Telecom Ramblings

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 →]

Boston based TNCI filed for Chapter 11 earlier this week, an event that has been reverberating through the agent chanel. The reseller and VoIP carrier hopes to restructure its finances while maintaining its operations and relationships and hopefully emerge quickly, but of nothing is ever sure about such things. After all, they wouldn’t have filed for bankruptcy if their current business was working out, so the question is [Read more →]

Quite a bit of news lately coming out of Broomfield, as Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) have announced another substantial gaming contract, this time with California-based GaiKai. GaiKai operates some very interesting cloud-based games.  Interesting because [Read more →]

NTT Communications (NYSE:NTT, news, filings)‘s nascent 100G DTN-X technology has completed an important and quite impressive demonstration with the help of Pacific Crossing, the transpacific cable owned by NTT Communications (NYSE:NTT, news, filings). [Read more →]

Several data center items already this week worth a quick look: [Read more →]

In a release today, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) announced that it is expanding its enterprise offerings into Germany, bringing its full portfolio to bear for the first time on the mainland. The offensive also includes a full scale marketing effort and a specialized [Read more →]

Sprint’s announcement on Friday of its decision to build out an LTE network of its own on an aggressive schedule has the market completely perplexed. One of the key sticking points is that little matter of cash. With their big, new iPhone subsidy needs, a multi-billion dollar infrastructure buildout, and a few billion dollars in debt that needs to be refinanced soon – one can see why that might give people pause. But I think Sprint has an ace up its sleeve that will make its way onto the table shortly. [Read more →]

So Netflix’s Reed Hastings did an abrupt 180 today and canned the company’s plans to separate the DVD-by-mail business from its streaming business.  Qwixter, which produced a swifter and more effective outcry than we saw with New Coke a few decades back, is officially history before it ever began. [Read more →]

Despite the merger and integration activity that must be ramping up, normal life goes on for Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings)‘s content delivery business.  Today they announced a new product offering aimed squarely at the gaming marketplace as well as a key customer win with Belarus-based online games developer Wargaming.net.  Level 3 has been helping Wargaming.net expand its World of Tanks massively multiplayer game from Russia into Europe and America, now approaching subscribers of 5 million.  To get a feel for the scale of this sort of thing, traffic for a recent patch peaked at nearly [Read more →]

Now there’s a name we don’t see too often nowadays…  VTLWaveNet, the wholesale network remnant of Viatel, is providing the dark fiber underlying SURFnet’s latest project. The Dutch research network is always putting the latest equipment and network designs through their paces. [Read more →]

Following the commitment by Sprint on Friday to an aggressive LTE buildout, the future of WiMAX upstart clwr is very much in doubt. Many would argue that was true before Friday as well given their cash burn rate, but with their primary wholesale partner saying they won’t sell more WiMAX phones beyond next Christmas…  I think the fat lady has finished warming up when it comes to Clearwire in its current incarnation. [Read more →]

You knew it had been too quiet over at Zayo, I’m not sure they’ve ever gone a year without an acquisition.  And so it came as little surprise today when Zayo announced the purchase of western regional operator 360Networks. In fact, the combination is one I mentioned as strategically interesting a few times in the past.  Here are the two network maps side by side: [Read more →]

Well, Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) has made its call on the future of its wireless business, and it’s going to be a brand new LTE network. They say they are already building, and will have the first markets online by the middle of next year with 123 million in population covered by the end of 2013 and 250 million by the end of 2013.  They say their current spectrum will get them that far, and the deal with [Read more →]