Telecom Ramblings

It’s official, Zayo’s latest acquisition is across the Atlantic in France.  This morning the Boulder-based network operator announced an agreement to purchase Neo Telecoms, an independent metro fiber and data center operator in France. [Read more →]

In a heavily foreshadowed but rather complex cable M&A move, Charter is now buying a piece of Comcast. The deal is quite complicated, but following the completion of Comcast’s TW Cable purchase it will see Comcast divest about 3.9M subscribers and get back about $22B. [Read more →]

I’m picking up rumors over in Europe that Zayo is set to make a move on some French metro fiber. The target of that speculation is none other than Neo Telecoms, which operates an extensive metro dark fiber network in Paris as well as a set of data centers around the country and a regional IP backbone. [Read more →]

Last quarter, Level 3 Communications busted through the break-even mark at long last with a big fourth quarter.  On Wednesday morning we get to see if the trend holds, or almost holds given the seasonal revenue hesitation the company generally sees in the first quarter.  I’ve followed Level 3 closely here over the years, and so here are my quarterly earnings guesstimates: [Read more →]

We have a new job listing on the Ramblings Jobs Board this week from GTT. [Read more →]

This industry viewpoint was authored by Brett Moorgas, Asia/Pacific Field Marketing Manager, for the Endace division of Emulex.

There are two trends in the market that have an interesting relationship. The adoption of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategies is delivering greater flexibility and agility for employees and efficiency gains for the organisations who [Read more →]

Here’s a quick Friday rundown on some of the news from the international front: [Read more →]

Remember the new network neutrality framework FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler promised to come up with? Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, those rules will make their grand entrance in three weeks, but of course they’ve ‘leaked’. If accurate, I’m not sure calling them ‘net neutrality’ rules fits anymore. [Read more →]

As the 100G market gains momentum, so are the bandwidth arms merchants that specialize in it.  Infinera had another strong quarter, showing sequential growth despite Q1 being usually somewhat weaker and guiding well above expectations for Q2.  Here is a table of their results in some context: [Read more →]

According to a report in the UK’s Guardian, there could be a pile of pan-European infrastructure on the table soon. After yet another reorganization of its business model, some analysts apparently think Fidelity may be finally ready to sell Colt, which it has long held a majority stake in.  So just to speculate idly, who might show up for such an auction? [Read more →]

Quite a few regional cloud and data center announcements already this week that are worth a look: [Read more →]

This week’s announced purchase of Cbeyond by Birch Communications caught many in the sector by surprise. While Cbeyond had been on the table for a couple quarters, many I had talked to were skeptical they would find enough interest. But with Birch stepping up with a $323M bid, I suspect other service providers making the transition to cloud and managed services may find suitors knocking. [Read more →]

It’s official, Netflix opposes the Comcast/TWC merger. I’m not sure why that question had to be asked, I’m sure any number of people could have ghost-written the answer they gave in advance.  [Read more →]

With one announcement yesterday and two before the long weekend, tw telecom offered some more details on the rollout of its fiber expansion, market by market. They announced the major new fiber investment back in November and have been wasting no time getting started. [Read more →]

Birch Communications apparently found itself a rather large Easter egg over the weekend, announcing the purchase of Cbeyond this morning. It’s an all cash deal worth roughly $323M, with Cbeyond’s shareholders getting between $9.97 and $10.00 per share – a level they certainly haven’t seen in a while. [Read more →]

Welcome back, at least for those who were off for a long Easter weekend.  While the world gets going again, here’s a quick look back at some of the data center news that came out late last week but I didn’t get to at the time: [Read more →]

This article was authored by Jouko Ahvenainen, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

A few decades ago telephone lines and backbone networks were typically built by national telephone monopolies. The coming of the 1990’s and mobile networks changed this. Most countries have telecom competition and a few [Read more →]

While 100G is still settling in on transpacific routes, the underlying technology continues to jack up the speeds. Yesterday, Ciena and the Japan-US Cable Network trialed 200G on a part of its network. [Read more →]

Lots of other metro network news from this week that is worth a quick look, here’s a quick rundown: [Read more →]

Also yesterday, Lumos Networks is planning an overhaul of its fiber-to-the-cell network, preparing for the coming LTE flood with the not so subtle moniker ‘Project Ark”. [Read more →]

FiberLight said yesterday that it has added the cloud to its bag of tricks. With the help of Cirracore, they have unveiled a cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service offering aimed at the business continuity and disaster recovery market. [Read more →]

In the category of obvious results, Netflix said yesterday in a blog post that its video streaming to Comcast customers is back up. Average speeds of 2.5Mbps were up 65% since January, a not insignificant boost. It had better be up, since they’re paying for it now right? [Read more →]

There are another 400 route miles or so of fiber on Lightower’s southern frontier this week.  The northeastern fiber operator said today that it has completed its expansion in the Washington DC and northern Virginia metro area.   [Read more →]