Telecom Ramblings

With XO’s refinancing complete, should we reevaluate the company’s prospects now?  Today the Icahn/R2/XO soap opera made it all the way to the New York Times, where Joe Nocera has a nice article on Icahn’s relationship with the company and its investors.  It is true that the possibility remains that R2/Amalgamated will succeed with pressure to change the deal, but I doubt if that will affect the companies business activities from here on out and it would only help their common shareholders anyway.   Whatever we might think of the fairness of the refinancing, the time has [Read more →]

With their stock price surging, up 20% in just a few days, this little known metro/colo company seems to be on the move.  There have been no press releases, I haven’t turned up any analyst reports, and basically nothing really new seems to have happened.  Could there be M&A in the air?  I do think it is possible, but I haven’t heard any of those rumors either. [Read more →]

Obama gave his speech last night, and I was able to watch it live in HD and it was just astounding!  Big deal, you’re saying, we all did.  Yeah, but I’m in Beijing right now.  Yes, the one in China.  And not in some fancy hotel with a high powered internet link either – just a basic, slower than average DSL line in an ordinary apartment building.  Even wonderful YouTube, in all its low-res [Read more →]

Telegeography reports that Google is working on yet another cable in Asia.  Google has already helped start the Unity system, now under construction and which will connect Japan and Los Angeles.  Data Center Knowledge has previously reported that Google has been scouting out locations throughout the region, so we have to see this all as part of one plan. The new cable under discussion, below, [Read more →]

The other day Savvis realigned itself into three business units:  Hosting, Network, and Financial Services. The move will be overseen by Bill Fathers, who has been appointed as SVP, Managing Director US.  The move makes sense given that Savvis’s customers really do break down on these lines, and the needs of each group are quite different from the others.  Financial Services customers are interested in business continuity and VPNs and such, customers of Savvis’s Tier-1 IP network and infrastructure  are looking at connectivity of various sorts, and Hosting customers care manly about servers, rack space, cross connects, etc.  Separate groups will let Savvis target each more effectively, in theory anyway. [Read more →]

Almost beneath the radar, Optimum Lightpath, the metro fiber division of Cablevision, did something interesting last week.  They began offering managed video services.  When I first read the PR, I said to myself ‘ooh, a cable company offering video, big whoop’.  But that’s not what Optimum Lightpath is talking about, this has nothing to do with cable television.  It’s not a CDN either, nor is it an Envysion-like product. [Read more →]

This is the first (and perhaps last) time I have seen the word ‘awesomeness’ appear on washingtonpost.com.  Here is the quote: [Read more →]

Ok, I had a call with IR and had a chance to ask many questions. Consequently I have updated my model. For those that follow this ongoing effort you will note that I have brought down my EBITDA number.  Here is the spreadsheet: [Read more →]

Caruso strikes again!  Following up on the purchase of Northwest Telephone, Zayo announced today the purchase of Columbia Fiber Solutions.  Columbia Fiber has a very dense metro network in Spokane, with 350 lit buildings on just 320 route miles of fiber, the purchase will add scale to Zayo’s ambitions in the pacific northwest.  In fact, it brings some of that Northwest Telephone revenue onto [Read more →]

Latency, which is simply the delay between action and reaction, has been a part of the internet since it was born.  Gamers live and die by it, and not just the MMORPGs and first person shooter games.  Latency is a big deal even in online chess and bridge.  When your senses are tuned to quick action, [Read more →]

While researching metro fiber providers, I have come to realize that it may be best to classify the different fiber assets in three categories that have distinct characteristics: [Read more →]

Back in May and June, I ran a series of posts looking at the various independent metro fiber companies in the marketplace within the USA.  Well, a quarter has passed, and of course the world is not static, and quite a few companies have updated their numbers.  I plan to update the list periodically, hopefully drawing out new information and even new companies (nope, I certainly don’t know them all even after a fair amount of digging) from helpful readers.  With no further ado, [Read more →]

No, I don’t mean a political zoo, I mean a telecom and data zoo.   So far, I count no less than four telecommunications companies that are attempting to use the Democratic National Convention next week as a demo platform.  Let’s walk through the zoo: [Read more →]

Dan Rayburn emerged with some welcome additional information on the BBC/Akamai/Level3 storm. Akamai is not being replaced by Level 3 for iPlayer video, only supplemented.  Dan is right, the blogosphere didn’t really do their homework on this one. Regardless, [Read more →]

These days, it pays to be careful when reading headlines.  PhonePlusMag has one today, “IPtimize Buys American Fiber Systems” which made me do quite a double take.  You see, I don’t know much about IPtimize, but I know it is very small and trades on the pinksheets.  The idea that they could go out and buy AFS, which should be worth something with 9 digits, just wasn’t reasonable.  [Read more →]

Well, it’s getting late in August, and there must be a lot of people on vacation enjoying the fresh air.  I see now why some say that telecom takes vacation in August and many trade magazines skip a week or two rather than put out new articles.  So what better to do than some site housekeeping?  [Read more →]

ThinkBroadband says that the BBC is switching from Akamai to Level 3 for streaming for its iPlayer offering.   Well, to be more accurate, they say that this information emerged from this blog post by Anthony Rose, head of BBC Digital Media Technology.  To be honest though, that conclusion is skimpy from the actual content of that post, there must be other information out there because it seems to have stirred up some controversy. [Read more →]

TelephonyOnline has an article today quoting Dan Caruso of Zayo and of course neighbor blog BearOnBusiness.  The comments seem to have come from a presentation at some industry event, but the article doesn’t say precisely which one.  The crux of his point is one I certainly agree with, that the fruitfulness of Zayo’s shopping spree has been enhanced by the distraction of other buyers.  And as he says, this phase is probably [Read more →]

XO recently announced another upgrade to its ethernet infrastructure, now offering ‘an even wider range of incremental bandwidth options to choose from’.  Well, that probably isn’t the reason for their PR.  Since it is mentioned more than once, what XO seems to be pre-announcing is the introduction of ethernet VPLS services early next year, as well as classes of service.  Only a couple years late, but still they do seem to be catching up. [Read more →]

Over on the business of online video blog, Dan Rayburn had the chance to interview Jim Crowe about Level 3’s CDN business.  It’s a must-read, being the most comprehensive discussion of the company’s CDN plans so far.  One key point Crowe makes is this: [Read more →]

Eric Bush of ThePlanet has a nice writeup of what a datacenter supervisor does every day.  Since I have not yet had the pleasure of working inside one, I greatly appreciate the summary. At least, the summary of what a datacenter supervisor is *supposed* to do every day – where does the MMORPG gameplay come in? 🙂 [Read more →]

Despite the rise of Infinera and the PIC, the dream of the all-optical network still lives.  The other day I read about the use of ‘metamaterials’ to slow down light, thereby enabling the next generation of speeds.  These are the same materials that scientists are trying to make into invisibility cloaks, they can manipulate light as it passes through them – bending it, slowing it, etc.  From a scientists point of view, this stuff is amazing.  From an engineering point of view though, it doesn’t yet exist. [Read more →]

Over on TMCNet, Rich Tehrani has an article on how the recent public spate of outages is hurting the Software as a Service (SaaS) movement.  When Apple, Amazon or Google goes down, everyone notices, and hence fewer people will entertain the idea of outsourcing their software needs.  Of course, none of this should surprise anyone but the media has a very short term memory.  [Read more →]