Telecom Ramblings

After rumors yesterday that a Vodafone deal was in the works, Verizon quickly moved to put out the flames. If that sounds familiar it’s because it is. Whether it’s just for the Verizon Wireless stake, the whole shebang, or a three-way, such rumors have been difficult to stop lately. [Read more →]

Time for some quick catch-up in the colo space, with items from Cologix, 6DG, CyrusOne, Digital Realty, and Equinix: [Read more →]

The Vodafone rumor du jour would certainly be a dramatic event, should it come true. FT’s Alphaville blog paraphrases ‘usually reliable people’ as saying that Verizon and AT&T are preparing a joint bid for Vodafone worth something in the neighborhood of $245B.  Of course, ‘usually reliable people’ is a fairly general category which could be interpreted to include my dry cleaner and we are still dangerously close to April Fools day still, but then it the Financial Times here and such a deal isn’t entirely implausible. [Read more →]

The Fiber M&A front has been relatively quiet so far in 2013, but this morning saw a bit of consolidation up in the northeast. Tech Valley Communications has agreed to acquire substantially all of the assets of Vermont-based TelJet Longhaul, LLC. Those assets include both a metro and regional fiber network and a 20,000 square foot data center. [Read more →]

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

Last week, news broke that the world’s largest DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack in the history had taken place, almost crippling the internet. Only it might not have been quite as large as reports made it out to be. And it was something that could have been stopped by a fix that’s been around for over a decade. [Read more →]

Sources suggest there has been a dramatic shift in the race to replace the FCC’s Julius Genachowski and Robert McDowell. Rather than go with the usual technocrat with special interest ties, both sides of political establishment have come to the conclusion that a new direction is necessary to bring some passion and energy to telecom regulation. The Democrats will be nominating filmmaker Michael Moore, while the GOP is going with Rush Limbaugh. [Read more →]

Not that it’s a big surprise, but Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) and its proposed acquirer Softbank are vowing to stop using equipment from Huawei. The deal remains under a review by US regulators, and lawmakers are taking the opportunity for a few photo-ops along the way protecting us from evil. [Read more →]

As we head into an earlier-than-usual Easter weekend, here’s a quick look at some other news this week from the colo sector from Digital Realty, IO, DuPont Fabros, Interxion, and Telehouse America: [Read more →]

Ok, there has to be more to this story but I suppose it’s early yet. Apparently the Egyptian coast guard caught some saboteurs in the act of taking down a submarine cable off the coast of Alexandria. Three divers in an inflatable dinghy with air tanks that look so battered they might have found them on the bottom next to the cable were down there sawing away, apparently. [Read more →]

With its recent M&A moves in mind, the markets are trying to guess Oracle’s next target. And it does seem likely there will be a next target, since integrating Acme Packet and Tekelec doesn’t add up to an endgame just yet. The lucky company annointed by analysts as the one with the biggest bullseye on its back appears to be BroadSoft, and I’ve got to admit it makes a lot of sense. [Read more →]

Time for a quick review of news items from the metro side of things: [Read more →]

News from the data center space in the far east this morning, where the frequency new projects has been particularly heavy over the past few years. [Read more →]

While the gear that lights fiberoptic cables continues to evolve rapidly, the changes to fiberoptic cables themselves have been much more incremental for a long time now. That could be on the cusp of changing, as researchers have apparently taken taken the glass out of the equation for some major bandwidth. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick roundup of some global network news, with items from AT&T, GTS Central Europe, Level 3, and Vodafone: [Read more →]

For Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings), Latin America is hot — hot enough to put more money into its metro networks. Today the company announced the launch of new high-speed metro networks in both Bogota, Colombia (left) and Buenos Aires, Argentina. [Read more →]

Today Telefonica decided to sell off all of its treasury stock as part of its ongoing effort to cut its debt load. The 90,067,896 shares were sold at €10.80, adding a bounty of €975M to the company’s balance sheet and increasing the company’s shares outstanding by just under 2%. [Read more →]

Yesterday Oracle announced that it is acquiring another networking vendor, demonstrating that it’s quite serious about moving into the telecom world. They are buying Tekelec, which specializes in network signaling, policy control, and subscriber management.  [Read more →]

The pan-European network operator Interoute issued its full year 2012 numbers today. Much as it did last year, Interoute credited strong cloud services demand for its solid 2012 growth despite the continued macroeconomic headwinds the region as a whole has had to contend with. [Read more →]

This quarter’s persistent rumor has been of a final resolution of the Verizon/Vodafone situation just beyond the horizon.  Yet thus far the rumors have been quite glib beyond that much. But according to the several UK newspaper articles, there may actually be a deal in the works now with an eye on a summer tie-up. Investors are taking it seriously enough to drive Vodafone’s stock 2.5% this morning. [Read more →]

After touring network maps side by side over in the UK and Scandinavia earlier this month, I decided to evolve the idea further but with US metro network maps.  As it works best for the largest metro markets with recognizable geographies, I thought I’d try looking at the combined Ashburn/DC Metro/Baltimore region – for which I have a dozen.   [Read more →]

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

It’s been said before (in this space and elsewhere) that customer data privacymatters, customers are becoming increasingly aware of that, and are demanding better privacy protections and assurances that their personal data won’t get lost, stolen or abused. [Read more →]

Yesterday Zayo Group (news, filings) announced a partnership with Internet2 to boost its network assets between Chicago and Seattle. When the upgrade is completed this spring, they’ll have over 4Tbps of capacity with which to support Internet2’s 100G network plans to hook up educational and research institutions in the Northern Tier. [Read more →]

It’s been a while, so it’s definitely time for a Friday poll.  Rumors abound that the current FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, will be stepping down after four years or so at the helm – in fact the announcement may be coming as soon as today.  Let’s step back for a moment and think about the last four years of US telecom regulatory theater as a whole.  How did he do?  What grade would you give him? [Read more →]