Telecom Ramblings

Back in July, the British regulator Ofcom ordered BT to separate its Openreach wholesale wireline arm and operate it as a separate company.  That process has apparently not gone as they desired, because today they ratcheted up the pressure further.   [Read more →]

In the US, Thanksgiving is over and we are now in the interlude before Christmas when little gets done.  Little doesn’t mean nothing though, so let’s take a quick survey of what else is out there: [Read more →]

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, there was a bit of interesting network news from South Asia. Global Cloud Xchange has announced the deployment of a national 100G backbone across India as well as some recent M&A I must have missed along the way. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Lachlan Colquhoun, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

No one was the least bit surprised last week when the Australian Government committed another $A20 billion ($14.8 billion) to the roll-out of the National Broad Network. [Read more →]

Yesterday, Zayo revealed an organic expansion into the UK city of Manchester. They’ve added a new PoP there in response to customer demand, including initial sales to both a multinational content provider and to a pan-European systems integrator. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Henrik Nydell, Senior Product Manager at Accedian

We are in the midst of a transitional period for mobile network operators and their use of virtualized performance assurance tools. One driver of the changes now underway is that, especially for new services such as voice over LTE (VoLTE), quality of experience (QoE) is proving to be more critical than ever, and also more challenging to achieve using conventional tools and methodologies. [Read more →]

Today there was yet another M&A to add to the list of the month-long spurt of inorganic activity. This time it is in the arena of wholesale carrier voice, and to a lesser extent submarine cables. UNIFI Communications has acquired WIS Telecom from Orascom TMTI, which is of course controlled by the Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris. [Read more →]

The last few weeks have seen a new wave of M&A in the telecom and internet infrastructure world.  But successful consolidation often comes down to putting the right people in the right places to get more out of the combined assets than others have been able to do.  Companies spend a lot of resources acquiring the right talented executives that can do that job, and they often turn to recruiters with deep industry knowledge to help them do it.  Competitive Telecoms Group, Inc is one such resource, and with us today to talk about his approach is CEO Jerry De Martino. [Read more →]

A short week in the US is on tap, but plenty is going on internationally anyway.  Here are a few quick takes for the start of the week: [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Chris Purdy, CTO, CENX

With SD-WAN, it’s all about flexible, assured connectivity. Software-Defined Wide-Area Networks offer a long laundry list of benefits for both enterprises (that use them) and service providers (that offer them). If you’ve been following the SD-WAN conversation, you are undoubtedly familiar with many of the claimed benefits: [Read more →]

This article was authored by Dylan Bushell-Embling, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

The Australian government has been forced to commit an extra A$19.5 billion ($14.3 billion) towards the construction of the National Broadband Network. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was contributed by Dr. Yuri Gittik, Head of Strategic Developments and Innovation, RAD

Network functions virtualization (NFV) is all about agility and efficiency, with the objective of automating and speeding service delivery with a streamlined cost structure for service providers. But where in the network can NFV best deliver on its promise? [Read more →]

Verizon’s plans to buy XO Communications cleared a key regulatory hurdle yesterday.  The FCC has given the deal a nod of approval for the $1.8B deal, which still has to finish up with some state regulators.  The deal is still expected to close in the first half of 2017. [Read more →]

Two global network operators revealed yesterday that they are partnering to expand their respective capacity and reach. Sparkle, the international arm of Telecom Italia, and Global Cloud Exchange, which serves the same role for India’s Reliance Communication, are tapping each others infrastructure. [Read more →]

The optical vendor Infinera announced new platforms today that incorporate its Infinite Capacity Engine technology platform, further filling out the company’s next generation portfolio. They’ve added two packet-optical transport modules, two meshponders, and a ROADM product to the mix, complementing the data center interconnection-focused products announced in September. [Read more →]

In the metro world, here are two bits of regional M&A, one contract win, and some data center connectivity to peruse today: [Read more →]

Comcast Business has big fiber plans for Philadelphia. The business services division of the cable giant announced yesterday that it is pouring some $30M into an expansion and upgrade of its fiber depth in the city. [Read more →]

The FCC’s planned votes this week on special access and set top boxes have been canceled, along with several other items. In light of the election win for Donald Trump, Republicans were pressuring FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler not to proceed, and they got what they wanted. [Read more →]

I’m back home in NJ from having a great time at the Telecom Exchange LA event this week, but I came in on the red-eye so I’m still catching up.  In that vein, here’s some quick takes on news from around the world: [Read more →]

The election of Donald Trump as the next US president has everyone scrambling to figure out what he’ll do, and in the last few days that has meant growing speculation about what it might mean over at the FCC. [Read more →]

I’m on the road again this week out at the Telecom Exchange LA. If you are too, come say hi. In the meantime, here’s a few quick takes on news from the start of this week: [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was contributed by Mannix O’Connor, Director of Technical Marketing at MRV Communications

With the continuous demand for hyper-scale migrations to the cloud, mobile broadband and high-definition video applications, Communication Service Providers (CSPs) find themselves transforming legacy network infrastructure to next generation packet-based networks. There is a need to [Read more →]

Communications Sales & Leasing announced its Q3 earnings this morning along with another acquisition, it’s third in the last twelve months.  They started off this year buying PEG Bandwidth, and followed up with Tower Cloud.  But their third acquisition isn’t fiber, but rather towers. [Read more →]