Telecom Ramblings

Capacity has an exclusive piece out this morning on the future of Reliance Communications' international arm, Global Cloud Xchange. Apparently there are three bidders at the table, but everything is on hold until the future of Rcom's other assets is out of limbo. But after years of false starts, I suspect the endgame is finally here. [Read more →]

Four quick bytes of expansion news from around the world and the industry worth noting thus far this week: [Read more →]

What started with an unexpected presidential tweet appears to be taking a more concrete form.  The US government and China are said to be close to a deal that would lift a ban on the Chinese-based vendor ZTE that was imposed in April. [Read more →]

The travails of India's embattled Reliance Communications just keep getting messier. Late last week, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) handed the Swedish vendor Ericsson a victory, admitting its petition and appointing managers to run RCom, Reliance Telecom, and Reliance Infratel. The two companies are said to be trying to work out a deal outside of court, and RCom has filed an appeal. [Read more →]

An expansion, an integration, and two customer wins: [Read more →]

This article was authored by Dylan Bushell-Embling, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

NEC has announced it has applied AI to subsea cable networks to push the capacity limits of the transmission networks. [Read more →]

Zayo has announced another customer win of the unnamed variety. A 'global business process outsourcing company' has picked Zayo for a combination of colo and wavelengths in a multi-year deal. [Read more →]

With its size and influence in the sector, Cisco's financial results would be a key milestone even if their corporate calendar weren't off-rhythm by a month. Since they are though, we get a look at results that include an extra month of economic activity. Cisco's numbers were pretty much where they were expected to be, and guidance for fiscal Q4 was too. [Read more →]

Here's a quick rundown on some infrastructure news from the metro this week: [Read more →]

So, yes I missed this one last week while travelling at ITW out in Chicago, so let's catch up. Within its earnings release, Uniti Group announced the acquisition of a strategic fiber portfolio from CenturyLink. [Read more →]

CenturyLink has lined up another buyer for the assets it agreed to divest as part of the Level 3 merger.  FirstDigital Telecom will be buying the metro network and related assets previously owned by Level 3 Communications in Tucson, Arizona. [Read more →]

Some European fiber is changing hands again, and the buyer is one of this year's most active players in the space.  Antin Infrastructure Partners has agreed to purchase Ufinet Spain from Cinven. [Read more →]

Still catching up on some of the news from out in Chicago at ITW last week, here are a few news bytes from around the world: [Read more →]

This article was authored by Dylan Bushell-Embling, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

In an unexpected twist in the ongoing saga over the ban on ZTE importing US components, president Donald Trump has indicated he may throw [Read more →]

Ok, I can't bear to write anything cogent on the subject, but I can't not mention it.  So I went with an offbeat poll.  This week we learned that AT&T paid Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's Essential Consultants LLC to help it understand the new administration.  What was your reaction to the news? [Read more →]

There were several interesting announcements of new subsea cable systems at ITW, as well as an interesting connection across what is both a shorter and longer gulf: [Read more →]

There was a big telecommunications M&A over in Europe yesterday.  After years of talking about it, Vodafone has entered into a definitive agreement to buy a pile of assets from Liberty Global for $22.7B. [Read more →]

Fresh off the closing of its purchase of Birch, Fusion has gone out and made another acquisition.  The publicly traded cloud and network services provider has signed a definitive agreement to buy MegaPath. [Read more →]

The Atlantic will be getting yet another cable system it seems, but this time it's on a route rarely travelled.  EllaLink has won a key anchor customer for a cable system connecting Portugal with Brazil. The research and education networks GEANT and RedCLARA are putting €25M up for direct capacity between Europe and South America. [Read more →]

I have been out at ITW this week, having just returned this morning.  And of course, there's a pile of things to cover, many of which I learned more about at the event.  Here's a quick look at a few bits of that, with one network expansion, three network deployments with data center partners, and two M&A items worth noting. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Gayle Levin, director of solutions marketing at Riverbed Technologies

Network configuration errors and the resulting service outages are a nightmare scenario for many network operations teams. These all-too-realistic nightmares are often the result of manual and error-prone command line interfaces (CLIs) that are still common among [Read more →]

Indiana Fiber Network is one of the more dynamic and vocal of the regional fiber builders and operators begun by coalitions of independent telephone providers around the country.  With us today to talk about what IFN has on the menu out in Indiana is CEO James (Jim) Turner.  Jim joined IFN as its new CEO last year when Kelly Dyer, whom we interviewed here a few years earlier, decided to retire.  Jim’s background is in the electric utility business, serving most recently as president of the regulated utility business at Duke Energy, which gives him a unique perspective on the evolution of the fiber sector and where regional operators might be headed from here. [Read more →]

Windstream is making progress toward making its fiber network a fully national proposition. Earlier today the company's Wholesale division announced an expansion along a new southern intercity route. [Read more →]