Tuesday Roundup: Orange, GTT, Audiocodes, Charter

In the news today that’s worth a look, some M&A activity in Europe, in UC, and at the FCC, plus with a contract win.

Orange may be about to make the next big European M&A move. They are formally opening talks with local rival Bouygues Telecom. Various reports, have pegged the deal at a possible €10B, mostly in the form of shares. Orange has 28M mobile subscribers in France, Bouygues has 14M. If Orange is successful, perhaps I really will get away with never learning how to pronounce Bouygues.

GTT announced a customer win today in the security vertical. Comodo has picked them for VPLS and IP transit services for locations both the UK and the USA, plus two GigE transatlantic links. Comodo specializes in things like SSL certificates, antivirus, and endpoint security.

The complicated world of business communications saw some more M&A activity this morning. AudioCodes has announced an agreement to buy Active Communications Europe, which specializes in software related to Microsoft’s Skype UC efforts. Theyll be paying $3M in cash plus an earn-out arrangement worth up to $2M. The two companies have been collaborating for several years. This is not the Skype-related deal we’ve seen this winter, as Microsoft bought Talko just before Christmas.

And the FCC needs more time to look at the purchase of TW Cable by Charter Communications, which was originally announced in May of last year. Regulators did what they do best, and pushed back their own self-imposed ‘deadline’ another two weeks. The delay will “contribute to a more efficient and expeditious review of the proposed transaction”. Because that’s what taking more time to do a job does — make it faster and more efficient. <sarcasm mode=off>

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Categories: Government Regulations · Internet Backbones · Mergers and Acquisitions · VoIP · Wireless