Telecom Ramblings

This article was authored by Don Sambandaraksa, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Smart mobile devices have long been hailed as the solution to the digital divide and many speak of the wonders that contactless payment technologies enabled through NFC and online payment apps can bring. But all too often, technology seems like a solution searching for a problem. [Read more →]

Yesterday I was reading this piece on the threat to the incumbent telcos and cable operators plans for the SME from independent cloud-based VoIP and UC from service providers like ‘8×8, Aptela, Fonality, and Nextiva’, and it occurred to me that there was something missing. There’s someone else out there who used to fight for these customers, but has faded a bit from the view of Wall Street. [Read more →]

With their proposed acquisitions of Abovenet and Arialink still pending, Zayo has continued to push forward on all fronts lately. Today they announced the completion of the network expansion in Nashville that they had started on in the fall, finishing up with [Read more →]

ABRY Partners seems to have an unending appetite for internet infrastructure currently. Today they expanded their colocation footprint by buying Access Northeast and merging it with Xand, which they just purchased six months ago.  [Read more →]

TeliaSonera International Carrier added a big sports broadcasting notch to its belt this morning, announcing that it will be delivering live NHL games to the Scandanavian countries. While of North American sports it’s usually basketball that gets exported the most, for countries touching the Arctic Circle it is naturally hockey [Read more →]

Reports from Europe this morning say that private equity is moving in on one of the largest independent fiber operators in the Netherlands. Doughty Hanson has apparently agreed to buy a majority stake in Eurofiber from [Read more →]

There have been several interesting colo/cloud items already this week, here are a few quick takes: [Read more →]

While its NBN project has a long road ahead of it yet, Australia got some 100G loving today from AAPT. They commercially launched a 100Gbps connection between Melbourne and Sydney on April 1, but of course it’s better to announce such things [Read more →]

Integra Telecom (news, filings) said today that it has launched wavelength services. The western CLEC and network operator isnow [Read more →]

This article was authored by James Henry, Senior Managing Director of Bank Street Group.

In recognition of April Fool’s Day, I thought the readers at Telecom Ramblings might enjoy this Monopoly-inspired Fiberopoly board game: [Read more →]

Until now, the wonders of the cloud revolution and low latency connectivity have been targeted at niche industries like gaming, high speed trading, and hospitals. But now the true power of fiber and the cloud is coming to the mass markets, as major telecommunications companies quickly move beyond server instances and backup infrastructure to standardize a revolutionary new cloud service with real potential to stem those landline revenue declines: high speed pizza delivery. [Read more →]

We’ve had a bumper crop of job listings on the Telecom Ramblings jobs board since my upgrade two weeks ago. This week we have a top management position at OpenCape and a group of four from Northeastern fiber operator Lightower. [Read more →]

Another week has passed, or will have passed by the end of the day of course. Time to catch up on some more interesting news items: [Read more →]

The most unique story out there this week came from AOL, which won the Server Roundup award by decommissioning almost 10K servers to save some $5M, highlighting just how cluttered infrastructure can get over the years. Mike Manos, now CTO of AOL’s parent, Huffington Post, and of course the former head of Digital Realty, spearheaded the effort and offered some very interesting commentary both on how important and how nasty this job was for AOL.  He also introduced me to the wonderful new word for the detritus left behind in any IT organization by the endless progression technology: [Read more →]

Northeastern fiber operator sidera has been selected to provide connectivity to the new ACC6 facility of Dupont Fabros in northern Virginia. Sidera is the first fiber provider to connect to the facility, phase 1 of which which went online last fall.  Sidera’s network between DC and NYC features both low latency and some unique route diversity, which gives them a leg up in [Read more →]

UK regulators have granted the wishes of Tata Communications (news, filings) and Vodafone Group (NYSE:VOD, news, filings) and extended the deadline for both companies’ potential bids for cw. Tata and Vodafone had asked for such a move, complaining that they hadn’t yet been [Read more →]

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

It seems like every telecoms-related conference I’ve been to this year – and I know it’s only March, but bear with me – has had a recurring theme that goes something like this: telcos really have no idea how much their industry is changing. [Read more →]

Cable giant Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA, news, filings) angered network neutrality supporters this week by saying that usage of its new Xfinity TV service on the Xbox 360 service won’t count against subscribers’ 250Gb bandwidth caps. The fear is that this gives their streaming service an advantage over the Over-The-Top competition, e.g. Netflix. And it obviously does. But [Read more →]

Here’s a group of quick takes on interesting items this week from the competitive side of the tracks. [Read more →]

With the Zayo transaction still fresh in our minds, abvt is still pushing forward with its own expansion initiatives. They’ve been working toward a Toronto rollout a year now, and today they finally launched the new market formally.  Toronto is the key hub for the Canadian bandwidth markets, and its financial sector has been targeted in various ultra-low latency efforts from both [Read more →]

At Enterprise Connect today, Avaya announced a plan to enter a strategic relationship with Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) as part of the launch of its hosted UC solution for small and medium businesses. The product, AvayaLive Connect, is still in trials, but is expected to go live this summer with a suite of cloud-based capabilities. It’s part of Avaya’s ‘Collaborative Cloud’ framework, which they are also detailing today.  [Read more →]

Quick takes on some of the interesting colo and cloud news so far this week: [Read more →]

A few weeks ago, BNamericas reported that Brazilian state owned operator Telebrás was planning a big submarine cable project that would add big bandwidth between South America and each of North America, Europe, and Africa. Apparently they weren’t just messing with us, as this week the news is that they have signed an agreement to build the least likely African leg with Angola Cables. [Read more →]