Telecom Ramblings

The folks at Zayo and 360Networks have put together a fiber map reflecting the combined assets of the two companies when they close their deal in a few months.  Of course, longtime readers know that maps are my weakness!  There are two ways to look at this map though.  The fit is very complementary, and will make Zayo a truly transcontinental provider for the first time with most of its metro assets connected together.  On the other hand, it also makes clear what pieces are still missing from the puzzle.  Here’s the map (click to enlarge, [Read more →]

It is fitting that along with Telegeography’s recent report detailing lower vacancy rates, we have a spate of colocation-related infrastructure expansions hitting the news.  Here are a few more today: [Read more →]

Chinese equipment maker Huawei and Russian incumbent RosTelecom have teamed up for yet another 100G test. The trial featured coherent 100G and ePDM-QPSK over a 1,033km stretch of Rostelecom’s live network between Moscow and Samara. They also tested [Read more →]

Telecommunications equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) says it has a received a binding offer for its Genesys business.  A company owned by the Permira funds will be paying $1.5B in cash for the privilege of owning the customer service solutions business. The deal will see $500M or so in annual revenue and 1,800 employees transition off Alcatel-Lucent’s books, once it gets past [Read more →]

Both Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) and Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) reported their third quarter 2011 earnings after the market closed today.  The equipment makers tend to be quite sensitive to economic trends, and if these two are any indication then the third quarter was pretty smooth but everyone is feeling a bit cautious going into Q4.  Here is a quick look at each company’s results: [Read more →]

Following a series of quiet acquisitions, a new colocation and interconnection company has formally opened its doors. Cologix, headed by Level 3 alumni Grant van Rooyan, starts off in life with 9 Meet-Me facilities in the markets of Dallas, Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, as well as [Read more →]

European fiber operator euNetworks (news) completed a rights issue today in which it raised €72M. More than half of that money goes toward repaying shareholder loans in connection with the LambdaNet and TeraGate acquisitions, but it does leave them with something of a war chest for further M&A as well as to finance the capex required for their growth. [Read more →]

The early part of this week has seen more forward progress from Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings), which has been blanketing the newswires since the closing of the Global Crossing deal. [Read more →]

According to an article put out today by the industry research group TeleGeography, the vacancy rates for colocation in major markets fell markedly in the past year. Vacancy has fallen from 30% in September of 2010 down to 16% in Washington DC in September of this year for instance.  Here’s their full graphic: [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown of several interesting datacenter and colo items already out this week: [Read more →]

Over the past year, Earthlink (NASDAQ:ELNK, news, filings) has been buying up CLEC network assets to go with the former New Edge business, to the extent that business services now make up 75% of the company’s revenues. Last fall it was Deltacom, then over the winter they tacked on One Communications, and then added a few smaller pieces like STS Telecom and Business Vitals.  Put altogether, they’ve got some substantial infrastructure in place, and today they announced the addition of some bandwidth muscle to that skeleton. [Read more →]

Optical networking equipment maker Xtera captured a multi-year sole source 100G contract with Gulf Bridge International (GBI). Xtera will deploy its full range of gear for GBI on both terrestrial and undersea routes, including their Raman+100G coherent solution. [Read more →]

Since FBR speculated that Level 3 might be about to make a late bid for PAETEC, I have been fielding numerous questions offline about the possibility – with skepticism as I have already noted and won’t rehash here.  But one of my main responses is that if Level 3 is hungry then they have tastier targets than a national US CLEC with its own integration to worry about, at which point obviously I am immediately asked who those targets might be.  Let’s talk about just one of them. [Read more →]

The days of Skype as an independent force in the industry are over for the second time now, as Microsoft today closed the purchase of the one-time VoIP wunderkind from Silver Lake for $8.5B. Skype has now become a new business division within the software giant, with Tony Bates assuming the title of president of the division. [Read more →]

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

One of the hot topics in the mobile sector is spectrum – how to get more of it and how to get more out of the spectrum you already have. For the latter, one technological solution could be to give radio waves a good twist – literally. [Read more →]

One wonders if ABRY Partners has some grand plan in mind, or if they just really like internet infrastructure assets. Today they made yet another purchase, acquiring Xand Corporation. Xand operates a 90,000 square foot datacenter in Westchester NY, from which it offers [Read more →]

Embattled WiMAX protagonist clwr took the bull by the horns this morning and pre-announced a selection of its Q3 results. The company expects to announce revenues of $332M, up from $294M in the second quarter. [Read more →]

Time to catch up on some of the other fiber news of the week: [Read more →]

Last week it was IBM and Verizon who were supposedly lining up to buy Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings). Yesterday, it was Google that was about to pull the trigger driving the stock price up 17%.  Next week perhaps it will be [Read more →]

Japanese telecommunications provider KDDI is becoming a content delivery network. Today they announced their intent to purchase Korean-based CDNetworks, or at least 85.5% of it. The company is taking aim at smoothing internet access for its wireless business, but the CDN business has assets outside of Asia as well that perhaps we ought to see as parallel to the company’s Telehouse subsidiary. [Read more →]

The Ethernet Exchange business has not found its way into the news as much in 2011 as it did in 2010, but they are still out there. The quietest of them has perhaps been Equinix, perhaps because it needs the publicity less. But Equinix yesterday announced the addition of three key new participants, strengthening its European coverage to the north and east. [Read more →]

If we expected Level 3 to go quiet while it gets its integration of Global Crossing rolling, the opposite appears to be the case.  Three more moves on three completely different fronts – two early integration milestones and a key contract: [Read more →]

Sprint’s controversial move to build its own LTE network over the next two years and distance itself from Clearwire has left the WiMAX upstart in a sort of limbo. The company’s path to postive EBITDA and cash flow had been charted through a combination of wholesale sales growth powered by the Sprint relationship and some very aggressive cost cutting they have been putting in place this year. Take away the first half of that, and the status quo is untenable and there must be more news to come. In that vein, let’s take a poll of Ramblings’ very well informed readership: [Read more →]