Friday Roundup 10/15: NTT, TWTC, Cox, Level 3

Friday at last.  Time to catch up a bit on the articles that slipped past my nets or otherwise left me briefly speechless:

Footprint expansion is not just for the smaller providers.  Japanese giant NTT Communications (NYSE:NTT, news, filings) announced this week that it will be expanding its ArcStar Global IPVPN service into five new European markets:  Madrid and Stockholm are already online, and Hamburg, Munich, and Warsaw will be by the middle of next month.  That will give them a more significant footprint on the continent with which to serve the multinational enterprises they favor.  NTT also announced a mobile app that rates its customers abilities to impersonate other voices (yes, that’s the speechless one).

National metro fiber operator TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) held onto its position as preferred provider of network services for The Quilt, which aggregates the buying power of many colleges and other institutions, including a large chunk of Internet2 participants amongst many others.  Not surprising though, as TW Telecom’s deep metro footprint makes them hard to do without.  And last week, they won a deal with another non-profit, LONI down in Louisiana, to provide metro fiber for SCinet in preparation for SC10 down in New Orleans next month.

According to CED, Cox Business is extending its fiber network in Roanoke, Virginia to bring fiber to a new technology park at the west end of Roanoke County.  The city has always been a Cox stronghold of course.  I do wish Cox Business would give us some more insight into its fiber footprint one day!

And finally, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) continued its yearlong PR barrage with a contract announcement with Grooveshark.  I sort of which Grooveshark was a network operator someplace, we need some new & strange names around here.  But no, the company is a subsidiary of Escape Media that provides on-demand music streaming.  They will be using Level 3’s high speed IP services to enhance its online streaming services.  On another note, D.A.Davidson analyst Donna Jaegers apparently issued a report suggesting Level 3 is set to beat the street in the next quarter or two on the strength of wholesale and federal, amongst other trends.  Let’s hope so, the company hasn’t gotten a break in a long while.

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Categories: ILECs, PTTs · Internet Backbones · Metro fiber