Telecom Ramblings

CENX (news) are announcing a new round of funding this morning, adding $9.5M to the company’s coffers. They plan to use the new capital to fuel the next phase of growth powered by the ongoing industry transition from TDM to Ethernet. The new investment was led by Verizon [Read more →]

Sunil Tagare put out a great piece yesterday on the submarine cable industry’s unique ability to spend money, and it got me to thinking that there is a strange juxtaposition here. Somehow we as a global society have gotten to this place where it’s ok to gamble on fiber a mile or two under the waves, but horrifyingly risky to put it a few feet underground. [Read more →]

Several quick items from over the weekend from the submarine cable world, featuring Bharti Airtl, Seaborn, and Gulf Bridge International: [Read more →]

I’ll be travelling on Monday, so if something happens that Ramblings doesn’t cover right away, you’ll know why. But before everyone goes off into the weekend, here are some quick takes on the other news of the week. [Read more →]

GlobeNet (news) [a subsidiary of Oi (news)] said yesterday that it plans to build a new submarine cable in the Caribbean. Extending from their their current cable routes hooking up Brazil to the eastern coast of the US and the islands in between, they plan to build a brand new express route between [Read more →]

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

Telcos hoping to cash in on – or at least survive – the rise of OTT services must open their network APIs and transform themselves into a toolbox to help OTT players innovate. [Read more →]

The KPN board is getting schooled by Carlos Slim and the Mexican telecommunications giant America Movil. Today AM announced that after additional transactions, it has taken its minority position from 8.7% the other day all the way up to [Read more →]

Several metro and regional items of notice: [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) said today that it is opening a new enterprise-grade data center facility in Omaha, which in many ways is the Colorado-based company’s home away from home. The new ‘Premier Elite’ data center will be targeted at meeting the growing needs of the enterprise sector, which is rapidly [Read more →]

Earlier this month, Reliance Communications got approval from Singapore to IPO its submarine cable unit and plans to make it happen next month.  But as it has educated investors on the unit’s potential, those investors have apparently been educating them in return about what they are willing to pay for. [Read more →]

XO Holdings (news, filings) is revamping its metro network capabilities by bringing in packet-optical gear from the Swedish vendor Transmode. XO was looking to scale capacity on its national metro footprint more cost effectively. [Read more →]

Time for a series of quick-takes on recent news from the colo business: [Read more →]

Last month we learned that Indonesia’s PT Telkom was looking seriously at a bid for Pacnet. Then Pacnet sent CEO Bill Barney packing in a surprise move alongside rumors that he had differed with the company’s private equity owners on a sale.  It looked like PT Telkom was all set to gobble up the regional submarine cable operator, but apparently it was not to be. [Read more →]

BTI Systems won an interesting deal in Southeast Asia yesterday. Fiberail is deploying their converged packet-optical and Carrier Ethernet gear to extend their delivery of mobile backhaul and Carrier Ethernet across the Southeast Asian nation.  [Read more →]

Hudson Fiber Network tapped a partner each in Japan and New Jersey to help bring lower latency connectivity to their customers, especially of the financial variety. [Read more →]

Windstream (NYSE:WIN, news, filings) said today that it is bringing big bandwidth to the Richmond Public Schools in Virginia. The buildout covers 87 route miles hooking up some 58 locations across the school district under an E-Rate contract. Richmond’s teachers and students will hopefully find [Read more →]

Datapipe is teaming up with Hibernia Networks (news) to connect up its data centers in the New York and London metro areas. They’ve purchased wavelength services from the submarine cable operator to bring lower latency connectivity to [Read more →]

Lightower Fiber Networks (news) has been putting a lot of money to work in New Jersey as it adds depth to its network to match what it has on the other side of the Hudson. Today they unveiled a new route and claimed the low latency title between two of the newer data hubs in the region: [Read more →]

Carlos Slim is definitely sending European the telecommunications sector a message: he’s coming and he’s definitely not bluffing. The billionaire’s Latin American’ telecommunications business, America Movil, has been spending quite aggressively to build its European presence. [Read more →]

Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) has finally started shipping its next generation DTN-X platform, by the end of Q2 as they had previously promised. They’ve already announced two early customers over in Europe: EPEG and DANTE for the 500Gbps superchannel PICs, but I expect we will see some additional network operators sign on publicly over the next few weeks and months. [Read more →]

A quick roundup of news from around the world again: [Read more →]

Looks like the purchase of cw by Vodafone Group (NYSE:VOD, news, filings) may have overcome its biggest hurdle. Orbis, which is C&WW’s largest shareholder, is apparently now on board with the deal according to reports.  [Read more →]

Over the weekend we learned that the FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is circulating a proposal to reopen the subject of the dangers of cell phone radiation. [Read more →]