Telecom Ramblings

It’s not often lately that Level 3 shareholders get to celebrate, but as Spring draws to a close this month it is becoming increasingly clear that springtime is just getting started at Level 3.  Just 7.5 weeks ago on April 15, LVLT was trading at $1.96, today it hit $4.48. The last time we saw this price was October 15, 2007 – just days prior to the October Massacre.

What’s changed is apparently the fundamentals, or at least the street’s current [Read more →]

Now that’s a POP…  Jubany Antarctic Base Communicates Via Global Crossing! I wish I could get the story from the guy from that truck-roll for Tales from the Field…

You can just hear the other carriers yelling from their nice warm offices in the USA and Europe: “Way to go!  Yes of COURSE we’re right *cough* behind you!”  [Read more →]

Items actually were closer than they appeared. That is the message Cogent got in the first quarter, when they saw slowing traffic growth and reduced sales productivity and I remarked on the change at the time. For years, Cogent’s $10/Mbps offer on 100Mbps of IP Transit was by far the lowest bar in the industry – when introduced the pricing norm was $50 or so. In essence, Cogent forward priced the market in order to [Read more →]

Verizon just deployed ULH in Japan.  Is it just me, or does this not seem silly:

The company will deploy 155 kilometers (96.3 miles) of ULH network in Japan between Tokyo and Maruyama. The latest ULH expansion, part of Verizon Business’ planned 2008 investment to advance the company’s [Read more →]

BearOnBusiness and Telecosm are discussing whether content is king of the network, so let me put my two cents in. Most content is like most people and like most things in this world, it follows rather than leads.  It flows downhill via the path of least resistance – in fact it is a watery analogy I will rely on here.  Is water king?  Or are the pipes king?  Neither, it is the valves that rule them both.

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Just when you think that Zayo can’t possibly keep buying stuff, they go out and buy assets I’ve never even heard of before (and that does take some doing).  Today they announced the purchase of Northwest Telephone, which apparently owns a network built out of IRUs in the Pacific Northwest connecting places most competitive network operators would never dare tread like Walla Walla and Wenatchee Washington.  So many W’s, it makes the head spin.

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If everyone were like me then standalone VoIP would have killed the RBOCs by now.  I have used Packet8 plus a cell phone full time since 2004, I cut my landline at that time and have never missed it.  Verizon and I no longer speak, and I like it that way.  In terms of reliability my solution annihilates the RBOCs.  Wait, in terms of reliability?

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Following my initial forays into compiling comparative on-net building data for competitive telecoms, more data started coming in.  Some from several very helpful readers, some from a little more elbow grease on my part.

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My earlier posts on whether the entrance of network operators Level3 and AT&T into the CDN space constitutes a threat caused a pretty hefty pile of comments, more offline emails, and even a couple of blog responses by Dan Caruso.  Some points were agreeing, some disagreeing, but all were helpful to me in furthering my understanding of the subject, thank you.

Let me clarify a few points:

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Yesterday I gathered on-net building data. Now, size isn’t everything, it matters a great deal what buildings you connect and how you connect them.  So let’s see what we can get out of those numbers.  In terms of on-net buildings per market served:

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A friend of mine, currently the CEO of Syringa Networks, is retiring and helping the board of directors recruit a replacement.  The readership of this board includes more than a few folks from the industry, some might be interested and more might know someone who is.  So here you go:

Syringa Advertisement for President/CEO

Syringa Networks, a regional fiber optic telecommunications carrier, is accepting applications for the position of President/CEO.

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For a couple years now I have been keeping track of on-net buildings, but I have done so haphazardly.  With this forum in place, I think I will try to keep it more regulary and in a public format.  When I speak of an on-net building I mean that it has a fiber connection to someone other than the local ILEC.  Of course, different companies disclose this number differently, and some don’t give it at all, but we can get a general idea if we try:

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Finally, after a process that was much more difficult than it should have been, this blog has a new home!  The forwarding from itaoran is propagating around the internet, I hope I didn’t lose too many readers.  Regardless, if you have this site bookmarked you should edit it if needed.  If you use a reader, I hope this went ok already but since I’ve never done this before we’ll just have to wait and see.  Of course, there may still be bugs, so if anyone finds links that don’t work or anything else broken, please please do send me a note.

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How can one company (Level 3) state that broad patent coverage is necessary to even enter the business, and another to all the way through an IPO (Limelight) with almost none? The whole patent situation amongst CDNs makes it virtually impossible to pinpoint value, and it is a symptom of the breakdown in our patent system, especially as applied to software and the internet. Here’s a quick summary of some of the players in the CDN patent soap opera:

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Yesterday I discussed the benefits of owning the network in the CDN business.  I do realize that the issue is a disputed one, but for the sake of argument just suppose that owning the network does change the cost structure of the CDN business substantially.  What happens next?  Surely the pure CDN providers won’t just sit there, waiting for annihilation, so let’s look at some possible responses:

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With the entry of Level 3 and AT&T into the CDN space, a discussion of cost structure has arisen. Pure CDN’s say that owning the network is not necessary and too expensive. The network operators say that owning the pipes amounts to a huge advantage. Who is right?
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Today, two weeks since this blog went public, we hit a milestone of 10,000 pageviews (all-time).  Not bad at all, and far quicker than I ever expected.  Thank you all for bearing with me as I work out the kinks, I’m still new at this blogging thing.

On that note, I have secured the domain ‘www.telecomramblings.com’ and will be moving to it before long, hopefully this weekend.  No doubt many of you wondered what that URL was all about – well mainly I wasn’t sure it was going to work out, so I just used a URL I had handy.  But it has worked out, and so I went looking for a more appropriate domain.  I will keep itaoran.com pointed here though.  Hopefully everything will go smoothly (yeah right).

Another day, another win for Infinera?  Today Zayo Bandwidth became the latest in a long string of wins for the upstart DWDM vendor, Zayo has apparently already installed Infinera’s PICs to light fiber between Chicago, NYC, and Washington DC.  Now it should be noted that Zayo bought Citynet’s wholesale division which had already picked Infinera in 2005, so this new PR shouldn’t come as a huge shock.

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Today Ike Elliott suggested Level 3 may soon be on the prowl for more acquisitions.  I am not so sure, maybe in 6 months though.  However, there are others out there with money and a reason to buy, and there are many out there that look like prime buyout material.  And then there are those that need to be bought – well, maybe they don’t think so, but everyone else does.

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I have been asked to comment on the anti-dilution hedge I mentioned in my Virtuous Circle post last week. I’ll do my best, but your mileage may vary.

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Contributed by the_highwayman

Not all POPs are what the PR folks make them out to be.

A while back my company was integrating some acquired assets, and as part of the process I was assigned to turn down a circuit and recover the router and all equipment at a “MAJOR” POP site for the acquired network. This particular circuit was located in a very rural portion of Missouri. [Read more →]

Yesterday, the Times Online reported Global Crossing might be selling its UK operations, and I contended that this likely would mean that in fact the whole company is being sold – in pieces to maximize the value for their majority owner STT. But who would buy them? In the absence of a bona fide rumor, let’s just apply a bit of logic.

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The Times Online is reporting that Global Crossing is considering a sale of its UK operations. A sale of GCUK cannot exist in a vacuum, it sounds like a strategy to maximize the sale value for Singapore Technologies Telemedia (STT) by breaking it up into pieces. GCUK is the most valuable piece of GLBC and its financial lynchpin, [Read more →]