Telecom Ramblings

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

I’ve decided there’s nothing wrong with being dumb. These days just having a smartphone handy can make the dumbest person absolutely brilliant, as long as he’s smart enough to use the smartphone. However, when it comes to being a network operator, the word “dumb”, when used with that other hackneyed noun, “pipe”, sends shivers down telco CEO spines. [Read more →]

Now that AT&T’s intended purchase of T-Mobile USA is finally officially dead, the pressure will quickly build on Deutsche Telekom to come up with a Plan B.  They have insisted they don’t have one yet, but I am sure there are all sorts of conversations going on already internally.  The unit doesn’t have enough spectrum to build out LTE, they has been bleeding customers all year, and their current situation is obviously unstable. But the breakup fee could make a real difference if applied in the right direction. What should they do?  Well, if you read Ramblings you know my thoughts on the matter, but what are yours?  Here’s a poll to see what the mood is.  Don’t be limited [Read more →]

Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Communications (NYSE:NTT, news, filings) has many pots on the stove these days, with three interesting expansive notes in three different geographies. [Read more →]

It’s over.  AT&T has thrown in the towel, knuckled under, cried uncle, retired from the field, raised the white flag. Whatever you call it, they have officially given up their attempt to purchase T-Mobile USA and agreed to pay the breakup fee of $4B in cash, spectrum, and roaming rights.  The combined weight of the opposition of the DOJ and FCC had made it all but impossible to continue, though I’m still somewhat surprised that the company didn’t even take the rest of the 30 [Read more →]

Today CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings) announced a big federal bandwidth project, winning a multi-year task order from DISA/DITCO worth up to $250M over the life of the contract. They will be providing private line services ranging all the way from DS-0 through [Read more →]

Global network operator Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) said today that it is playing an important role in California’s $66.6M Central Valley Next Generation Broadband Infrastructure Project. The buildout, which is partly funded by $46.6M in stimulus funds, is creating 1,300 miles of fiber infrastructure throughout 18 counties in the Central Valley – a.k.a the place they grow everything. [Read more →]

There’s another company out there aiming to partner with network operators on CDN technology. VidScale (news), which until now has had mostly Asian customers, has now moved into the US cable MSO market with a win at Avail-TVN today.  Avail-TVN will leverage the company’s MedaWarp software to integrate both transparent caching and commercial CDN services into their [Read more →]

The Middle East has itself a new cable system today, as TE Subcom and Gulf Bridge International (news) have formally announced the completion of work on the cable system, saying that the whole system will be ‘Ready for Service’ [Read more →]

Following the purchase of PAETEC by Windstream (NYSE:WIN, news, filings) which closed earlier this month, there was obviously going to be some musical chair activity amongst the combined pool of executives. At least two from PAETEC’s leadership have shown up in the past few days in new positions before the Christmas holidays start. Arunas Chesonis has resurfaced in a completely different industry, while Clint Heiden is back in the fiber business. [Read more →]

After a slow few months, the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board is seeing some holiday activity.  We have another job posting, this time from Sirius Telecom – a provider of hosted softswitch partition services.  They are looking for [Read more →]

Apparently the holiday season is treating magicJack VocalTec (NASDAQ:CALL, news, filings) very well.  The company said today that it has sold over 365,000 of its magicJack devices in the past 30 days, and is now expecting $55-60M in sales for the fourth quarter.  By next month, they expect to have [Read more →]

After last year’s orgy of private equity-driven metro fiber consolidation,  2011 has been quite a different story. Public companies did most of the heavy M&A lifting this year, with two [Read more →]

Here’s a quick look at some other interesting news by network operators recently, with items from Transtelco, Telx, Level 3, and Masergy: [Read more →]

TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) raked in yet another of its trademark multi-site, multi-year enterprise contracts yesterday over in the healthcare vertical. Clinica Sierra Vista will be using the company’s Business Ethernet and converged services to connect 46 [Read more →]

Emerson Network Power has a fascinating graphic out as part of their State of the Data Center 2011 report. The most intriguing number on it is the number of data centers in the world, which Emerson pegs at 509,147 covering over 285 million square feet of space. Half a million data centers — that’s a lot of on-net buildings to get to.   [Read more →]

So earlier this week, rumors emerged that Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) was considering buying Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX, news, filings). Well, actually the source was a serial Netflix-buyout speculator who said that the company might consider it, but you know how these things snowball in low news periods. [Read more →]

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

I spent much of last week sorting out a network and ADSL connection in a small rural Buddhist hilltop monastery in the Northeast of England. Ratanagiri Monaster is located in Harnham, a small hilltop community near Belsay, near Newcastle. This should have been an easy, straightforward job, but [Read more →]

Here are a few items of interest over the past few days the metro/CLEC world: [Read more →]

Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) has been the main early adopter of 100G technology in US terrestrial deployments so far, and today they took another step along that path. The telecommunications giant says it will be upgrading its IP backbone in major markets across the country by deploying the CRS-3 from Cisco closer to the edge. [Read more →]

Seems like Phoenix-based IO’s datacenter module business is accelerating into the holiday season, as they have two more announcements out already this week.  Yesterday, ISSQUARED [Read more →]

Telecommunications giant AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) has had enough for the moment, they’ve asked the referee for a one month timeout. The referee of course is the Judge Huvelle, who is overseeing the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit opposing their propowed purchase of T-Mobile USA. She has granted a joint motion giving AT&T one month to decide just what to do next. [Read more →]

Well, it didn’t take too long for Integra to make up its mind about who will lead the company after Tom Casey left for Tronox two months ago. Kevin O’Hara, who has been serving as executive chairman since then has now been formally named Chief Executive Officer.  [Read more →]

WiMAX and now LTE upstart clwr said this morning that its underwriters have exercised their option to purchase those additional 26.25M shares as part of the company’s public offering. That means another $52.5M in cash for the company’s LTE buildout, making the total cash infusion just over [Read more →]