Telecom Ramblings

The Indian mobile giant Bharti Airtel is putting money into an African IP backbone, and Alcatel-Lucent is providing the technology behind it. Bharti has 17 affiliates in various spots around Africa, and is building an IP/MPLS transport and backhaul network to handle the growing data needs. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Cam Cullen, vice president of global marketing at Procera Networks.  

IPv6 continues to be a topic of great interest to ISPs. A survey done by Nominum in conjunction with IPv6 Day shows that Europe is entering a critical phase in dealing with IP address shortages. Europe is served by [Read more →]

We have a new job listing on the Ramblings’ Jobs board this week from none other than Zayo, and four others still active as well. [Read more →]

Three weekends left before Christmas, which has nothing at all to do with the various interesting things that FiberLight, LightPath, Telarus, Bandwidth, and Fairpoint have been up to this week: [Read more →]

Zayo Group (news, filings) may be busy integrating the six acquisitions it has made this year, but they seem to have the mojo to take on new projects in every corner of their footprint. Today they announced a fiber expansion in eastern Oregon. [Read more →]

Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) won a big victory from the carrier world this morning, announcing a strategic alliance with none other than AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings). The two will be combining AT&T’s global IP network portfolio with Akamai’s CDN platform in a jointly marketed, managed, and supported suite of solutions. They’ll be starting out in [Read more →]

Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings), the 800lb gorilla of carrier neutral colocation, notched two more victories in the financial vertical today. This morning it was LMAX in the UK, and the other day it was CBOE in New York. [Read more →]

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

Indian operators could be in for another rocky year in 2013, according to a report from Fitch Ratings, which has assigned the entire sector a negative outlook. [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) won another streaming deal this morning from the visionary vertical.  Ok, there is no visionary vertical, but maybe there should be.  TED will be using Level 3’s CDN to stream its Ted Talks videos, of which there are 1,400 now that as a group have been viewed more than [Read more →]

Another quick look at news from international network operators: expansions by Pacnet and Geo, an upgrade at Reliance Globalcom, and a new security offering from Interoute: [Read more →]

Several weeks back when CenturyLink announced its 100G product launch and expansion, the gear they were using was unspecified. There was speculation at the time that it was Infinera’s long awaited Tier 1 win for its DTN-X, and today that speculation became reality. CenturyLink has deployed Infinera’s gear in its backbone, the Tier 1 deed is finally done. [Read more →]

Time for a quick roundup from the colocation sector, with new facilities for Windstream and Equinix, automation enhancements for CoreSite, and a new fiber network tenant for Interxion. [Read more →]

Rochester-based Fibertech (news) has announced a major expansion initiative in Ohio. They’ve long had a substantial metro presence in Columbus, but it has been a rather long time since they paid any other attention to the Midwest. [Read more →]

Successful peering agreements and their inner workings usually don’t get their own press releases, but not so today’s settlement-free peering agreement between Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) and TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings).  But while it hasn’t been in the news lately, Level 3 has been on the warpath regarding the way such agreements ought to be designed ever since the dispute with Comcast a couple years back. [Read more →]

After several difficult years as a drain on its parents, the joint venture Nokia Siemens Networks has been looking for strategic alternatives for some time. So it will come as no surprise that today they announced an agreement to sell the company’s Optical Networks business unit. Marlin Equity Partners will be taking the division on a new, independent path.  [Read more →]

The independent IP backbone Hurricane Electric is further expanding its European network toward the south and east.  Last week they added two more PoPs in Milano and Vienna.   [Read more →]

We have a new job listing on the Ramblings’ Jobs board this week from none other than XO, and six others still active as well. [Read more →]

According to Renesys and others, Syria has finally taken itself off the internet. Observers suspect that something ugly is about to go down, as Damascus seems desperate enough to go off the deep end in its battle against the opposition. What surprises me the most though is not that the country’s leaders shut down the internet, but that it took so long.

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Time for a Friday look at news from the data center and interconnection segment: [Read more →]

It’s been a week or two, so it was obviously time for another acquisition by Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings). Today they announced their intention to purchase privately held Cariden Technologies.  Cariden joins Cloupia and Meraki on Cisco’s November shopping list, and the Christmas season is just getting started. [Read more →]

Over Thanksgiving I finished the Q3 update for my competitive telecom trends charts, which tabulate various normalized metrics for alternative fiber operators from across the sector.  This autumn we have seen margins continue to expand with few exceptions, but the market hasn’t been giving anyone much credit for the operational improvements as valuations have been going in the other direction. [Read more →]

Over in Japan, Nissho and Infinera have been demonstrating the DTN-X again, showing the ability to provision an 8Tbps pipe made up of those 500Gbps super channel PICs. That would clearly be rather old news, except for the fact that it’s a rough neighborhood. [Read more →]

Time for some mid-week catch up from network service providers, with quick takes on news from Fairpoint, Agile, Masergy, and Windstream. [Read more →]