Friday Roundup 10/16

Dan Rayburn reports that CDN challenger EdgeCast was profitable in Q2.  That’s quite impressive actually, considering the relatively low $10M of capital invested and revenues in the neighborhood of $15-20M.  To reach scale so quickly when few others have done half as well with twice as much suggests that these guys aren’t going away.  It also throws into a favorable light the choices by Deutshe Telecom and Global Crossing to resell the company’s services.  I wonder if either of those arrangements have generated appreciable revenue.

NTT Docomo has selected gear from Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) to transform its network to all IP.    I don’t generally get too excited when one giant chooses another giant, after all that’s what giants do.  But in this case we are talking about a mobile network moving to an all-IP core, for both voice and video traffic.  Definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) seems to be running into a snag in its bid for Tandberg, as major holders accounting for some 24% of shares outstanding are publicly objecting to the sale.  It isn’t as if Tandberg was under heavy pressure to sell out, so it’s somewhat surprising that its own board has a much lower opinion of the company’s prospects than many of its major shareholders.  I suspect this isn’t going to go away, and Cisco will be forced to raise its bid.  But they will probably do so if it comes to that.

And finally, we got our first peak at Q3 results from Nokia Siemens and it wasn’t a particularly tasty one.  Nokia’s revenues of €9.810B were down sequentially from €9.913B in the first quarter, and that was entirely due from the Nokia-Siemens unit where revenues dropped from €3.199B to €2.760B in the prior quarter.  In other words, the recession may be easing, but it hasn’t eased yet at least for Nokia Siemens.  Let’s hope we don’t see declines like that across the equipment space.

If you haven't already, please take our Reader Survey! Just 3 questions to help us better understand who is reading Telecom Ramblings so we can serve you better!

Categories: Content Distribution · Telecom Equipment