products, so every joint win counts. [Read more →]

Regional and metro fiber provider Zayo today previewed its capex budget for 2010.  The company has earmarked some $65M for expansion of its fiber networks.  They will finish 2009 having spent $45M while adding more than 400 on-net locations.  Hmmm, will the increased dollars turn into another 600+ on-net locations this year?  I think only TW Telecom is moving faster than that on an absolute basis, but they are [Read more →]

I have added another group of metro fiber maps to my collection, this time focusing on Texas.  Like Florida, Texas has many large cities, but the same companies tend to show up in most of them and therefore it is convenient to treat them as a group.  I’m sure I’m missing a few still, but it’s a start.  Additionally, this month I will be updating and enhancing my metro fiber provider and on-net buildings list, and will be looking at the changes we’ve seen since [Read more →]

Last week it appeared to be all over.  They had an auction for Nortel’s MEN division and Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) came out with the top bid, ’nuff said right?  But apparently Nokia Siemans’ best bid was not actually its best bid, since according to a Reuters report they have now raised it to $810M in cash.  After adding the $21M that Nortel would have to pay Ciena to call off its deal, that’s an additional $20M above Ciena’s $769M winning bid.   [Read more →]

SevenOne Intermedia has selected the CDN services of Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings), adding to their success in the European content market.  SevenOne is the multimedia arm of ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, which itself is not exactly a household name in the USA.  They offer television mostly in Germany but have a presence in some 13 European countries and are Europe’s second largest broadcasting group.  SevenOne operates the company’s web properties and is responsible for all new [Read more →]

RCN Business (NASDAQ:RCNI, news, filings) Metro announced today that it has added a direct connection to datacenter specialist Telx’s Financial Business Exchange in Clifton NJ.  By hooking up with RCN’s financial network, Telx is of course looking to add to the low-latency portfolio it can offer to the financial community.  Combined with connections to Telx other facilities in NYC and to a collection of financial exchanges and other data hubs in the metro area, this will provide Telx with improved connectivity and service options with which they can [Read more →]

Having looked at the relative trends in EBITDA margin, Revenue, Capex, and EBITDA-Capex across a selection of public fiber-based competitive telecoms, it is now time to take another look at valuation trends.  In other words, how has the market’s perception of these companies changed in response to the movement of these various metrics, both collectively and individually?  First a few details:  [Read more →]

On Wednesday before the Thanksgiving break, Windstream (NYSE:WIN, news, filings) dropped another M&A bombshell on the telecom market, taking out Iowa Telecom for $1.1B including some $600M in net debt.  This follows the acquisition of D&E in May and its recently announced acquisitions of Lexcom in North Carolina and of CLEC NuVox just a few weeks ago.  Quite a roll-up being managed out of Little Rock this year, eh? [Read more →]

You know, given the prevailing gloom and doom scenarios offered by so many financial and tech analysts for Clearwire’s future, I would have expected the company to have to work their asses off to raise just $1B at a time like this.  But the same street which has so many doubts is practically throwing money at these guys.  Yesterday they just raised another $920M.  So how much does that [Read more →]

After looking at EBITDA Margin, Capex, and EBITDA-Capex across the sector, I’ll finish up this series with a look at Revenue.  Everyone wants to grow of course, but in this recession there has been a divergence in the sector’s growth profile.  Seen alongside the EBITDA and Capex trends, we get a fuller picture of what is going on in the sector.  Here is the relative revenue growth chart over the past 7 quarters: [Read more →]

Over the weekend, Renesys posted one of its infrequent but highly insightful updates on the IP transit market, I recommend a read.  On the menu besides the usual pricing pressure spearheaded by (but not limited to) Cogent Communications (NASDAQ:CCOI, news, filings) was the quickly shifting market in eastern Europe, the rising tide of paid peering between eyeball networks and content providers, strength in Asia, and of course Google. [Read more →]

American Fiber Systems has recently hooked up no less than 8 major casinos in Las Vegas, according to a press release today.  The size of those casino hotels on the strip makes them pretty good traffic generators of course, you certainly can’t feed one with a few T1 pipes.  AFS is now staking its claim to the top spot amongst alternative fiber networks in the city, and I don’t have any reason to doubt the claim.  Vegas hasn’t been a hotbed of metro build-outs.  Amongst the more national metro footprints, Level 3 has only [Read more →]

After a dispute that lasted four months, IBasis (news) [a subsidiary of KPN (NYSE:KPN, news)] has come to terms with its majority shareholder KPN (NYSE:KPN, news).  KPN will pay $3 per share to buy the rest of the company, totalling $93.3M.  The special committee of IBasis’s board has unanimously approved the new bid, and thus it appears that the soap opera will come to an end. [Read more →]

According to various reports over the weekend, Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) has won the auction for Nortel’s optical networking and carrier ethernet businesses.  The company apparently raised its earlier stalking horse offer all the way to $769M, made up of $530M in cash and $239M in convertible notes, just barely edging out the team of Nokia Siemens and One Equity Partners.  Nokia of course felt its offer was fair value, but of course value is in the eye of the beholder and Ciena simply has more [Read more →]