Telecom Ramblings

cw may be in the midst of a buyout process with Vodafone Group (NYSE:VOD, news, filings) but they’re continuing to push ahead in network deployment.  Today they announced the migration of their metro networks in Hong Kong and Singapore to 100G, giving their assets in the Far East a necessary [Read more →]

Quick takes on some expansion news from Digital Realty and C7, an acquisition by Peer 1, another contract for Akamai, and the results of the shareholder vote at Abovenet: [Read more →]

Today is World IPv6 Day again, but this time participants are doing more than testing things for a day.  This time, when they launch the switch stays on.  Or at least it does for those who are ready, which hopefully will be enough to start a tiny little snowball rolling.  What do you think are we there yet? [Read more →]

The news that Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX, news, filings) is building its own CDN infrastructure gave the markets a chance to do what do best: overreact. There’s always a company or two out there at any given time whose every action gets obsessed over like this, and for the past two years [Read more →]

Zayo certainly has a bottomless appetite for metro fiber.  With the Arialink deal on the books for just one month and the AboveNet deal set to close in the next month or two, the company struck yet again with a big Mid-Atlantic purchase.  Zayo said today that it is buying privately held FiberGate, boosting its presence in Washington DC and the surrounding region in a big way.   [Read more →]

A few interesting items from overseas that are worth a quick look from Mexico’s CFE, Level 3, Hibernia Atlantic, and ChinaCache: [Read more →]

It had to happen sooner or later, but I’ll bet some in the CDN sector were hoping it would be a bit later than this. Yesterday Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX, news, filings) took the wrappings off its Open Connect Network, a special purpose in-house CDN designed to eventually take over the bulk of its content delivery needs over the next few years.  [Read more →]

A few quick takes on other news today and over the weekend from inetwork, Pangaea Networks, Limelight, Inteliquent, and Gulf Bridge International: [Read more →]

magicJack VocalTec (NASDAQ:CALL, news, filings) is once again trumpeting its results before quarter’s end. The upstart VoIP provider said today that earnings per share over the first two months have already exceeded analyst projections for the full quarter, with all of June now just adding icing on top of the cake. [Read more →]

Last week Dan Rayburn went on at some length about the huge effect the major carriers are still NOT having on the CDN marketplace. Specifically he mentioned how few CDN customers either Verizon or AT&T have relative to the field – they come in way behind not just the leaders but the main pack of challengers as well. Only Level 3 has made a real dent in the sector. [Read more →]

Over the weekend, Canada’s BCE, a.k.a. Bell, and three private equity groups have announced an agreement to acquire Q9 Networks.  It’s just the latest example of an incumbent provider acquiring data center assets in order to gain a foothold in the very hot new market of providing cloud-based solutions to the enterprise. [Read more →]

Time to catch up on the rest of the news before heading off into the weekend. Here’s a quick look at an EoC milestone for Integra, and three colo deals: [Read more →]

Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Communications (NYSE:NTT, news, filings) has been busy in Europe lately, and today they furthered their cloud ambitions via M&A. They have acquired an 85% stake in Gyron Internet Limited, a UK data center operator. Gyron operates 3MW of space near London with two more data centers totaling another [Read more →]

KPN (NYSE:KPN, news) isn’t going to help Carlos Slim’s América Móvil in its unsolicited bid for a 27.7% stake. Today the company’s board recommended that shareholders ‘take no action’ in response to the offer, saying that the proposed €8 price offers no premium to shareholders.  [Read more →]

This article was authored by Michael Carroll, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Telcos talk a lot about customer service and experience, but few are willing to go as far as United Arab Emirates operator du, which is offering subscribers a direct line to senior management. [Read more →]

Windstream (NYSE:WIN, news, filings) says it plans to restructure its management ranks, expecting to eliminate 375-400 positions for annualized savings of approximately $30-40M. This has obviously been in the works for a while, and shouldn’t surprise anyone given the PAETEC acquisition closed six months ago and there are synergies yet to derive from it. [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) is taking its content business deeper into South America. Today they announced their first live Vyvx broadcast in Brazil. And since this is Brazil, it had to be soccer driving things. Indeed, it was two professional women’s soccer matches transmitted in HD from [Read more →]

With the drumbeat of doom coming out of Europe lately, we could use a bit of good news from the equipment sector.  Despite a light fiscal Q1, Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) came through this morning with a very nice quarter, announcing their unaudited fiscal Q2 numbers (through 4/30).  Yep, they crushed both revenue and EPS estimates for once.  Here are the numbers in some context: [Read more →]

The financial vertical continues to drive more direct metro routes in the New York metro area, and particularly in northern New Jersey. Today Hibernia Atlantic announced a key new low latency route between two of the main hubs, with the help of boutique metro fiber builder Cross River Fiber and the vendor Vello Systems. [Read more →]

Networking giant Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) issued its sixth annual Visual Networking Index forecast this morning, and as usual the numbers were big. Really big. Zettabyte-big, meaning that the internet will carry 1.3ZB in 2016. But as big as these numbers are, the media does tend to get carried away.  [Read more →]

Disruptive force that it has always been, magicJack VocalTec (NASDAQ:CALL, news, filings) has never been much for the conventional way of doing business, but in the first quarter it seems they really out-did themselves. Check out this Wall Street Journal piece from last night.  Apparently 20% of their earnings per share came from selling put options on their own stock, betting against their own stock going down. In and of itself this sounds like something out of the dotcom years, but there’s another aspect to this that the WSJ didn’t happen to mention. [Read more →]

Some quick looks at a few news items from the infrastructure sector from yesterday: [Read more →]

Thats what CEO Ben Verwaayen told Bloomberg is coming if Europe doesn’t find a way to convince its incumbents to invest more in their networks. He makes the point that European carriers are being out-spent and out-upgraded by their US counterparts, resulting in the loss of the telecommunications leadership position they had a few years ago. His prescription: [Read more →]