Telecom Ramblings

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 →]

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 →]