Telecom Ramblings

tndm reported its Q3 earnings this morning, posting revenues slightly above expectations as their per minute voice pricing held steady and pricing pressure in the IP transit stabilized somewhat.  Earnings per share were below expectations, but mainly due to several one time events including a currency loss on an intercompany loan (i.e. Euros to Tinet I presume) else they would have been roughly in line.  Here’s a quick summary of the company’s numbers in context: [Read more →]

We have seen 100G trials all over the world over the past quarter or two, but today saw the first Transatlantic implementation of 100G. Hibernia Atlantic and Huawei successfully demonstrated coherent 100G on the 5,570km cable between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Southport, England. And beyond the successful demonstration, the two intend to move forward on commercial deployment next year. [Read more →]

Two interesting items over the last week or so from hybrid satellite/terrestrial operator Segovia, both in the federal [Read more →]

Bandwidth needs down in the Carribean have been growing steadily, and regional cable operator Columbus Networks has now upgraded the ARCOS-1 cable system.  Columbus has deployed additional Xtera gear to upgrade capacity on the repeatered segments, whereas they had already done so in 2008 for the unrepeatered segments. From the map, I’d guess the repeatered segments would be between [Read more →]

There was no let up in the torrid pace at which TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) has been adding buildings to its network during the third quarter.  According to the company’s  Q3 earnings report today, they added another 561  through September 30, meaning the past twelve months have seen 2,179 buildings brought on-net.  Overall, the company’s financial results went by like clockwork as usual.  Here’s a quick table: [Read more →]

tndm made a major move today, adding a completely new product category to their wholesale lineup. They will be leveraging Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) platform to offer a cloud-based unified communications product on a wholesale basis.  That means that alongside those tandem switches they’ll be running a cloud of servers too.  They won’t be targeting [Read more →]

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

Today, TeleCity Group, one of Europe’s three main players in the carrier-neutral data center offering, announced its intention to start paying [Read more →]

Since it announced its new DTN-X gear in advance of next year’s commercial sales, Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) has had a steady stream of big name trials and demos. Today it was Swedish telecommunications giant TeliaSonera AB (ETR:TLS, news, filings) taking the gear for a spin, but in California not in Europe. The two announced a Terabit optical transmission based on 500Gbps super-channels on a 1105km route between [Read more →]

The past few months have seen Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) all over the headlines on a weekly basis. It has seemed haphazard, but if one takes a step back and looks at it all as a package it’s really not. They’re playing hearts and they’ve spotted a chance to shoot the moon. Look at all their moves over the past few months as a group: [Read more →]

Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Communications (NYSE:NTT, news, filings) has committed to putting true 100G to use on its PC-1 cable.  It was just last month that their subsidiary Pacific Crossing took Infinera’s 100G DTN-X solution for a successful spin, apparently it went even better than expected.  The upgrade will be in place by mid-2013, and is expected to more than triple the cable’s total capacity to   [Read more →]

Soon-to-be part of Windstream, PAETEC (news, filings) today announced their Q3 earnings report – the last time we will probably hear from CEO Arunas Chesonis in this format.  The company has been busy integrating the assets it purchased last year, including the Cavalier/Intellifiber footprint and its more recent purchase of XETA.  But the story this quarter was actually one of organic growth.  Here’s a quick table: [Read more →]

DragonWave (NASDAQ:DRWI, news, filings), a Canadian-based supplier of wireless backhaul products, has announced plans to acquire a piece of Nokia Siemens Networks. They will be acquiring NSN’s microwave transport business, including its OSS and other related systems for the sum of €10M in cash plus €5M in stock plus additional sales-based earn-out payments.  Additionally, DragonWve will become [Read more →]

Over in the UK, upstart metro fiber operator City Fibre Holdings shook the foundations of the national fiber scene yesterday. They appointed Macquarie Capital as an advisor to help it raise the capital for a truly major fiber buildout. They intend to invest £500M ($800M) in both new metro fiber networks and fiber-to-the-premises city-wide in markets across the country. [Read more →]

Northeastern metro and regional fiber operator Lightower Fiber Networks (news) is making a bigger play for the low latency market in the New York City/New Jersey metro area. The company has turned up an all-optical network linking 15 strategic locations together via unique point-to-point routes. They’ll be [Read more →]

Cogent Communications (NASDAQ:CCOI, news, filings), which operates both a top IP transit backbone and a substantial on-net metro footprint, checked in with its third quarter results this morning too.  The company reported revenues just under analyst expectations but up steadily sequentially, and EBITDA margins expanded nicely once again.  The company also maintained its foot in the positive earnings door with earnings per share of $0.01.  As usual, here’s a quick table of the more relevant numbers in the context of the past four quarters: [Read more →]

National tier-1 metro fiber operator abvt released its Q4 earnings this morning, turning in it usual solid performance.  Revenues were in line with expectations, while EBITDA and earnings per share had positive surprises.  The company also both raised and narrowed its full year revenue guidance and raised its EBITDA margin expectations.  Here are the company’s results in the context of the prior four quarters: [Read more →]

Quite a few interesting items in the data center space already this week, time to round up a few more: [Read more →]

Embattled WiMAX provider and LTE hopeful clwr took a small step away from Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) by adding another wholesale customer. United Online will be selling a NetZero 4G high speed mobile broadband service via Clearwire’s WiMAX network under a five year agreement.  They will be selling [Read more →]

Hibernia Atlantic picked up a transatlantic bandwidth contract with OnLive, a cloud-based gaming provider.  OnLive delivers on-demand games and related media to both PCs and mobile devices, which these days increasingly means tablets. They will be leveraging Hibernia’s bandwidth to deliver their games both [Read more →]

Fresh off the closing of the Global Crossing deal four weeks ago, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) has reported its Q3 numbers, which seem to be very much in line with expectations.  Revenues grew at the same rate as in the prior quarter, while EBITDA expanded.  They also released enough of Global Crossing’s Q3 data to give investors enough to work with in estimating where the combined entity started from.  Here’s a quick summary of the company’s metrics in the context of the prior four quarters:

[Read more →]

There was a time when multisite networking contracts went to data centers, switching centers, skyscrapers, and satellite offices of multinational corporations. These days though it’s farmers markets, at least if TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) is any indication. Today they announced a contract with Sprouts, an operator of more than 100 such stores across Arizona, California, Texas, and Colorado. [Read more →]

Today we witnessed a rare event in telecom: a fission of one into two – the opposite of M&A activity. nTelos (NASDAQ:NTLS, news, filings) has completed the process of splitting off its wireline division, leaving two publicly traded companies. That means that Lumos Networks (NASDAQ:LMOS, news, filings) is now the newest fiber operator on the block. Their Mid-Atlantic regional fiber footprint is built around a West Virginian core, and looks like this: [Read more →]