Telecom Ramblings

Just a week shy of the 6 month anniversary of the original announcement, Level 3 has closed its purchase of Global Crossing. The combined company had $6.2B in revenue and $1.3B in EBITDA pro forma (before synergies) for 2010, and they still anticipate $300M in opex savings from synergies. It will have 165,000 route miles of fiber, 30,000 being in the metro, and a presence in [Read more →]

With CompTel this week, everyone’s got something interesting going on, but nobody’s got time to read them all. Here’s a quick survey of some of it from the metro and regional connectivity side of things: [Read more →]

The 100G locomotive is gaining traction overseas for Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings), which said yesterday that it is helping Russian telecommunications giant Rostelecom establish a ‘superfast connection’ between Europe and the Middle East. The upgrade will see coherent 100G technology put onto [Read more →]

Low latency bandwidth specialist Spread Networks is introducing sales of ‘managed bulk bandwidth’ on their leading NYC-Chicago routes. And they’re not playing around, as Northeastern fiber operator Sidera Networks has signed on for 250Gbps at a round trip latency of 16ms. They’ll be paying a fixed monthly fee on a long term contract plus [Read more →]

With an interim CEO now at the helm, XO Holdings (news, filings) made an interesting move today. The national CLEC and fiber operator is will be tapping Sprint for MVNO wireless services, including their Wholesale Mobile Integration services.  XO will be offering various wireless products to its SMB customers including both 4G and fixed mobile convergence. [Read more →]

CompTel is this week.  Let’s quickly catch up before the flood of announcements begins. [Read more →]

first-communications is lighting more of its dark fiber holdings. The company’s assets include both intercity and metro fiber across the Midwest and the Northeast, including a diverse entrant in the low latency markets between New York and both Chicago and Toronto.  Today’s announcement adds the Chicago to [Read more →]

In this fall’s least surprising lawsuit, Verizon on Friday fired off its best shot at the US Court of Appeals. They contend that the FCC overstepped its authority in setting up such rules, and basically suggest that the FCC should just butt out of everything related to the internet. You can’t blame them for taking a big swing though, otherwise this one would be too easy to justify the cost of the legal team they’ve put together.  And this is Verizon’s responsibility right now, as its fellow [Read more →]

Another new posting on the Ramblings’ Jobs Board this week in the vibrant Northeastern bandwidth market. [Read more →]

Another week, another deal for Global Crossing down in Brazil. Today they reported an expansion of their arrangement with BRQ IT Services. BRQ uses the network operator’s managed WAN to connect its data center with 2500 employees spread out amongst the [Read more →]

The news these days is full of doom & gloom over the macro economy, but it is not yet clear in just what form that is going to show up in the numbers.  The internet infrastructure segment overall weathered the last storm quite well compared to the rest of the economy, but are we prepared for a double dip if it happens?  Is there enough surplus inventory in the bandwidth and datacenter markets to even permit a slowdown in spending?  Here’s a Friday poll aimed at taking the market’s temperature ahead of earnings season: [Read more →]

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

Plans by the European Commission to probe bank’s efforts at self-regulation for electronic payments contain a stark parallel with comments by [Read more →]

It took five and a half months, but Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) finally got what it has been waiting for.  The FCC and the DOJ have now approved the company’s purchase of Global Crossing.  The two companies now say they may complete the merger as early as next week.  Certainly they won’t waste any time. Actually, I had always thought the timing might work out for an October 1 close – it had always seemed like a likely target date for all concerned.   [Read more →]

Pan-European network operator Colt Group (LON:COLT, news) is adding integrated data encryption to its enterprise managed services. It’s a feature of packet-optical gear from Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings), in which ‘in-flight’, protocol-agnostic encryption can secure data streams without impacting network performance itself. [Read more →]

Easynet Global Services is teaming up with Telefonica International Wholesale in order to better reach Latin America. The agreement means the VPN MPLS services of the two companies will be connected, greatly expanding Easynet’s coverage in the region and letting them provide services in [Read more →]

Last night, Dan Rayburn posted a lengthy and very detailed screed about the pressure growing on Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings).  Dan suggests acquisitions, for example EdgeCast, to jump start its carrier-licensing efforts. That certainly might help a bit in the short term, but I think that perhaps the EdgeCast model doesn’t take advantage of Akamai’s sheer scale.  There is another option out there though if they’ve got the stones for it.  [Read more →]

Virgin Media Business has entered the cloud sweepstakes with a little help. They will be using virtual private data center services from Savvis (news, filings) [a subsidiary of CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings)] to offer cloud solutions in the UK, also leveraging their own fiber network of course. [Read more →]

Several interesting bits from the world of metro fiber lately: [Read more →]

IP Networks, which operates a rather low profile metro fiber footprint in the San Francisco Bay Area, has signed on with Tinet and its EtherCloud. Tinet’s EtherCloud was unveiled back in April, and represents the evolution of Neutral Tandem’s earlier entry into the Ethernet Exchange market. [Read more →]

Access equipment specialist Calix offered up an early preview of its Q3 numbers today, and the picture wasn’t a pretty one. [Read more →]

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) has had quite a news blitz lately, and it has continued this week with a bunch of interesting international wins. [Read more →]

The past few days have seen stories pop up on virtually every site I follow. Network Neutrality is about to go into effect as of November 20!  Except that it won’t, and we all know that.  What happened on Friday is the equivalent of the start of a nice game of T-Ball.  Ok, maybe a not-so-nice game of T-Ball. [Read more →]

UEFA, the organization governing European football (soccer to the USA of course), is moving its data infrastructure to the cloud, and more specifically to Interoute’s cloud. For the next three seasons, the pan-European backbone and cloud operator will be supporting all of [Read more →]