Telecom Ramblings

While new metro loops are almost commonplace these days, new longhaul intercity routes are still a rare beast. We’ve seen a few big projects lately though on the east coast with Allied Fiber in Florida and both Lumos and SummitIG in Virginia, and now Zayo says it is building a new dark fiber route much further inland.  [Read more →]

We had some M&A news in the financial networking vertical yesterday. IPC Systems is changing hands, with Centerbridge Partners paying $1.2B or so to take it off the hands of Silver Lake Partners.  [Read more →]

Seems like everything is in play these days when it comes to telecommunications consolidation in Europe. While Americans were all off on a turkey break, across the Atlantic several soap operas continued. [Read more →]

Holiday weekends are many things to the corporate world, and one of them is an opportunity to bury things they’d rather not have gain that much attention. In that finest of traditions, AT&T sent a letter to the FCC before the break responding to that call for information about its fiber deployments of earlier this month. In short, they’re backing down and still planning to follow through on the plans, although we’re not going to get to see just what those plans are since they were as usual heavily redacted. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Dan Joe Barry, vice president of marketing, Napatech.

Gigaom Research reports that software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) represent two of the more dramatic oncoming technology shifts in networking. Both will significantly alter network designs, deployments, operations and future networking and computing systems. Key drivers include improved network service levels and lower operating and capital costs. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Phil Marshall, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

This month I published a research report on the telecom tower industry; an industry that I have followed for nearly two decades since its inception in the United States in the mid-1990’s. In recent years, the tower industry has expanded at an incredible rate, particularly as operators seek cost effective network expansion strategies, and network sharing becomes more readily accepted. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of some recent network news that’s worth a look: [Read more →]

While I was traveling last week, the rumors of an M&A deal surrounding euNetworks became more than rumors. They company’s largest shareholder, Columbia Capital, has launched an effort to buy the rest of the company and take it private, looking to bring the independent western European fiber footprint all the way under its umbrella. [Read more →]

The M&A talk over in Europe today is focused on the UK, where BT and Telefonica are dancing around a possible transaction. While described by BT as ‘highly preliminary’, the idea would be for BT to get back into the wireless game by reacquiring O2, which it spun off over a decade ago. Telefonica would likely then own a significant minority chunk of BT. [Read more →]

As the holidays loom large, so does the urge to look ahead and speculate on what will come in 2015 and beyond.  With us today to opine about where the internet infrastructure industry is headed and why is Gillis Cashman, Managing Partner at the private equity firm M/C Partners.  M/C Partners is very tightly focused on communications services and infrastructure, and Gillis [Read more →]

This week we got two new listings from down south to take a look at. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Max Silber, executive director of mobility, MetTel

Mobile devices in the workforce are nothing new – since the invasion of Palm Pilots and Blackberry phones in the late 1990s, these devices have become as common in a cubicle or office as a desk phone and computer monitor.

What wasn’t expected at the dawn of the mobile era was the extent to which users would [Read more →]

With the travel, I have been playing catch-up all week on other news. Here’s another roundup, this time of network operator news: [Read more →]

Windstream is sending out some cards just in time for the holiday season, but they aren’t of the festive variety. The hybrid ILEC/CLEC is planning to slim down its workforce by 2.7% by December 1 in an effort to improve its cost structure and efficiency. [Read more →]

Lots of news from the vendors this week, especially around Ethernet, SDN, and NFV given GEN14. Here’s a quick look a few items I learned about at and around the event: [Read more →]

One of the more interesting and colorful items I ran into at the GEN14 conference this week was the unveiling of the Clouded Leopard’s Den. It’s not a new product or service, but rather an effort by the Cloud Ethernet Forum to bring the popular Shark Tank concept to the cloud, where the teeth this time belong to the endangered Himalayan big cat. [Read more →]

Virginia has been getting some fiber attention lately, and it got another key intercity piece this week while I was off traveling this week.  Dulles-based SummitIG has completed the construction of its brand new dark fiber route between Richmond and the key data center hubs of northern Virginia. [Read more →]

One of the biggest deals in internet infrastructure this year was the combination of Level 3 and tw telecom, which just closed a couple weeks ago.  Both companies had strong momentum in the enterprise markets, and once integrated the combined network and on-net building footprints will be quite formidable by any measure.  The key, therefore, is to make that happen.  With us today to talk about the integration ahead and the road beyond is Level 3’s longtime Chief Technology Officer, Jack Waters. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of news from around the world worth a quick look: [Read more →]

I’m on the road this week, but here’s a quick rundown of some of the news out there: [Read more →]

A week after taking another swing at buying ShoreTel, Mitel has backed off — at least for now — and has publicly withdrawn the offer.  ShoreTel seems happy with that. They had raised their earlier bid up to $8.50 per share, but ShoreTel’s board continued to be unimpressed and had described the offer as ‘highly inadequate’.  [Read more →]

The northeastern fiber operator Lightower Fiber Networks is now not properly called northeastern, having brought fiber to a piece of Dixie. Lightower has completed its 1,100 route mile fiber buildout throughout Virginia and now reaching down into North Carolina. [Read more →]

After every acquisition, Level 3 goes to work on that complicated balance sheet, and this morning they are doing so again.  Although actually this one was probably in the works regardless.  [Read more →]