Telecom Ramblings

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 →]

Over in the north of England, a new alternative FTTH project is taking shape. Two alternative broadband and content providers and one metro fiber builder and operator have teamed up to form a joint venture. The target is the city of York, and the goal is 1Gbps to homes and businesses. [Read more →]

The Northern Virginia, Washington DC, and Maryland fiber market is one of the most dynamic in the world. And with more than 800 route miles of high-fiber-count cables crisscrossing the region and an expanding portfolio of products, 24/7 Mid-Atlantic Network is a rising, independent provider in a geography that is on everyone’s radar. With us today to discuss the company’s approach and plans for the future is Sean Baillie, who joined the company last summer and then took over as President this past November.   [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of some global news from over the weekend and early Monday: [Read more →]

As expected the announcement last month that the US would give up its control of ICANN, the body that oversees domain names and such, has turned into a political football.  And no amount of backpedaling will get the talking heads to let it drop either.  One wonders who had such spectacularly bad timing to even mention such a thing as the country gears up for what looks like a very nasty off-year election cycle.  But anyway, now that it’s on the menu and we’ve had time to hear from both sides, let’s poll Ramblings’ readers: [Read more →]

TGIF.  Before you go, here’s a quick rundown of one last set of metro, data center, and vendor news from this week: [Read more →]

The so called “heartbleed bug” is apparently worse than an epidemic. It isn’t just going around, everyone’s already got it. The tiny yet massive flaw is in the popular security library OpenSSL. This is apparently a week for irony. [Read more →]

One of the next big frontiers of simultaneous cooperation and competition in internet infrastructure looks like it will be interconnection agreements that will be necessary to turn off the PSTN. Yesterday, the nations’s biggest ILEC and one of its larger privately held CLECs managed to actually get it done. [Read more →]

Well, it’s been an interesting week for the regulatory process that the Comcast/TW Cable merger will be mired in for a while. All the excitement in the news is what Business Week properly calls a sideshow, albeit an entertaining one.  [Read more →]

Time for a quick rundown of news on the international front from this week: [Read more →]

This article was authored by Joseph Waring, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Security spend is outpacing IT spend. And the only thing that seems to be outpacing security spend is security losses. Martin Casado, VMware’s CTO for networking, says: “It’s like we’re losing this battle. We can’t spend our way out of the battle.” [Read more →]

Unite Private Networks is taking another step beyond its E-Rate roots with a significant new buildout of intercity fiber in the Midwest.  When complete, the new fiber will span nearly 200 route miles between Kansas City and Omaha along interstate 29.  It will feature a high fiber count, lower latency, and of course diversity from existing carrier routes. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick update on other news from the early part of this week that’s worth noting.   [Read more →]

Another bit of M&A in the managed services and cloud arena has rolled past. Masergy said today that it has acquired the Texas-based security solutions provider Global DataGuard. [Read more →]

My content delivery M&A speculation the other day may have seemed far-fetched, but little did I know that there was another network operator out there about to enter the CDN waters. Hibernia Networks has in fact taken the plunge, launching its HiberniaCDN offering on Monday. [Read more →]

There have been two key video announcements at the NAB event out in Las Vegas for Level 3. Given how dominant video bits are when it comes to overall internet traffic these days, it’s a reminder of just how much more there could be in a few years. [Read more →]

According to Vertical Systems Group, the ongoing industry-wide rollout of fiber to the business markets continues to make steady progress. The industry aggregate percentage of on-net commercial buildings with 20+ employees spent 2013 rising to 39.3%, up from 36.1% the prior year and 31.8% the year before that. Back when I started Ramblings, this number was still in the [Read more →]

XO Communications stepped back into the public eye with some new expansion plans yesterday, backed by some new cash. Since Chris Ancell took over as CEO after last Thanksgiving, I’ve been waiting to see which way he would turn the steering wheel at XO. [Read more →]

There’s been a bunch of metro fiber news in the past few days, here’s a quick rundown: [Read more →]

In a filing with the SEC yesterday, Juniper Networks offered some sobering new information about its plan to refocus and cut costs. They’ll be reducing their headcount worldwide by 6%, which given current levels of around 9500 means that about 500-600 folks will be looking for alternatives.  Juniper says a significant proportion of those will be from middle management.  [Read more →]

In the last few days two IP backbones, each large in transit but small in the overall telecom world, made quiet moves that have given them an extra $200M or so to play with. GTT filed a shelf with the SEC in that amount, while Cogent Communications has tapped the debt markets. And while it’s probable that there’s nothing relating the two moves (I certainly don’t have any information about either company’s plans), it still got me thinking. What sort of inorganic move would make sense for an independent IP backbone right now? [Read more →]