Telecom Ramblings

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 →]

Remember about two years ago when cable giant Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA, news, filings) bought up the small but dynamic wholesale VoIP services provider New Global Telecom?  Since then Comcast has made waves in the metro Ethernet side of the enterprise market, but not so much with VoIP. Well, they took their time about it but they appear to be making their NGT-powered move now. [Read more →]

In a guest article in Forbes over the weekend, Level 3 CEO James Crowe opened a new front against the incumbent last mile providers. Or, more accurately, he reopened a front that the FCC has been trying to sit on for a very long time. He took them to task for exacerbating the very spectrum shortage they are complaining about in order to maintain their marketshare. [Read more →]

Quite a lot of news for a Monday morning today, let’s take a quick survey of some items from network operators of various sizes: [Read more →]

It isn’t just the USA that is acting on security worries about Huawei. The Australian government today barred the Chinese equipment maker from its $37B NBN project, according to reports.  I honestly didn’t think the NBN would get this far back when it was announced, but it has and [Read more →]

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

As we’ve spoken with industry executives and private equity partners over the past week since Zayo’s acquisition of AboveNet was announced, there have been a number of common questions and themes about the transaction itself [Read more →]

With the news that T-Mobile is laying off 1900 and two M&A events all happening this week, we could do with a reminder that there is hiring going on out there too. New this week on the recently upgraded Ramblings Jobs Board has been another in a series by northeastern fiber operator [Read more →]

If you thought that three months after the T-Mobile deal died the US government and AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) might have shook hands and made up already, you were wrong.  Ok, maybe nobody thought that. But yesterday the DOJ accused AT&T of knowing that those Nigerian scam artists that never seem to get tired of filling your email box had also [Read more →]

It’s been an interesting week, although the Zayo/AboveNet deal drowned out much of the rest. Let’s catch up on some of the items that slipped past my nets the first time through: [Read more →]

India’s Tata Communications (news, filings) formally launched its ‘Tata Global Network – Eurasia’ cable today, completing the first ‘wholly owned cable network ring around the world’. The 9,280km TGN-EA cable connects Europe to India via the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. [Read more →]

Yesterday southeastern metro fiber operator FiberLight (news) announced another expansion project to go with the buildout in West Texas. They will be providing Ethernet backhaul services to over 40 additional towers in the Tampa metro area for ‘one of the nation’s leading wireless providers’. The Tampa project will add 50 route miles in the region for FiberLight, bringing their Tampa total to [Read more →]