Telecom Ramblings

Sunil Tagare, the protagonist who helped drive the original FLAG effort that disrupted the global submarine cable industry back in the ’90s, is at it again. He has invited carriers to attend the first investors meeting and DGM for the ‘Tagare Cable’ in Dubai on September 11-13.  The Singapore-France system would take on the proposed Sea-Me-We-5 cable, the details of which have been [Read more →]

Perhaps stung by the market’s reaction to last week’s earnings, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) has gone on offense this week on multiple fronts – the most interesting one not yet appearing in a press release (oh wait, there it is now). [Read more →]

Midwestern fiber builder and operator Unite Private Networks announced an agreement this morning to acquire the Nebraska fiber network of Zito Media. Since getting that infusion from Ridgemont Equity Partners a couple years ago, UPN has been increasingly aggressive in the fiber space- but this is the first time that has manifested itself in the form of M&A.  [Read more →]

Savvis (news, filings) [a subsidiary of CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings)] is purchasing the IT outsourcing business of Ciber, giving it greater muscle on the services side of its business to go with its colo and cloud infrastructure. The two companies have been working together since partnering last summer.  [Read more →]

With all the consolidation reducing the number of fiber network operators and builders in the space, it’s nice to see one get created now and then. Today Summit Infrastructure Group formally launched, specializing in dark fiber for data center connectivity. [Read more →]

ABRY Partners has acquired yet more internet infrastructure to add to its collection. Xand, which ABRY purchased last october, announced its intention to merge DBSi this morning. The deal follows a merger with Access Northeast just this past Spring. [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) picked up a key election season video deal at its Vyvx division. McNeil/Lehrer Productions, which produces the PBS NewsHour and handles convention coverage for the public broadcaster, has selected Level 3 to help produce and deliver video coverage for both party conventions this summer. [Read more →]

CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings) announced an expansion of its fiber in the Charlotte metro area, adding a ring with connectivity into five data centers and bringing products such as wavelengths, IP transit, and IPVPN directly to more customers there. [Read more →]

A bit of catch-up to start the week, with news from Adtran this morning plus bits from late last week from MegaPath, Limelight, Alcatel-Lucent, and UPN: [Read more →]

Seaborn Networks, which is preparing to build a direct link between the US and Sao Paolo, down in Brazil, has shifted its plans to a more northerly endpoint. Whereas their initial intention had been to simply land in Miami and hand bits off to terrestrial fiber from there, today they announced plans to instead offer a direct route all the way to New York City. [Read more →]

Ok, it’s Friday and after yesterday’s news out of Kansas City many have got Google Fiber on the brain.  Do we have an access revolution at hand, is this just a minor step forward, is it all hype, or a smoke screen?  Don’t be shy: [Read more →]

A quick survey of some of this weeks updates in the submarine cable sector: [Read more →]

A gigabit connection to the home for $70/month on a one year contract? I’d instantly take it if it were available where I live, but of course this is only in Kansas City where Google has been busy preparing its FTTH project.  At long last, they went live with details today. [Read more →]

With all the earnings news this week, we don’t want to ignore the rest of what has been going on. Here’s a review of a few other items this week from across the US internet infrastructure market from IO, Terremark, Lightower, Zayo, and AT&T: [Read more →]

In their earnings report this morning, Sprint rightly put most of the focus on its much larger wireless business, i.e. their progress in the shuttering of Nextel and the rolling out of LTE. Overall, earnings per share were a bit light but revenue was strong and they raised OIBDA guidance for 2012. But the most interesting data point to me was the boost in wireline capex.  [Read more →]

Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) shrugged off any macro-economic headwinds even more convincingly than Equinix today, posting both revenues and earnings per share above both guidance and analyst expectations.  New guidance for Q2 was similarly positive, and the stock traded up 17% after hours in response.  Here’s a quick tabluar summary in context: [Read more →]

Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) has had no trouble with the macro environment it seems, as their Q2 report was as solid as it always is. Revenues came in within their usual narrow range of guidance, and they boosted the full year 2012 outlook by $30M to ‘greater than $1.920B’ to account for $30M from the acquisitions of Asia Tone and ancotel.  EBITDA was higher than expected, checking in with a nice sequential increase to $222.1M, and they boosted the full year 2012 outlook for that by $20M as well.  Here’s a quick table of the relevant numbers: [Read more →]

Two interesting releases from CenturyLink yesterday and this morning, on two different subjects: consumer access and cloud connectivity. [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) reported its Q2 earnings this morning, keeping its promise on EBITDA growth with a very nice number that out outpaced my model easily, but with lighter than expected revenues in part due to currency fluctuations.  The integration still appears to be going well, requiring less integration spending for each dollar of synergies than anticipated.  But the macro economy definitely did not help this quarter.  Here’s a table of Level 3’s numbers in the context of the past two quarters: [Read more →]

With its 5x100G DTN-X finally released into the wild, Infinera posted its Q2 results today.  Revenues coming in toward the lower end of guidance while the market had them closer to the midpoint, while earnings per share and margins were in-line.  As expected, the numbers start to look much better in the second half – with Q3 guidance fairly strong despite the prevailing mood out there.  Here’s a quick table of results in some context: [Read more →]

Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) followed up a surprisingly good Q1 with an even better Q2, despite the moody uncertainty hanging over the sector as a whole.  Here’s a quick table of some of the relevant numbers: [Read more →]

Let’s survey the latest announcements from the vendor side of the tracks: [Read more →]