Telecom Ramblings

Two data center buildouts completed, one getting started, and a contract: [Read more →]

In the Q4 results and forward guidance released by Earthlink this morning, you can just tell that the transformation CEO Rolla Huff is trying to pull off has a lot of miles yet to go. They are looking to newer IT and managed services capabilities for growth, but the results of that effort are still dwarfed by the declining fiber, CLEC, and access businesses they are using to get there. [Read more →]

InterXion (NYSE:INXN, news) today detailed some of its expansion plans for 2013. The European data center specialist will be building a new data center in Stockholm, and expanding existing facilities in both Frankfurt and Copenhagen.  [Read more →]

In the wake of CenturyLink’s surprise dividend cut, many eyes were on the earnings report of Windstream this morning to see if they’d do the same. They didn’t, and in fact made a point of reaffirming their current $1/share dividend. [Read more →]

As Metro Connect get started down in Miami, here’s a quick look at some news from the European front from Colt, Sea Fibre, VTLWaveNet, and Alcatel-Lucent: [Read more →]

According to reports, regulators in India are ready to allow service providers to provide voice services on 4G wireless spectrum, regardless of the underlying technology. Or at least they’ll allow it once the fee of 16.58B rupees ($306M) is paid. Yes, you read that right, a government is making service providers pay up for their own over-the-top services over data connections.  [Read more →]

During Level 3’s earnings call last week, the company mentioned an acquisition if fiber in London they made in 2012. The deal wasn’t  big enough to make the news, and there apparently wasn’t enough revenue to be material in a financial sense – so it slipped between the news cracks. But it’s not often a deal goes by without a mention here, so it’s time to belatedly note that in August Level 3 acquired FibreSpan. [Read more →]

Glad to see there’s some hiring going on out there, though the telecom job market isn’t an easy one currently.  This week we have a new listing from Lumos Networks. [Read more →]

It’s Friday before a long weekend, if you take President’s Day off in the US of course.  Here’s a quick look at some news from afar before you go, including an expansion by NTT and three vendor contracts of interest: [Read more →]

This article was authored by Michael J Carroll, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

A break in a key submarine fiber optic cable linking Georgia to Russia caused problems as far away as Oman, web analytics firm Renesys claims. [Read more →]

QTS (news) has bought itself a giant facility in Texas, giving it an entry into the Dallas/Ft.Worth market. They’ll be converting it to data center space and bringing it online on phases, with the first tenants moving in the first quarter of next year.  [Read more →]

No US metro market has seen as many low latency elbows as New Jersey since the financial community started paying by the microseconds. Today one of the more comprehensive fiber builds to re-imagine the routes between key locations went online, as Hudson Fiber Network took its four new routes to Mahwah live: [Read more →]

Russia’s VimpelCom has become the latest network operator to decide that network operations are a good thing to outsource, and they’ve brought in Ericsson to do the job in a five year deal. [Read more →]

CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings) reported earnings yesterday, with revenue of $4.58B and adjusted EPS of $0.67 each just a hair beneath analyst expectations. But that’s not the story. The story is that the nation’s #3 ILEC decided that it doesn’t like issuing a dividend as much as it used to, and would like to do something else with some of that cash. [Read more →]

With it’s REIT conversion still a long road ahead, Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) posted its usual solid quarterly report today.  The fourth quarter posed them no new problems, as they outperformed guidance and analyst estimates on all fronts after divesting their non-core markets to 365Main last quarter.  Here’s a quick table of their results and forward guidance in context: [Read more →]

Just ten weeks after allying with Akamai for CDN services, AT&T has released its new capabilities into the wild.  Today they announced that the new services are being offered to their U.S. business clients of all sizes.   [Read more →]

On yesterday’s conference call, tw telecom’s CEO Larissa Herda announced an ambitious new network platform that they will be putting together this year. Going by the moniker ‘Constellation’, the new platform aims to give enterprises the same sort of flexibility and speed they can get from cloud computing for their network pipes. [Read more →]

Zayo Group (news, filings) said yesterday that it is planning a metro fiber buildout in the Jacksonville metro area, with its full suite of bandwidth infrastructure services in tow. With the exception of the starter set in Miami they acquired from AboveNet, Florida has been the last densely populated area of the US that Zayo hasn’t significantly penetrated.  [Read more →]

Time for a quick roundup of news from managed network services providers, with a contract for Earthlink, a product enhancement for MegaPath, some funding for Birch, and a partner for Global Capacity. [Read more →]

As anticipated, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) posted its fourth quarter results this morning, and for once there was some good news on the revenue front.  The global fiber operator grew CNS revenues by 1.8% sequentially on a constant currency basis, powered by sequential global enterprise revenue growth of 2.2%.  Adjusted earnings per share were a couple pennies better than anticipated, but on the EBITDA line it took a rather large one time benefit to make guidance look good.  As always, here’s a chart of their numbers in the context of the past four quarters: [Read more →]

For the fourth quarter, TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) posted higher than expected revenues but came in lower than I had expected for both EBITDA and earnings per share.  Mostly this was due to some hiring they have been doing to put in place the personnel necessary to drive a higher growth rate, plus the effects of October’s balance sheet move.  The company boosted its sales force by 5.7% and added other support staff rather faster than I expected they might.  Here are their Q4 numbers in some context: [Read more →]

According to an article by Capacity this morning, Hibernia Atlantic has now halted all work on its Hibernia Express transatlantic cable project due to the uncertainty around its vendor Huawei’s status in the US market. It had been so long since we’d seen an update on the project that I suspected something of this sort was in the works. [Read more →]

The Swedish giant Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC, news, filings) announce this morning that they have won a $1B outsourcing contract in Southern Asia.  Reliance Communications will be outsourcing the operation of a portion of both its wireless and wireline networks to them over the span of a $1B, eight-year managed services agreement.   [Read more →]