Tuesday Fiber Roundup: XO, Abovenet, Sidera, Global Crossing

There are several interesting items from fiber operators this morning that are worth a look:

Transaction Network Services has selected the Ethernet Hub Service of XO Holdings (news, filings) to grow its business nationwide.   Having raised a bit of money and announced plans to raise a bit more via a rights offering, XO’s next task is to keep those margins up above 15% as they recently guided to for Q3 and Q4.  As always, Icahn lurks in the background here, seems like he’s been too quiet lately.

In Chicago, IPNETZONE picked abvt‘s Chicago footprint to expand its MPLS Exchange Platform into the city.  IPNETZONE is an independent provider specializing in private line, metro Ethernet, and MPLS services, and is based in New York.  I haven’t followed them much, but they seem to be popping up more and more so I’m sure we will hear more from them in coming quarters.

And sidera won a contract with American University down in Washington DC to provide a high capacity, diversely routed network path for disaster recovery.  Sidera of course is the freshly independent and rebranded company formerly known as RCN Metro.  Sidera already provides other bandwidth services to American University, as it has an extensive footprint in the metro area.

Meanwhile, glbc is enhancing its EtherSphere product line by adding smart demarcation capabilities as well as optional performance assurance and traffic management.  The idea is end-to-end service management and quicker turnups and troubleshooting.  Global Crossing has been working hard lately to differentiate its Ethernet offerings to large enterprises on the basis of service capabilities.

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Categories: CLEC · Ethernet · Metro fiber