Telecom Ramblings

The rumors of Verizon asset sales turned quickly into reality yesterday after the markets closed. Frontier is spending $10.54B to acquire Verizon’s California, Texas, and Florida holdings, while American Tower is buying Verizon’s tower portfolio for $5.06B and of course leasing it back to them. [Read more →]

I’ve been down with the flu most of this week, but I’m almost all the way back now.  Here’s a quick look at news from overseas to chew on:  [Read more →]

In a leak that will surprise nobody, various reports are out this morning naming the company that may be ready to take about $10B of landline assets off of Verizon’s hands. Yep, it’s still Frontier.  [Read more →]

The UK’s supply of telecommunications operators with acronyms shorter than two letters is about to drop to three. In a widely anticipated consolidation move, BT and EE have come to terms. [Read more →]

When FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler was appointed, the cable and telecommunications giants tried to hide grins while public advocates worried about having a lobbyist with industry ties replace Genachowski. The tide has shifted a few times now, but today it’s definitely all the way back the other way with the new net neutrality rules Wheeler is proposing this week. [Read more →]

Zayo has been moving quickly to make use of the assets it acquired over in Europe last year.  This morning the announced plans to expand across the Irish Sea over to Dublin, lighting various dark fiber assets along the way. [Read more →]

In a release that offered a blizzard of combined, standalone, and pro-forma results for the fourth quarter of 2014, Level 3 started a new chapter of its story with the incorporation of tw telecom.  Lots of data, but just what does it say?  My initial take is that North American enterprise revenue growth remained pretty strong for both legacy Level 3 and tw, wholesale was weak, and acquisition costs were big enough to distort it all quite effectively. [Read more →]

That’s a trick title up there, there’s actually only three items in this cloud & colo news roundup: [Read more →]

Both AT&T and Verizon are in the news this week with plans to sell some assets. AT&T is said to be preparing a sale of a data center portfolio reputedly worth some $2B, while Verizon is rumored to be closing in on a sale of wireline and tower assets worth as much as $15B.  [Read more →]

Since its acquisition of Cbeyond last year, one question outstanding — at least for me — has been what they would do with the budding fiber initiatives of the acquired company. Today, Birch in fact revealed a further expansion of its fiber footprint in three major markets. [Read more →]

On Wednesday morning, Level 3 will report its fourth quarter numbers with two months of the former tw telecom’s results to add in.  That will make hash out of the usual table of context I use to keep things in perspective, so instead we’ll try something else to make relatively clear predictions with: [Read more →]

This article was authored by Stefan Hammond, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Research firm Gartner typically offers annual predictions as mentioned in my blog-post “Predictions or science fiction?”  late last year. In January, a couple of switched-on Gartner VPs – Brian Prentice and Andrew Rowsell-Jones – came to Hong Kong to give journalists an in-person taste of the future. [Read more →]

Late last week saw a new job listing land the Ramblings Jobs Board from GeoResults.  Turns out the slow start to the year was in part caused by a bug introduced when we moved to a new server over the holidays — all fixed now I hope. [Read more →]

The FCC’s AWS-3 auction really brought in the cash… After 341 rounds of bidding closed yesterday, the total price tag apparently came to $44.899B, nearly four and a half times the reserve price and twice what observers had been expecting.  [Read more →]

TGIF.  Between Metro Connect and the blizzard, there’s been a lot of news this week that I didn’t get to.  Here’s two international items, some vendor M&A, and two metro networking expansion items to review before the weekend gets rolling: [Read more →]

I spent the last few days at Metro Connect wearing out both my ears and my voice.  It’s always a great event, where the metro fiber industry’s leaders get together and talk straight both in private and in public.  Some of the northeastern contingent had its flights canceled by the snow, but it was very well attended nonetheless.  Here are a few things I took away from Miami — there are probably more, but they are still ricocheting around in my skull. [Read more →]

Just when you might have started thinking it was a feint, Google Fiber is expanding again. Along with Kansas City, Provo, and Austin, the upstart FTTH project announced it will take on four more metro areas. And they’re some of the biggest markets in the southeastern USA. [Read more →]

I’m still at Metro Connect, heading home later today.  In the meantime here’s another set of quick-takes on recent news that is worth a look: [Read more →]

Allied Fiber has won a big dark fiber contract for its ongoing fiber roll-out in the southeast.  Spanish-based Telefonica is coming ashore in North America and onto some new terrestrial dark fiber, taking up residence on Allied Fiber’s growing footprint. [Read more →]

Transbeam has been busy making a big dent in the New York area in the Ethernet-over-Copper and Ethernet-over-Fiber space over the past few years, and they’re now ready to take their platform on the road. They’ll be entering a selection of NFL cities in force this year, which will let them start to address multi-location businesses more effectively. [Read more →]

I’m at Metro Connect this week, so if you are there feel free to look me up!  In the meantime, here’s a quick look at some news from this morning: [Read more →]

This article was authored by Stefan Hammond, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

The “computer” concept used to mean mainframes: giant machines kept in a special room guarded by technicians. Ordinary employees were given “dumb terminals”: keyboard/monitor combinations with wires that plugged into the computer room and controlled access to the “big iron” beasts that crunched the numbers. [Read more →]

Showing just how intent they are on their Mexican invasion, AT&T has made another acquisition just nine days after closing its purchase of Iusacell. This morning they announced a deal to purchase Nextel Mexico from NII Holdings, following through on rumors of their interest since fall.  [Read more →]