Telecom Ramblings

Seems like the only time we hear from this bend of the Missouri River is when we’re talking about Google, so it was refreshing to see some other fiber news come out of Kansas City yesterday. twtc is putting more fiber into the ground to expand its presence in the city, adding loops in the ‘North of the Missouri River’ area and in the central business district. [Read more →]

Parts of the nation’s communications infrastructure went on the blink today in the Pacific Northwest. Sprint’s network suffered dual cable cuts in different parts of the company. Cable cuts happen of course and every now and then more than one happens at the same time in just the wrong place, making mincemeat out of someone’s network protection design. [Read more →]

Sidera Networks unveiled an aggressive new buildout project this morning. The company is planning a statewide network in Virginia, taking it for the first time beyond the suburbs of Washington DC and into ‘the South’. I guess that means I’ll have to drop the ‘north’ from the phrase ‘northeastern regional fiber operator’ from here on out. [Read more →]

dlr announced a large new turn-key data center lease down in Houston. The space is going to an unnamed ‘leading technology-focused seismic solutions company serving the global energy industry.’  The energy vertical is obviously big in Texas, and it’s becoming more and more of a bandwidth consumer of late, just like every vertical seems to be for one reason or another. [Read more →]

I have been pondering the influence high frequency trading has had on the bandwidth market over the past few years, and whether the recent second look it is getting from regulators might be something worth keeping closer tabs on. Low latency demand from the HFT wing of the financial industry has created some of the most profitable opportunities for both new and existing infrastructure since the bubble.  Hence, shifts in that industry’s structure may have reprecussions. [Read more →]

Yesterday’s poll will remain open for a while yet, but I found the results after the first day to be somewhat enlightening. The three most common adjectives that Telecom Ramblings readers picked to describe T-Mobile USA’s planned merger with MetroPCS have been, interestingly enough, ‘strategic’, ‘logical’, and ‘defensive’. [Read more →]

Time for a Friday roundup of network news that slipped through the cracks or left me initially tongue tied, with items from tw telecom, Level 3, Hurricane Electric, Cross River Fiber, and Zayo: [Read more →]

iqnt moved quickly to tie off a few loose ends as it shifts directions this fall. Following the announcement that the COO Surendra Saboo and CFO Robert Junkroski would leave on October 1, they have now named the successor CFO. David Zwick has been promoted from his current position as SVP of Business Development to EVP and Chief Financial Officer. [Read more →]

s may not take the DT/MetroPCS deal lying down. Reports this morning say that the company is preparing a counter bid for MetroPCS.  DT is said to be prepared for such an eventuality.  But regardless, we may have an auction on our hands. [Read more →]

The ultra-low latency specialist Spread Networks has done it again, cutting another chunk out of the time it takes to send data between New York and Chicago.  They have taken 100 microseconds from the dark fiber offering via continuous route improvements, with latency now at 12.98ms.  Meanwhile, the latency on their fastest wavelength offering has dropped to [Read more →]

Ok, we’ve had a day to digest the news.  Now to see what everyone *really* thinks of T-Mobile’s decision to buy MetroPCS, it’s time for a bit of word association via a poll of a less-than-conventional type.  Pick as many as three adjectives from the list, or add your own. [Read more →]

With the merger news and rumors in wireless and wireline, the colo sector has probably been feeling a bit neglected a bit this week. Here are some quick takes covering XO at Equinix, Cadre at Viawest, Cologix in Toronto, Funding for C7, and a big new project for Sentinel: [Read more →]

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 akam 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 lvlt was mentioned by some as a suitor for twtc 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 twtc, ctl added a bit of confusion as it pump faked the debt markets yesterday. [Read more →]

lvlt 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 twtc is for sale and that ctl 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 →]