Telecom Ramblings

The other news over the weekend came from Google’s David Drummond, who suggested that the internet giant is ‘looking very closely’ at another fiber project, this time in Europe.  Such a buildout would parallel their ongoing FTTH project in Kansas City, Kansas, which is of course still [Read more →]

There’s a Reuters interview out over the weekend in which Bill LaParch, CEO of AboveNet, sounds eager to make his company’s first M&A move. Most of that is via the word ‘keen’ in the title rather than actual quotes, but still.  He also suggested $600M in debt as a level that AboveNet could support to make a deal happen.  I have long thought that AboveNet made a better buyer than seller in the M&A arena, despite the rumors over the summer.  Let’s take a quick survey of what they might want to buy: [Read more →]

Finally, last week’s rumor balloon has finally been shot down.  Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, said earlier today:  “We’re not buying Akamai; we don’t have any plans to do that.”  So that settles that, right?  Until next quarter perhaps – or maybe just until the earnings call on this coming Wednesday.  But either way, what seems certain is that Akamai’s future seems to be in flux, though nobody’s quite sure in what direction.  That’s the subject of today’s Friday poll: [Read more →]

This article was authored by Joseph Waring, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Mobile operators in the US, after dragging their feet for years and resisting pressure from the FCC for 18 months, have finally agreed to send customers alerts when they near their limits on voice, SMS and data usage. [Read more →]

As one might have anticipated following Icahn’s final takeover and the appointment of CFO Laura Thomas as interim CEO, the company is now cutting expenses. That means downsizing, headcount reduction, layoffs, whatever you want to call it.  It is not yet clear how extensive the event is, nor which departments have been most affected.  But since the company is fully private now, I doubt they will be telling us anything officially.   [Read more →]

Everyone’s favorite telecommunications giant reported earnings today. Revenues checked in a $31.48B, just slightly below analyst expectations. Earnings per share of $0.61 was right on the button though. Total wireless customers were up 2.1M, slower than when they had exclusive iPhone rights but apparently losing those still hasn’t led to utter disaster.  The iPhone 4S will likely make for an interesting Q4. [Read more →]

Several interesting news items recently on the metro side: [Read more →]

A few days ago when I talked about the possiblity of Sprint selling off its wireline division to pay for its LTE buildout, I focused on only two potential suitors: Level 3 and CenturyLink. But a regular commenter brought up a third bidder that I neglected to mention but which may be just as likely: TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings). [Read more →]

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 →]