Telecom Ramblings

There was a time when it was MicroSoft that always won, always made the right moves.  What they touched turned to gold, or whatever currency you prefer.  But ever since it went public the golden touch has belonged to Google.  By and large it still does of course, but when Google agreed to sell back its share in AOL to Time Warner today at a loss of $717M it was definitely not a moment reminiscent of King Midas.  [Read more →]

Telecommunications giant Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) released earnings this morning, giving us another update on how the industry is weathering the economy.  Revenues of $26.86B and earnings per share of $0.63 were inline with expectations. Wireless subscribers grew by a net 1.1M, wireline connections fell by another 880K, and FIOS subscribers grew another 300K, all of which sounded awfully familiar.  Overall, I found very little to get excited about in either direction in this report.  The 800lb gorilla managed to jump in the pool without making a discernible splash.  [Read more →]

On Friday, Telecom Ramblings was pleased to welcome a guest post by Steven Parrott of Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) and The Seamless Enterprise on the subject of core competencies and network operators.  His take was not solely in the context of Sprint’s recent deal with Ericsson for the outsourcing of network operations but in general as well.  The argument he makes boils down to one I’ve heard before, but which has become somewhat endangered in the carrier space:  that the industry is best served by horizontal disaggregation, with each participant focusing its efforts on the layer it does best and leaving the layers it doesn’t to others who do.  In a previous incarnation from the last bubble, it was an unfulfilled [Read more →]

There was so much happening last week with earnings reports and other announcements and many other things going on offline, and when that happens some news just slips through the cracks – at least temporarily.  Two such stories that involve companies covered frequently on this website did just that this week.  TW Telecom and Zayo have something in common, or so I seem to feel.  Through this economic firestorm over the last year, both have managed to come through it with their gameplans almost [Read more →]

This is a guest post by Sprint-Nextel’s Steven Parrott who also blogs regularly on The Seamless Enterprise, the company’s corporate blog. Steve leads Sprint’s IP convergence Product Development team in the areas of MPLS VPN, managed service and Unified Communications.  Anyone else who might be interested in a guest post may contact the webmaster.

How do you define a “real” carrier?

That question arose recently after my company, Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings), announced a seven-year deal to partner with Ericsson to run many of its day-to-day network operations. Before anyone could say the word “partner”, questions were being asked such as: [Read more →]

The United States Coast Guard has selected Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) for its networking and voice needs, according to a press release yesterday.  Level 3 will provide connectivity between some 10 sites within the DC area as well as voice services to each.  The company’s extensive metro footprint throughout the Washington DC region was obviously the main [Read more →]

It was a busy day yesterday on the earnings front.  In the telecom equipment segment, Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) had a rough time, although on paper things weren’t so bad.  Revenues of $786M were actually better than most had projected, breaking the steady downward trend.  Earnings per share of $0.19 seemed to be inline with expectations.  Likewise, projections for Q3 weren’t far off.  But there are projections and there are hopes, and clearly the market was hoping for much better.  The fortunes of equipment makers can turn on a dime, and [Read more →]

RCN Metro, the metro fiber division of RCN Business (NASDAQ:RCNI, news, filings), announced today that it has been selected by OpenCape to build and operate a fiber network hooking up Cape Cod and southeastern Massachussetts to Boston and Providence.  The network, as currently planned, would span 300 miles and look something like this: [Read more →]

In the first datapoint from the colocation and datacenter sector, Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) reported Q2 earnings after the bell yesterday.  And quite a report it was!  Revenues of $213.2M were above both expectations and guidance of $206-210M.  Adjusted EBITDA of $99.5M was even better, well above projections of $92-94M, and earnings per share of $0.44 well above the street’s projections of $0.33 or so.  Of course, the datacenter space has been the strongest in the sector throughout this recession, and we can only hope that the rest of the sector had even a sliver of the quarter these guys had. [Read more →]

So much news lately…  Privately held CLEC Integra Telecom announced today that it has restructured its balance sheet.   The deal swaps debt for equity and will bring their debt down to about $600M, down from $1.3B.  Of course, there is a price and in this case it is dilution – with Goldman, Sachs & Co., Tennenbaum Capital Partners, and funds managed by Farallon Capital Management LLC as major new shareholders.  The exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, but we can draw a few inferences. [Read more →]

International IP network operator glbc announced today the opening of a new datacenter in Amsterdam.  The new facility, which follows a similar build in London’s Docklands last year, is a part of the company’s push into managed services in the European corporate marketplace.  Their first customer, apparently, is Dimension Data.  This gives them 17 full scale datacenters worldwide, though they offer [Read more →]

Over the past few months, we have seen NYSE Euronext assemble a team of partners with which it will build its next generation infrastructure in and between New York and London.  One big unnamed piece in that team until today was where they were getting the fiber.  The fiber routes are critical because of NYSE Euronext’s desire to drive out every microsecond of latency possible.  With yesterday’s PR it is now clear that they are getting it in large part from metro fiber specialist abvt. [Read more →]

DWDM specialist Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) issued its second quarter earnings today after the bell.  Revenues of $68.9M and earnings per share of $0.19 seem essentially inline with expectations going in.  Of course, the stock tumbled prior to earnings after an analyst report indicated that the company may have lost some part of its Level 3 business to Huawei.  Guidance was therefore critical:  would the company’s revenue recovery be hurt by this news? [Read more →]

Over the past few months there have been several attempts to quantify YouTube’s business model, with very different results.  The main point of contention has been simply “how much money do they lose?”  Today, YouTube fought back on its Biz Blog  with a myth-busting post, taking 5 points and addressing each with a few sentences.  As inspiration they used MythBusters, the television program where two guys try to debunk urban myths by actually reproducing them.  Did YouTube succeed? [Read more →]

The dismemberment of Nortel continues at a brisk pace.  Today the Canadian based equipment maker announced it has found a buyer for its Enterprise solutions business, which makes phone systems for office use.  Avaya will buy the EMEA portion in an asset sale for $475M.  The company will also become the stalking horse bidder on the American (North and South) portion.  Strictly speaking, that means that there will be an auction and Avaya gets to bid first, but they can be outbid.  [Read more →]

Yes, according to the event calendar it’s time for another dose of financial reality in the internet infrastructure and telecom sectors.  Because earnings are a lagging indicator, actual second quarter results seem likely to remain relatively dismal and the story there will be how well the recession has been managed.  What everyone will be looking for is signs of life in guidance for the second half of the year.  Will the purse strings loosen up a bit?  With that in mind, we will hear on Tuesday from [Read more →]

A few weeks ago, the federal government chose a definition for broadband in the context of the stimulus package and the goal of extending bandwidth to all.  The bar they chose, a minimum of 768kbps down and 200kbps up, has been widely panned as a decade late.  But since then, I’ve been thinking that having such a ‘definition’ in the first place is the ludicrous part.  It just doesn’t make sense to have a single threshold as our goal for every dwelling in the USA.  [Read more →]

Just a month or two ago, it seemed like every fiber network in the country was considering its options.  The second quarter began with q considering the sale of its longhaul networks, something which for a while woke up everyone from Verizon and AT&T on to Level 3 and all the way to Cogent.  Global Crossing, which has been beating the M&A drums all year, did so again bringing up the possibility of Savvis.  And then of course word leaked out that Sprint was considering contributing its wireline business toward some sort of joint venture.  Every major network was either in play or looking to buy.  But the result?  [Read more →]

Telecommunications equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) has taken us one more step into the world of 100G by introducing the industry’s first 100 Gigabit Ethernet service routing interface for the edge.  The new service is enabled by “unique silicon innovations” and delivers the massive bandwidth everyone is expecting from 100G.  The edge is where much of the brains of a network is located, and the introduction of 100G interfaces will help service providers [Read more →]

Orange Business Services announced today that it has won a large contract with the German Foreign Office.   The 5 year deal involves wired connections to 180 sites worldwide, another 50 by satellite.  In addition to basic transport, other services such as VPN and Voice will be layered on top.  That’s a pretty hefty deal by anyone’s measure.  Orange Business had already held the precursor to this contract, which of course made it easier to keep.  But the new contract is almost double the size of the old one. [Read more →]

According to various reports, AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) have finally broken out the peace pipes.  Not everywhere though, just in the Midwest for some 18,500 workers.  The new 3 year contract appears to be a compromise, with workers getting pay increases but also agreeing to pay more for health insurance.  It’s not a done deal yet of course, union must vote on whether to accept the new contract first.  But I suspect everyone is rather tired of this by now, and if they were going to strike [Read more →]

The shakeup at Internap Network Services (NASDAQ:INAP, news, filings) continues.  From an SEC filing today:

On July 14, 2009, Internap Network Services Corporation (the “Company”) announced the elimination of the Chief Technology Officer position and, as a result, that Timothy P. Sullivan’s employment will terminate effective July 31, 2009. The Company anticipates entering into a separation agreement with Mr. Sullivan regarding the terms of his separation, a copy of which will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission following execution.

Of course, Eric Cooney just took over as the new CEO in March, and since then it apparently hasn’t been a fun place to work.  The [Read more →]

Carl Icahn isn’t the only majority shareholder of a telecom looking to take advantage of the market downturn.  Dutch PTT KPN (NYSE:KPN, news) has now bid for the 44% of international VoIP wholesaler iBasis that it doesn’t already own.  The proposed price of $1.55 per share was a 19% premium above Friday’s close of $1.30, but since then the price has risen to $1.71 at today’s close.  Apparently traders think KPN will have to raise its bid for IBasis (news) [a subsidiary of KPN (NYSE:KPN, news)] . [Read more →]