Telecom Ramblings

Last week Renesys came out with its annual Baker’s Dozen analysis of the travails of the major IP backbones, and the most striking thing in it this year was the rapid retreat by both of CenturyLink’s acquired backbones: Qwest and Savvis. Over the summer, Renesys looked at the combination of the two and concluded that when combined the two would rank as high as #2 behind the then-pending LVLT/GLBC combination. But by the end of the year, [Read more →]

Over the weekend, rumors started to spread that Vodafone Group (NYSE:VOD, news, filings) is looking at a possible purchase of Cable & Wireless Worldwide. And in fact today Vodafone has confirmed that it is in the “very early stages of evaluating the merits of a potential offer.”  Such a deal would give Vodafone [Read more →]

This is a guest post by Paolo Gorgò.  If you might be interested in a guest post, then contact the webmaster.

Telecity Group (LON:TCY, news, filings), one of Europe’s leading network-neutral data center providers, today announced its results for 2011 and issued a positive outlook for 2012.  Some highlights: [Read more →]

On Friday alongside its quarterly earnings report, Cincinnati Bell (NYSE:CBB, news, filings) said that it is considering strategic alternatives for its data center business, CyrusOne. That could mean anything from an IPO in which they keep a stake to an outright sale of the business to a third party, or even that they don’t make any changes at all. But if they do, they’ll definitely be bucking the [Read more →]

Another job was posted to the  Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board this week.  The success of the jobs board is something I hope to build on when I unveil the next version of it in a few weeks.  This week’s  job posting is from Windstream (NYSE:WIN, news, filings), newly enlarged following the PAETEC acquisition back in December. [Read more →]

I don’t yet follow the financials at Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) with any regularity, but like Cisco they apparently didn’t find the fourth quarter to be terribly difficult either. [Read more →]

This week, the Metro Ethernet Forum dived into the problem of how to scale mobile backhaul. With LTE now ready to take off in earnest, scaling the costs needed to bring all that traffic to the backbone is an urgent issue for most wireless carriers. As you might suspect, the MEF’s solution involves [Read more →]

Pan-European network operator Colt Group (LON:COLT, news) is expanding its network out to the northwest, far beyond its usual haunts. They are adding a PoP up in Iceland, hooking up the Verne Global data center campus in Keflavik. If that location sounds familiar, it’s because it does. In September, Colt manufactured and shipped a 500 square meter data center to the same campus by [Read more →]

Earnings reports this week have drowned out most other news, but there was quite a bit of activity in the metro fiber space.  Here are some quick looks: [Read more →]

Networking equipment giant Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) had a very solid fiscal second quarter, beating earnings estimates and projecting faster growth than expected next quarter. Starting in January, bad news from the likes of Juniper, Acme Packet, and Tellabs suggested the equipment space was in for a rough patch. However, it now appears that we’re just looking at market share shifting around rather than any sector-wide trend. [Read more →]

Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) finished 2011 with a muscular performance, posting revenues and earnings per share that easily bested both guidance expectations.  The CDN giant has been shifting its business model toward the cloud and value-added services to reflect changes in the marketplace, and despite the worries about competition seems to have found the going reasonably smooth lately: [Read more →]

In its results released after the close, TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) posted its usual reliable results but with a bit extra to end 2011 on a powerful note.  Revenues, EBITDA, and EPS each outperformed both analyst expectations and for the most part my own as well.  Here’s a quick table with the numbers in some context: [Read more →]

Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) is apparently still hungry for inorganic opportunities, as today they announced the acquisition of Blaze Software.  Blaze offers cloud-based frontend optimization, which basically automatically optimizes a web page’s code on the server side in order to speed up the overall delivery process. Akamai expects Blaze’s FEO to complement their [Read more →]

Every time a new carrier starts selling the iPhone, the next quarter they invariably get headlines highlighting their earnings miss due to selling too many of them. This quarter it was Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings)‘s turn. Total revenues of $8.722 were above expectations, while loss per share of $0.43 missed analyst projections by [Read more →]

In its first quarter following the close of the Global Crossing purchase, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) reported Q4 results that were as complicated as expected, and still a bit split in terms of personality.  The original Level 3 business had a great quarter with 2.6% CNS growth, while the the Global Crossing side of things went in the other direction with gusto.  My own revenue and EBITDA guesses earlier this week for the combined company turned out to be a bit high while loss per share narrowed substantially, but honestly it was a crapshoot this quarter.  Here’s a quick table:  [Read more →]

Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings) has been working with carriers to some degree for a while now, but today they made a formal move deeper into the space by unveiling a managed CDN product called Limelight Deploy. Aimed at telcos, carriers, and service providers of various types, Limelight’s new offering does more than simply license the technology. It also includes [Read more →]

Neutral Tandem has re-invented itself and its Tinet subsidiary today under a brand new name and a new stock symbol: Inteliquent (NASDAQ:IQNT, news, filings). The driving force for the re-branding is obvious, as both the Neutral Tandem and Tinet brands were very focused on particular product types, and in the former’s case on a single voice technology. Meanwhile the company itself has been broadening its portfolio, and wishes to be [Read more →]

On Thursday morning, TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) will report its fourth quarter and full year 2011 earnings.  Unlike Level 3, which reports on Wednesday and which I previewed in a post yesterday, tw telecom is not in the midst of a big internal integration project and there is not much mystery in what they’re likely to say.  The financial markets have been favorable to them lately, boosting their stock price above $20 again though, which suggests perhaps there will be [Read more →]

Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) is planning to go over the top in a big way with a direct challenge to both Netflix and Amazon. They announced today a partnership with Coinstar’s Redbox aimed at bringing streaming video to consumers. And not just in their own territory but nationwide, which means they’ll be doing it over [Read more →]

Hybrid RLEC/CLEC Consolidated Communications (NASDAQ:CNSL, news, filings) said today that it is making a major M&A move by purchasing surw. SureWest operates last mile networks for both residential and business customers in Kansas City and Sacramento, while Consolidated Communications operates in [Read more →]

As longtime readers know, I have spent some effort over the years modeling the results of Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings), but haven’t tried to quantify much on the subject since the Global Crossing deal was concluded. The company reports its Q4 results on Wednesday morning, and there are so many moving parts that it is hard to predict just what they will say.  But many eyes will be on the company this week, so I’ll give it a go anyway. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Tony Poulos, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Google sent me an email last week. It read: [Read more →]

We now have a counter-example to the thesis of carrier spending pullbacks in 2012. Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) easily bested analyst projections for the fourth quarter, despite warning in November of the impact of flooding in Thailand on its supply chain and despite the dismal winter some other vendors have seen (e.g. Juniper, Acme Packet).  Here is a quick table putting the company’s fourth quarter in some context: [Read more →]