Telecom Ramblings

It’s official, Deutsche Telekom and MetroPCS have come to terms and the German giant’s T-Mobile USA unit will merge with smaller rival MetroPCS. The combined AWS spectrum will give T-MobileUSA’s LTE plans a nice boost in major metro areas where MetroPCS is strong. [Read more →]

Cloud and CDN provider Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) is expanding its local presence in Latin America. Of course, they’ve delivered content in this part of the world for a long time, and have a sales office in Sao Paolo. But today they opened a services and support center in San Jose, [Read more →]

While Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) was mentioned by some as a suitor for TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) recently, yesterday a different rumor emerged in another part of the world that may have more teeth. No not in Europe or South America, actually, which is where most of us have been looking. Commsday says that the global network operator is rumored to be contending to purchase [Read more →]

With the tw telecom rumor now receding somewhat into waiting mode, we have another merger rumor in the telecom world, this time it’s in wireless and it has teeth. T-Mobile is apparently poised to pounce on its smaller rival MetroPCS, looking to rejuvenate their US presence with an existing, if small, LTE buildout already in place. Both companies have [Read more →]

Quick takes on network news today from Zayo, Internet2, AT&T, and Verizon: [Read more →]

A quick look at some vendor news lately, with items from ADVA, Cisco, and Juniper: [Read more →]

Amidst the recent rumors that it is bidding for TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings), CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings) added a bit of confusion as it pump faked the debt markets yesterday. [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) kicked off the fourth quarter with another tweek to its enterprise portfolio. They unveiled a new portfolio of layered security services giving what they’re calling ‘Earth to the Cloud’ protection. [Read more →]

On Friday one of the more interesting stimulus projects got completed way up in northern New England. The Maine Fiber Company has finished construction of the ‘3 Ring Binder’ project, hooking up those everpresent anchor institutions across the state. [Read more →]

The news over the weekend seems to be that TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) is for sale and that CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings) is close to making the deal happen. The rumor is in the Denver Post, but seems to have originated with the DealReporter website. Does it make sense? Yes, it might – but it also might be [Read more →]

We have another new two job listings on the Ramblings’ Jobs board this weekend from a familiar source.  The northeastern fiber operator Lightower Fiber Networks listed another two positions.   [Read more →]

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) said this morning that it will be building a network for Ghana’s National Information Technology Agency and its e-Ghana project. The buildout consists of a new 600km fiber backbone, a national state-of-the-art data center facility to support it, and three years of network management starting in November 2012. [Read more →]

Various reports yesterday said that Vodafone expects the integration of its newly purchased Cable & Wireless Worldwide assets to cost as much as £500M ($800M+) over the next four years. That’s definitely not chump change, in fact it’s nearly half of what they paid to buy the company in the first place. [Read more →]

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

Here’s what the future of the Internet looked like to AT&T in 1983.  One word: videotext! [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of data center news in the past day or two from Internap, IO, FiberMedia, Stackpop, and Global Capacity: [Read more →]

According to Commsday this morning, the Australian communications minister Steven Conroy recently said that if prices don’t come down the NBN will build its own cable to the US. The $40B NBN project certainly has the firepower to build a cable if it wants to, but their current project list is surely long enough to keep them busy for a long time without [Read more →]

Various reports say that Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) is now housing a direct link to the Southern Cross Cable Network. The direct connectivity makes it easy for customers to connect from SY1 to its Seattle IBXs, amongst others. The proximity to SCCN was crucial to Equinix’s choice of location when entering Australia. [Read more →]

There’s a new network route connecting western Russia with Germany and its main Frankfurt hub. Russia’s MegaFon has teamed up with Latvia’s Lattelecom and Germany’s Deutsche Telekom to create the “Baltic highway”. [Read more →]

Here’s today’s roundup of network operator news: an M&A for Ritter, a new product for Integra, and customer wins for Earthlink and Level 3: [Read more →]

In the wake of the New York Times’ broadside on the energy habits of the data center industry and the many responses from around the internet, let’s take a poll of Ramblings’ readers and see where things stand: [Read more →]

According to a detailed article over on the Wall Street Journal, the advent of smartphones has seen telecom spending by families go up sharply at the expense of things like cars, clothing, events, and eating out. That wireless carriers have succeeded in getting a greater share of family spending sounds great for the sector, but there’s a lot of conflicting trends going on here don’t you think? [Read more →]

Some quick takes on news from network operators this morning: contracts for Lightpath and Hibernia and a refinancing and confirmation of guidance by Level 3: [Read more →]

With European telecom and internet infrastructure valuations still way down, there’s another outside buyer looking to take advantage, this time from the southeast. According to Reuters, Turk Telekom’s CEO Tahsin Yilmaz said today that it has allotted up to €300M toward expansion via M&A.  [Read more →]