Telecom Ramblings

With ITW underway out in Chicago, folks have been saving up network news of all types for the occasion.  Here’s a quick survey of some metro fiber news of interest, with four domestic items and one from the UK: [Read more →]

Lots of news out there this week to get to, here’s a set of internet exchange and transit backbone quick-takes that are worth a look: [Read more →]

In a chess move that will further blur the lines between content and networks, Verizon announced this morning an agreement to buy AOL.  They will be paying $50 per share for about $4.4B in cash, a 17% premium for AOL’s stockholders. [Read more →]

This morning, AT&T and Level 3 announced an agreement for bilateral interconnection of their IP networks. Now, these sorts of peering deals happen all the time without much fanfare of course. But it’s interesting that we’ve seen three such [Read more →]

While we’ve seen Google making waves in the undersea markets and there’s been an occasional sighting of Facebook, the presence of Microsoft has been harder to spot.  This morning though, the software giant went public as a major customer of both of the two new Transatlantic cables that are under construction. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick roundup of news to start this week as ITW kicks off.  (No I’m not there this time, maybe next year). [Read more →]

Several competitive service providers posted their first quarter earnings this week, here’s a quick review: [Read more →]

After a year of mostly integrating Cbeyond and its other various acquisitions, Birch Communications has stepped back into the M&A market.  Yesterday they announced their 24th deal, a definitive agreement to acquire the customer assets of OrbitCom . [Read more →]

Last week was truly a remarkable one for M&A transactions and other strategically important developments in the world of Bandwidth Infrastructure, so we took the opportunity to sit down with Bank Street’s James Henry (JH), Richard Lukaj (RL) and Peter Beckett (PB) to get their perspectives on the news and its implications for the sector. Here is the second part of our two-part interview in which we look at Lightower’s merger with Fibertech and the formation of Communications Sales & Leasing. [Read more →]

In other data center merger news, QTS Realty Trust has found itself an inorganic target.  Yesterday they announced an agreement to acquire Carpathia Hosting for $326M, looking to move deeper into cloud-based services. [Read more →]

The global carrier neutral data center market turned into a soap opera this morning, as Equinix made an unexpected offer to acquire TelecityGroup. TelecityGroup is of course has been busy preparing to merge with Dutch-based Interxion since their own deal was announced three months ago, but Equinix is arguing that it’s proposal would be a better idea. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Don Sambandaraksa, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Denial reigns among the cellcos in today’s post-Snowden world. While the likes of Google, Yahoo and US cloud in general has been struggling to come up with answers to surveillance, scrutiny of our cellcos has been lacking, but grassroots [Read more →]

Here’s some quick-takes on news from the vendor space this week: [Read more →]

Fiber, that is. Lumos Networks is introducing a dark fiber offering, shifting its approach to the networking business to include a lower gear. Meanwhile, the company posted revenues and earnings for the first quarter that met guidance and exceeded market expectations. [Read more →]

Last week was truly a remarkable one for M&A transactions and other strategically important developments in the world of Bandwidth Infrastructure, so we took the opportunity to sit down with Bank Street Group’s James Henry (JH), Richard Lukaj (RL) and Peter Beckett (PB) to get their perspectives on the news and its implications for the sector. Here is the first part of our two-part interview. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick look at some news from the past few days — new SDN-powered cloud connectivity, some refinancing, an alien wave, and two executive job appointments. [Read more →]

The colocation provider vXchnge has made an inorganic move that significantly increases its footprint.  Yesterday they announced the acquisition of 8 data centers from Sungard Availability Services, nearly doubling their reach to a total of 15 markets now. [Read more →]

Some five years after acquiring Nortel’s MEN business, Ciena is making another significant acquisition of a competing vendor. This morning they announced a definitive agreement to acquire Cyan in a move that will take the company much deeper into the world of on-demand networking and services. [Read more →]

Contributed by Charlie Reed & Rajive Keshup, ATLANTIC-ACM

Fiber market on fire

In the last week, we have seen ~$3B of transaction value between the Crown Castle/Sunesys and Lightower/Fibertech transactions at multiples as high as ~15x (EV/EBITDA).  These are some of the highest multiples the industry has seen in recent history, sparking substantial debate on potential bubbles and a market that requires [Read more →]

Three new job listings this past week on the Ramblings Jobs board from the northeast, and yes it’s from the consolidator of the week. [Read more →]

Two announcements this week shook up the metro fiber markets in the USA this week: Lightower is taking out Fibertech for $1.9B, while Crown Castle is buying Sunesys for $1B. That’s a significant amount of fiber changing hands, and it’s worth taking a moment to step back and look at where we are. [Read more →]

Here’s our recurring Friday quick look at other news from around the sector, as we digest the big metro fiber consolidation week we’ve had in the US. [Read more →]

In the previous article today about Crown Castle’s plans to purchase Sunesys, I wondered what else might be on their shopping list after two deals in the past 8 months. Well, as an alert reader pointed out, it turns out that should have been three — we missed one other already this year. [Read more →]