News may have been slow over the past week, but there were quite a few very interesting posts to the many telecom and data blogs out there. Here are a few I think shouldn’t be missed:
Renesys put out its annual summary of trends in the IP transit business for the top 13 networks (according to their methodology). Level 3 apparently had a good year, winning new customers worldwide and leaving Sprint behind and claiming sole top honors. Other big gainers included Tinet and Tata and to a lesser extent Global Crossing and Savvis. Of course, market share in IP transit doesn’t mean financial success – it’s still a very tough business.
AFS’s Dave Rusin over on Telecom Straight Shooter had two really nice posts last week. The first gave entertaining, individualized new year wishes to a few dozen of his fellow CEOs. The second gave his insightful take on M&A in the fiber sector in 2010, which he expects to be a lively year in which AFS may actively participate. Personally, I hope they do – Dave needs a bigger company to run to keep him busy… Haha.
Over on the Global Crossing blogs, Tim Copley made his blogging debut with an interesting discussion of Global Crossing’s EtherSphere in the context of the recent moves by Equinix and CENX to establish carrier neutral exchanges. As this is a rapidly developing story in the marketplace, the more voices we hear from the better chance we have of really understanding what is going on. If there are any other companies out there looking to discuss their Ethernet exchange plans and ideas but need a place to put them, feel free to inquire about a guest post here on Ramblings.
And on Sprint’s Seamless Enterprise blog, Christopher Glenn took on the tough issue of calculating ROI for technological shifts, in this case Sprint’s Unified Communications (UC) efforts. I haven’t talked much about Sprint’s UC efforts, largely because I haven’t yet spent the time to fully understand where they are going with it. That will be a project for the new year I guess!
And last, but perhaps largest in scope, was GigaOm’s discussion of AT&T’s recent extraordinary regulatory filings, in which the company acknowledged that POTS will die during the decade to come and asked for the development of rules to let it do so peacefully. By peacefully of course, they mean without disturbing the company’s profits or forcing them to do anything, preferably by – gasp – deregulating the business. What is good for AT&T is not necessarily good for CLECs, as Peter Radizeski noted in his own article on the subject. While technically nothing has happened except that AT&T has stated the obvious and whimpered in premature pain under the strain of maintaining its billions of dollars in cashflow, this is a developing story that we will no doubt be talking about for some time.
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Categories: ILECs, PTTs · Internet Backbones · Internet Traffic · VoIP
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Mr. Rusin’s an interesting gentleman, but I keep wondering if there’s a socialist inside of him relying on oligarchy’s to support his business while referencing his market cap analysis.
Ultimately, all markets where mankind plays its role makes price discovery unavoidable including price adjustments that reflect all tiers of participants according to their proper place on the board.
Jim Crowe and his crew were never playing for second place, nor were they ever indicating a less than 50 percent share amount relative to the investments that their shareholders have embarked upon!
Jim has said routinely and historically, “We’re share takers…”
I don’t think Jim is intent on sharing his market success, assuming it finally rears its pretty head, along with sub par players, many whom continue to maintain flawed business models re-emerged from bankruptcy courts.
If he were to do as Mr. Rusin implies, he would not be a capitalist, and I would not have wasted my hard earned capital to bet with him and on him!
I can’t bet on Mr. Rusin or the Zayo Man, can I? 🙂
I am finding it funny considering Mr. Rusin’s sense of humor tied to my oligarchy comment which really represents the titans, in this example.
I was really intent on describing oligopolies more attributable to Dave’s vision whereby price fixers at the Brahmin level conspire to keep serfs across the globe paying the freight for their wishing wells, whatever those wells might hold inside.
No, no, no! We can have none of that in telecom!
Rather, we need a monopoly player who built its network predicated upon silicon economics and Moore’s law, whereby, price compression is overcome by unit demand.
We need a harlot who all roads lead to and all players must have.
Why? Because it’s good for end users, these serfs, who long to keep using and advancing the network ultimately enhancing productivity by inventing in addition to creating never before understood or imagined applications during the process.
As Mr. Rusin knows, we need Bubba’s galore out there! 🙂
M&A — never pay retail.