Telecom Ramblings

This industry viewpoint and David Letterman tribute was authored by Fady Masoud, Senior Advisor, Product and Technology Marketing at Ciena.

Let’s face it – the importance of the data center in our everyday life has never been greater. As a culture, we expect on-demand, high quality and real-time access to content via a multitude of applications and devices. Since all that content lives in the data center, [Read more →]

Friday is here, and so is a quick roundup of other news from around the US this week that is worth checking before you go: [Read more →]

Powered by strong converged packet-optical sales, Ciena posted a strong fiscal Q2 report this morning, surpassing both estimates and guidance on virtually all fronts.  Here are a few of their numbers in some context: [Read more →]

According to the Wall Street Journal this morning, Dish and its CEO Charlie Ergen may finally achieve the wireless dream they have been chasing for many years now. While it’s not exactly news that the two might be interested in a combination, Dish and T-Mobile are said to be hammering out an actual deal. [Read more →]

Yesterday, a new bit of mega M&A speculation started making the rounds. Michael Rollins, a Citigroup analyst, suggested that after its Suddenlink purchase the French group Altice might have more on its mind than US cable assets like Cablevision, that in fact it might cross the cable/ILEC chasm and buy Verizon’s local wireline business. [Read more →]

As Allied Fiber prepares for the formal launch of its Atlanta-Miami route later this month, they have picked up a high profile customer on the southern half of it.  Windstream has signed on for a fiber IRU on 360 route miles between Miami and Jacksonville. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick mid-week rundown of some news from across the sector: [Read more →]

Yesterday we saw another side of the telecommunications world take a step into the cloud. An association of 32 independent, regional telcos has acquired the cloud service provider Codero. [Read more →]

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

A regional information superhighway from the Pacific to Europe is the missing link to tuckling Asia’s digital divide according to a panel discussion at CommunicAsia2015 Tuesday. [Read more →]

Zayo Group has unveiled plans to build longhaul dark fiber up the eastern seaboard, expanding further the company’s intercity fiber buildout plans.  The new route will stretch across 800 miles between Atlanta and the Washington D.C. metro areas, passing through Charlotte, Raleigh, and Richmond along the way — and of course hitting Ashburn as well. [Read more →]

Content delivery down under just got a bit easier for Level 3 with a new partnership with Optus. The deal will see Level 3’s caching servers placed within Optus’s network infrastructure, growing Level 3’s CDN capacity in the country by some 300%. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Prabhu Ramachandran, Director of WebNMS

Like all businesses, optimizing the customer experience for communication service providers (CSPs) helps make everyone happy. Satisfied customers don’t look elsewhere and keep using the service. Low churn and new user referrals help the provider’s profitability, and it lets [Read more →]

DE-CIX says it had a big first quarter to open 2015, selling as many 100GE ports during the quarter as they did all last year. The big name on that list is clearly Akamai, who now has 12x100GE or 1.2Tbps of connectivity over at DE-CIX’s flagship Frankfurt exchange.  That’s a lot of peering capacity. [Read more →]

Not much early action this Monday morning, but a bunch of folk from the sector have some interesting new titles this week. [Read more →]

The consolidation story in the European colocation world just entered a new, fascinating chapter this morning. Three weeks after making a play to derail the Telecity/Interxion merger and acquire Telecity Group for itself, Equinix has won major battle. Telecity this morning has agreed to their offer of £2.35B ($3.6B). [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Scott Sumner – VP, Solutions Marketing, Accedian Networks

The industry is buzzing about the promise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and predictions about its growing influence. Gartner forecasts that 4.9 billion connected ‘things’ will be in use in 2015, up 30 percent from 2014, and will reach 25 billion by 2020. That’s potentially great for consumers and industry, assuming network operators are prepared [Read more →]

Several interesting news items came out yesterday that are worth a quick look and comment: [Read more →]

This article was authored by John C. Tanner, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Mark Zuckerberg’s bid to connect the unconnected via Internet.org is already facing its first major roadblock – not from cellcos, but from internet companies and activist groups who claim Internet.org’s business model violates net neutrality principles and [Read more →]

Just a bit over a month after formally launching its transatlantic cable plans, AquaComms has its funding in hand.  Yesterday they closed the financing for AEConnect and brought into force the contract with TE SubCom to build the cable system.  With plans for a December 2015 ready-for-service date, they certainly aren’t wasting any time. [Read more →]

The managed cloud services marketplace got a big jolt yesterday as the storage technology giant EMC announced the purchase of Virtustream.  It’s an all-cash deal for $1.2B that will bring Virtustream’s team and as-a-service offerings under the EMC umbrella. [Read more →]

Software Defined Networking and Network Functions Virtualization have come a long way in a short amount of time, far enough to grab the attention of large technology giants like Hewlett Packard. In a move that accelerates its entry into the space, HP said yesterday that it has agreed to buy ConteXtream for an undisclosed sum.  [Read more →]

We have one last earnings report for the first quarter left to look at.  The pan-European fiber operator euNetworks may no longer be listed on the Singapore exchange, but are still reporting their numbers.  And it was a pretty strong quarter, with revenues and EBITDA both up sequentially for the third consecutive quarter.  Here are their numbers in some context: [Read more →]

Ireland has emerged as one of 2015’s bandwidth growth spots, and the city of Cork is readying itself for a new era where it is no longer a backwater you have to get to via both London and Dublin. While we were all at Memorial Day picnics, they were hosting an event for no less than three submarine cable projects that may soon connect the Irish city to three continents without passing through either of those hubs. And along for the ride came some updates on the progress of those cable systems. [Read more →]