Telecom Ramblings

The only consolidator out there that has been competitive with Zayo in terms of raw number of deals since 2006 struck again yesterday. Birch Communications announced an agreement to acquire the client base, accounts receivable, and physical assets of Ernest Communications, bringing their total to nineteen in the past six or so years.  [Read more →]

The three wireless deals of the year now have another thing in common. Softbank has now sweetened the pot a bit in hopes of winning shareholder support for their deal and delayed the vote, much as happened recently with Sprint’s bid for Clearwire and for DT’s purchase of MetroPCS in April. And while I doubt they will make Crest Financial happy, they did bring the hedge fund Paulson & Co on board. [Read more →]

Three months after unveiling their Constellation project for 2013, TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) is preparing to fire it up, at least in prototype form. And along the way, they’ll be providing dynamic Ethernet connectivity to CoreSite’s Open Cloud Exchange. [Read more →]

So last week’s big political/tech news was about privacy and the fact that we apparently have even less of it than we thought we did. Revelations that the NSA has been playing fast and loose with the rules shocked the media, though I seriously doubt they were nearly as shocked as they made out. [Read more →]

I guess Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC, news, filings) is making good money off these network outsourcing contracts, because they keep racking them up. This morning they added MBNL, the joint venture tasked by Everything Everywhere (EE these days) and Three UK to run [Read more →]

This week could be yet another watershed moment in the ongoing M&A soap opera that is Softbank/Dish/Sprint/Clearwire.  And just to make things even more complicated, over the weekend the buzz was about Softbank’s Plan B should Sprint spurn their offer. Yep, they’re floating the possibility of a bid for T-Mobile USA. [Read more →]

As disclosed by Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) this morning, the IRS says it has convened an internal working group to study what constitutes “real estate” when it comes to classifying assets in the context of REITs. Equinix has been working toward a conversion of its business into a REIT, and based on the analyst and pre-market response, the wind has just shifted in an unfavorable direction. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Dylan Bushell-Embling, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has commenced a project to deploy a 100G optical network to support its online platforms, and has contracted ZTE for the rollout. [Read more →]

It’s been a busy few days for metro and regional fiber: [Read more →]

For the second straight quarter, Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) easily surged past both guidance and analyst estimates and posted quarterly revenues above $500M for the first time.  Forward guidance was also above the expected range.  Here’s their numbers in some context: [Read more →]

As a helpful reader pointed out, the rumored move by DT on GTS Central Europe was just the initial bit of information and apparently there’s actually an auction to be had. So let’s engage in a bit of idle speculation.  Who might fit the bill? Who would pay up for deep fiber in Eastern and Central Europe? [Read more →]

Here’s a set of quick takes on the international front from TI Sparkle, Level 3, Savvis, and Equinix. [Read more →]

Ok, it’s been almost a year since I updated my long-running statistics page summarizing the industry’s metro fiber route miles and on-net buildings. That’s long enough that a half dozen people have been either asking for an update or volunteering data in hopes I will get off my backside. [Read more →]

Time for a quick look around at the week’s initial news from competitive network operators: [Read more →]

As the wireless industry continues to prepare for the future deluge of data traffic in an era of smartphones and video, the subject of small cells has been coming up frequently as an important potential piece of the puzzle.  But beyond the fact that they’re cells and they’re small, most of the talk about them is quite general.  With us today to shed a little more light on the subject is Doug Wiest, EVP of Wireless at EdgeConneX.  EdgeConneX today announced a new small cell deployment contract in [Read more →]

With words like f there were any gloves still on, they’re definitely off now. Sprint says that Dish’s latest last minute bid for Clearwire is ‘not actionable’, while Crest Financial is demanding Sprint not interfere and that the special committee be reinstated to consider Dish’s bid.  By ‘not actionable’, Sprint means that in order to agree to Dish’s bid Clearwire’s board would [Read more →]

Last month, Lumos Networks announced a buildout to the southeast of its main turf all the way down into Richmond.  Today they released additional information about that buildout, including a major Ethernet anchor customer for the new infrastructure in the form of the healthcare provider HCA Virginia. [Read more →]

France Telecom/Orange has sold off its financial infrastructure business, Orange Business Services – Trading Solutions division to the Gores Group. And it won’t have that long, derived name anymore either, as the division will be rebranded as Etrali Trading Solutions. [Read more →]

Demonstrations can be a bit dry, so over in Europe DANTE and Infinera have put provisioning bandwidth in the context of either sportscar performance (from zero to a Terabit in less than twelve minutes) or the cooking of mashed potatoes (not quite done yet), whichever floats your boat. [Read more →]

Let’s start the week with a quick roundup of data and content news from across the sector. [Read more →]

My internet connection got blown out of the water for a while there this morning, but I’m back at least temporarily. In the interim, here’s a quick Friday roundup of news from the metro and regional space from the week. [Read more →]

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

The so-called “Internet of Things” currently consists mainly of smart meters, webcams and whatever major appliance you can fit a wireless broadband radio into (TVs, refrigerators, coffee makers, vending machines, cars, etc). In the future, that will expand to include pills. [Read more →]

Well they didn’t really have an alternative, so it came as no surprise that clwr postponed the vote on its proposed sale to Sprint for $3.40 per share. The chances of Sprint’s bid winning that vote went from iffy to nil when Dish offered $4.40 per share in cash. But it does pose the rather basic question ‘now what?’ [Read more →]