Telecom Ramblings

Commenting on Monday’s article on rejection of Icahn’s offer by the board of XO Holdings (news, filings), regular reader Brian Scully asks:

In a world without Icahn, what are the XO assets and revenue stream worth?

A fair question, first let’s have a poll and see what readers think. [Read more →]

Talking at the FTTH Conference and Expo, Verizon CTO Richard Lynch said out loud what is almost certain to be many ISP’s response to network neutrality:

At the end of the day the concept of a flat-rate infinitely expandable service is unachievable. We are going to reach a point where we will sell packages of bites. Now I’m not announcing a new pricing plan. But we have already gone this way in wireless because that is where the resource is most constrained.

In other words, unlimited broadband will soon be a historical [Read more →]

Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) had promised an announcement today regarding a new strategic direction for video delivery.  And what did it turn out to be?  Why the Akamai HD Network of course!  The new platform is billed as “the first platform to deliver HD video online to viewers using Adobe Flash technology, Microsoft Silverlight, and to the iPhone, at broadcast-level audience scale.”  In other words, they’ve rolled out the infrastructure to support HD streaming across most of their worldwide network of some 50,000 servers. [Read more →]

The special committee of the board of directors of XO Holdings (news, filings) has responded to majority holder Carl Icahn’s proposal to buy the 10% or so of shares he doesn’t already own.  In an PR released today, the special committee said: [Read more →]

Feeling that they have finally put their cash-burning, post-disaster recovery phase completely behind them, glbc is embarking on the next stage of its evolution.  The company has reorganized internally into four Customer Facing Units (CFUs), one each for North America, South America, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), and Worldwide Carrier Services.  For financial reporting they will still be giving us GCUK, GC Impsat, and Rest-Of-World for now, however customers will interact with the new structure.    They seem to have taken a middle road on where the dividing line between CFUs and centralization falls:  areas like sales and local access which [Read more →]

On Friday, AT&T asked the FCC to investigate Google Voice for, get this, violating network neutrality.  On the surface, one might think this is a bit silly, since Google doesn’t actually operate a last mile network and therefore isn’t terribly likely to be shaping traffic or blocking data.  But nevertheless, underneath the surface there is a point that AT&T is trying to make indirectly, and – I can’t believe I’m saying it – it’s a valid point. [Read more →]

The internet never gets old, it has so many nooks and crannies that even in the relatively smaller world of blogs devoted to telecom and internet infrastructure there are always fresh voices out there to find.  I’ve been exploring a bit, and here are a few that I welcome to my blogroll. [Read more →]

Ever since Carl Icahn’s bid for the 10% of XO Holdings (news, filings) he doesn’t already own and the subsequent revelations from the litigation by R2 Investments of two bids last year, I have wondered about something.  Where are those bidders now?  Not just those two – rumored to be Zayo and Paetec, but there have been other talks over the past few years with others like Level 3 and TW Telecom with whom there are obvious synergies.  Icahn is offering some $0.55 which translates to a pathetic net purchase price of about $730M – just six times 2009 EBITDA.  Surely someone [Read more →]

It has been several months since I last charted relative valuations in the sector, so it’s time to see what the summer has wrought on EV/EBITDA ratios for fiber-based telecoms.   Of course, we lost one name from my usual list when Fibernet Telecom Group was purchased by Zayo, but perhaps we can get it back someday if Zayo goes public.  But beyond that, have the early signs of a recovery made themselves evident via higher market valuations?  Here’s the chart: [Read more →]

Ok, we’ve let the dust settle for a couple days since Julius Genachowski’s proposed network neutrality rules came out.  The readers of this blog come from all segments of the telecom and internet infrastructure sectors, and it would be interesting to see exactly what we all think of this rather than letting journalists and bloggers endlessly spin right, left, and round and round.  So what say you, readers?

[poll id=”29″]

I haven’t written as much lately about the metro fiber space lately, but that doesn’t mean nothing has been going on.  Actually, what’s happening is steady expansion on seemingly all fronts while much of the rest of the sector is still hiding under its rock.  Let’s take a look at some news that either slipped past my nets or somehow got bumped by other news. [Read more →]

In an announcement this morning, PAETEC (news, filings) supplied financial guidance for the full year 2009, something they had not done previously due to the economic uncertainty.  The reason seems to be stabilization of the economy, and increasing visibility.  Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend, and providers are feeling more confident about their predictive ability.  It would be nice to get a bit more than the opaque levels of caution we have been listening to. [Read more →]

There were lots of responses from all quarters to the newly proposed Net Neutrality rules.  Here is a collection of a few them, culled from all over the place – feel free to add more in the discussion below.  The quotes will be presented without comment (hah, there’s a first!):

Vin Cerf of Google: [Read more →]

It’s official, or at least it’s officially proposed.  As expected, FCC Chair Julius Genachowski announced network neutrality rules in a speech today.  The new rules will cover not only wireline networks where the early debate was but there has been little recent activity, but also wireless networks where there are battles currently being fought.  Well, whether it turns out to be the right call or not at least the FCC isn’t 10 years late this time.  Genachowski would like to vote on the rules at the FCC’s October meeting, and the feeling seems to be that he has the votes.  So we could actually have a new ballgame this year. [Read more →]

There was an interesting anonymous comment by anon on yesterday’s Net Neutrality article:

if you have to treat all traffic on your network the same, you look closely at what traffic you put on the network.. settlement free peering is the next battle

I think I know what he means and I think he has a point worth exploring.  Let me try to explain and perhaps readers with more extensive background in the nitty gritty of how the internet works will chime in and correct me. [Read more →]

Late Friday, details from the speech that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is going to give on Monday showed up in the Wall Street Journal.  I hesitate to say ‘leaked’ because I rather doubt it was unintentional, having such news out over the weekend gives the market time to absorb the news.  The message:  the FCC plans to propose new rules enforcing network neutrality, apparently preventing all service providers, whether wired or wireless, from blocking or otherwise interfering with over-the-top traffic.  I never thought it would get this far this quickly, but clearly the time has come to take stock of how this changes things.  [Read more →]

Yesterday at the Goldman Sachs conference, the CEO of telecommunications giant Verizon, Ivan Seidenberg, had a lot to say.  Enough to get the ‘bits’ blog of the New York Times to write Verizon Boss Hangs Up on Landline Phone Business.   Benoît Felten of Fiberevolution wrote some nice commentary on it as well.   In essence, Seidenberg completely abandoned the traditional phone network model, both in its physical, copper manifestation and in the organizational structure that the RBOCs have built around it.  Imagine five or 10 years ago hearing these statement from the CEO of an RBOC about the future of his company [Read more →]

Data Center property developer Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR, news, filings) has made a major move in the Dallas market, taking a 60% stake in the Collins Technology Center in Richardson, Texas.  In short, it includes 7 buildings totaling just under 800,000 square feet of space, and a 40MW power substation that can be expanded to 125MW.  Data Center Knowledge has more detailed information here.  Digital Realty intends to have it ready for the market in early 2010.    The deal is more evidence [Read more →]

Harris Corporation has selected Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) to provide telecommunication services in support of the 2010 US Census.  Level 3 will be providing voice services to 494 Local Census Offices supporting half a million workers, and of course high speed internet services as well to keep all that demographic data flowing smoothly.  They have already been supporting 151 Early Local Census offices for the Census Address Canvassing Operation since March. [Read more →]

On Tuesday q announced the launch of its fiber-based, Mobile Ethernet Backhaul service designed for wireless providers.  The new offering will leverage the company’s existing fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) infrastructure to bring nearby towers online as well.  Only wide use of fiber can provide the massive, scalable bandwidth that will be needed for the wireless networks to come.  I have wondered when they would start offering such services, it seems like [Read more →]

Telecommunications equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) today unveiled its Converged Backbone Transformation Solution and provided new details on its vision for networks of the future.  The key aspect of the new offering centers on IP/Optical convergence, bringing the routing layer much closer to the DWDM layer and promising higher efficiency, greater resiliency, and lower complexity.  (Still working on world peace though.  The company says studies indicate capex savings of [Read more →]

In an SEC filing on Tuesday, DWDM specialist Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) offered some new information on its status.  First of all, the company began shipping its new metro edge product in August with four customer wins already, and they will formally introduce the product at Supercomm in October.  Having a metro product to complement their longhaul and undersea products should open new revenue opportunities for Infinera, and the timing seems good assuming the telecommunications industry climbs out from under its rock over the next few quarters. [Read more →]

There has been a mini news blitz from telecoms accessing the credit markets in the last few days, implying that a real window has opened in the credit markets.  If so, we can expect more activity over the next few days as those who need to take advantage of the opening.  Let’s look quickly at the financial moves made by glbc, q, CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings), and Zayo Group (news, filings) to start the week off. [Read more →]