Telecom Ramblings

Ever since Carl Icahn finished taking full control of XO Holdings (news, filings), some sort of shift in leadership has been inevitable. With Grivner gone since May, and the chairman unlikely to sell the company for a year at least, there remains work to be done. But would they seek outside blood in an effort to rejuvenate the company? Or promote from within and give a ‘steady as she goes’ signal? [Read more →]

We don’t hear as much nowadays from glbc, as we await the completion of the company’s purchase by Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings). But this morning they announced an important deal with the Russian equivalent of Facebook, VK or VKontakte. VK has 150M users across the Russian-speaking world, with substantial bandwidth needs. [Read more →]

European colocation provider Telecity Group (LON:TCY, news, filings) hit the acquisition trail this morning, announcing the purchase of UK Grid for £11.7M. UK Grid operates over 50,000 square feet of carrier neutral colo space spread across [Read more →]

On Thursday, Level 3’s CEO Jim Crowe was asked about on-net building count (~8200), and he took the opportunity to comment the metric itself and offered an alternative: [Read more →]

Two new postings on the Ramblings’ Jobs Board this week, the first from a familiar Northeastern source and the second from a new player out in the Midwest. [Read more →]

The first Friday of Autumn, hope your week has been as good as mine was for once. A few interesting items on the international front before you go: [Read more →]

abvt has built fiber into the new Santa Clara facility of Dupont Fabros Technology (NYSE:DFT, news, filings), SC1. Their new IP POP at the site fits with the company’s aim to be ‘datacenter neutral’, meaning if it’s a datacenter within in their footprint then they’re probably already in it or planning on building out to it. When both phases have been completed, SC1 will have 176,000 squre feet of raised floor space and 36.4MW of available power.  This is the second announcement of new fiber to the facility, as Layer42 [Read more →]

PAETEC (news, filings) offered up another government win today. They have been awarded a five year contract serving the bandwidth needs of Fort Detrick. The services provided will include voice, Ethernet, and secure internet access, and is valued at [Read more →]

Terremark (news, filings) [a subsidiary of Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings)] followed up its expansion down in Brazil with the opening of a new NAP in a more traditional location. The NAP of Amsterdam starts out with 25,000 square feet of space, with another 50,000 square feet on adjacent land for future expansion. It is located within the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol Area, with direct connectivity to AMS-IX.  [Read more →]

As promised just last week, LightSquared has offered up a solution to the problem of interference with high precision GPS applications for its proposed LTE network buildout. They have signed an agreement with Javad GNSS to develop simple, affordable filters which will need to be implemented on the affected GPS devices. A few dozen prototypes are expected to be available in just two weeks followed by mass production. Assuming of course, that the FCC and the GPS industry are satisfied. [Read more →]

Telecommunications equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) became the first to launch VDSL2 Vectoring Technology commercially. That’s significant because it brings the capacity of copper above 100Mbps to a distance of 400m. That’s real [Read more →]

Of course, the moment I say that M&A seems to have dried up, the universe conspires to prove me wrong.  Alpheus Communications has found itself a private equity buyer.  The Gores Group has signed an agreement to purchase the company, which it intends to merge with another fiber operator it owns: First Communications.  Financial details were not disclosed, though I’ll pass on any if I come across them later. [Read more →]

The third quarter has not been a fun one for investors in US competitive network operators, despite the fact that operationally the sector continues to do just fine.  Below I’ve cribbed a static relative valuation plot of EV/EBITDA(ttm) from my Competitive Telecom Trends pages, the final datapoint of which reflects current stock prices as we approach the end of the third quarter: [Read more →]

A quick look at several interesting items from competitive network operators: [Read more →]

Several interesting items from the data center side of things today: [Read more →]

Pan-European network operator added some more cloud services to its portfolio today with the purchase of Quantix. Based in Nottingham, Quantix offers cloud-based database management for Oracle and SQL, as well as other services via their Nimbus-Q cloud platform.  Interoute will add them to their enterprise-focused ICT portfolio, and expand the customer focus beyond Quantix’s current [Read more →]

As longtime readers know, I’m a sucker for maps. So when someone puts together an interactive compilation of connectivity covering virtually every active or planned undersea cable on the planet, I take notice. The folks over at Telegeography did that earlier today, combining their extensive database with some really nice and lightweight javascript mapping software [Read more →]

That Chinese telecommunications companies are becoming more aggressive is certainly nothing new, but this case is a bit intriguing. China Telecom and Huawei have teamed up to build a new submarine cable between Australia and New Zealand, or more specifically Sydney and Auckland.  The new cable will cost just under [Read more →]

If you haven’t already heard, the internet is afire with the amazingly ordinary news of a mere re-branding. Netflix’s DVD-by-mail offering will now be called Qwikster. And I’m going to swim against the tide here and call Reed Hastings a genius. [Read more →]

Yes, I know that AT&T could still win in court, or that they could find some magic formula of divestments that would let them eek their way through. But in practical terms, I think we may have passed over the hump of reasonability. Winning this battle may come at too high a cost, whether it be in changes to the deal, bridges burned along the way, or more importantly [Read more →]

P&TLuxembourg has established a 100Gbps IP connection between Frankfurt and Luxembourg with the help of equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings), giving them a huge low latency pipe into the key bandwidth market and financial center. The buildout lets Alcatel-Lucent answer yesterday’s [Read more →]

There’s nothing quite like an election year to spice things up. Two different congressional forays into the wireless business came to light yesterday, one from each party and both leave one wishing Congress had something better to do. Oh wait, actually it has a long list of things it isn’t actually willing or able to do.  But I digress. [Read more →]