Telecom Ramblings

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:

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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 →]

High end CDN challenger Cotendo has renewed and expanded its arrangement with TeliaSonera AB (ETR:TLS, news, filings) International Carrier.  Cotendo has been using Teliasonera’s colo and IP services mostly in Europe until now, but will be providing services in North America as well.  It’s a natural fit, so it’s no surprise the two are happy to work with the status quo.  Cotendo needs [Read more →]

No, Zayo Group (news, filings) isn’t painting its Manhattan network pale blue, I mean the equipment vendor. Zayo will be upgrading its metro network in the Big Apple using Cyan’s Z-Series packet optical gear.  Apparently they’ve been using Cyan gear in a number of other markets already, with positive results.  The upgrade will enable Zayo to [Read more →]

A quick survey of some recent items in the datacenter space: [Read more →]

Today Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) announced a key submarine upgrade contract with Southern Cross, which connects California in the North Pacific with Australia and New Zealand in the South Pacific, making a stop in Hawaii along the way. Southern Cross will be upgrading from 10Gbps to 40Gbps on all segments, including the longest one spanning 8,000km. The upgrade will effectively [Read more →]

The Russian operators have been rather actively investing in their infrastructure lately, haven’t they? Today it was TTK, a.k.a. TransTeleCom, upgrading its IP network with gear from Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings). Russian infrastructure wins aren’t minor, as you can see from the company’s fiber map: [Read more →]

Here’s a quick look at some interesting metro and regional items from last week that were a bit further off the beaten track. [Read more →]

On Wednesday, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) will report its third quarter financials, and this will be the last time the company looks anything remotely like this.  The Global Crossing merger and synergy progress will dominate the fourth quarter, and is already playing havoc with projected numbers – Yahoo Finance has one analyst projecting [Read more →]

Can it be?  Has the FCC finally put together a plan to reform the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation after a decade of procrastination?  I have hesitated to write about the possibility, given the long history of deadlines missed and proposals never followed through on.  But nevertheless, that’s what the news out of the FCC says today — although nobody has actually [Read more →]

Yesterday PAETEC (news, filings) voted as scheduled on the proposed merger with Windstream (NYSE:WIN, news, filings). Despite the expectation by some that another bidder emerge and upset the apple cart, the result was [Read more →]

This article was authored by Michael Carroll, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Ericsson stands to gain more by exiting its Sony Ericsson handset joint venture than Sony, analysts say.
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