Telecom Ramblings

Between the traditional summer bookends of Memorial Day and Labor Day we had lots of M&A rumors amongst fiber operators, but only a few substantial deals that actually happened plus a smattering of smaller ones. More interesting was the substantial amount of fiber that was for sale that *didn’t* get bought. Let’s review: [Read more →]

We had a fitting end to a summer of job postings on Ramblings’ Jobs Board, with one last posting over Labor Day weekend from XO Communications.  XO is looking for a Product Manager IV in Herndon, VA.  Last week they posted a job listing for Senior Major Account Executives.  XO of course recently became a privately held company, as billionaire Carl Icahn finally took control of the last bit of the company he didn’t already own.  Is he now shifting gears [Read more →]

Since its re-emergence a few years ago, abvt has impressed many by leveraging their deep Tier 1 metro fiber footprint with a tightly focused business model to generate steady, powerful growth combined with high EBITDA margins and positive free cash flow.  This summer the company and its fiber assets were at the heart of several M&A rumors, but as we now move into autumn it seems more and more likely they will remain an independent force in the industry.  With us today to shed some light on AboveNet’s plans is Rajiv Datta, who became Chief Operating Officer in January of this year. [Read more →]

The US was off enjoying its summer-ending Labor Day weekend, but that doesn’t mean nothing happened elsewhere in the world.  Here’s a few quick-takes on some of the global news lately: [Read more →]

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

Now I’ve seen everything. A union fights for a $39 billion merger. Coming to the defense of [Read more →]

TGIF, and for those in the US have a great long weekend. A few quick bytes before you go:

Sidera Networks is taking on more OSHEAN work with an expansion of its network in [Read more →]

This week’s fiber M&A comes courtesy of Canadian MSO Cogeco, which said that it is buying MTO Telecom.  MTO operates 1500km route miles of fiber on the island of Montreal, mostly of the 432 count variety. They serve carriers, enterprises, and the public sector. I’m less familiar with metro fiber assets north of the border, and haven’t run into a map of MTO’s network or a sense of their on-net [Read more →]

In an interesting item over on the Huffington Post, union workers are claiming Verizon is denying them overtime (overtime is a right?) which they could be using for post-Irene repairs that are stacking up. Whether cost savings or payback, I found the response of Verizon’s spokesman fascinating: [Read more →]

As several readers have commented, the S-4 filing for Windstream (NYSE:WIN, news, filings) purchase of PAETEC (news, filings) is out, and it makes for some interesting reading. There was indeed another suitor, one whose offer started at $6 per share and rose as high as $6.80. But they came later to the process and without funding already in hand to refinance PAETEC’s debt load, and in the end were unable [Read more →]

Following its merger with Nortel’s MEN division Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) in the spring of 2010, Ciena has been working feverishly to put the combined business on a solid footing. Today they reported fiscal third quarter revenues that were on the low end of guidance at $435.3M, whereas analysts had projected the midpoint. However, they did manage to pull out positive adjusted net earnings of [Read more →]

Ok, after yesterday’s shocker from the US Department of Justice, it’s time for a quick poll. AT&T says it will challenge the DOJ in court, while various analysts are saying it’s effectively all over.  What do you think? [Read more →]

Wow, who would have thunk it. A Bloomberg report today says that the US Department of Justice is suing to stop the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile.  That pretty much takes the wind out of AT&T’s offer this morning to repatriate 5000 call center jobs if the deal were approved.  Not [Read more →]

In an interview with La Tribune this week, Cogent’s CEO Dave Schaeffer said that the company has filed a formal complaint with French regulators and are also talking with those in Brussels.  What complaint?  Orange and Cogent haven’t seen eye to eye in a long time, and the two fought a brief peering war back in 2005.  This new dispute hasn’t gone quite that far.  It isn’t that Orange won’t connect with Cogent or that anyone has depeered anyone else yet.  Rather, Cogent says [Read more →]

Here’s a quick catchup on recent news items: [Read more →]

If it wasn’t already clear that AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) really wants to buy T-Mobile USA, witness today’s economic bribery offer. The international telecommunications giant is now promising to bring 5,000 call-center jobs back to the USA if the merger gets approved. Not only would those jobs come back from overseas, the new employees would be eligible to join the unions and there would be no US-based job losses from those call centers due to synergies. (Sorry India, you’re holding the wrong end of that sword!) [Read more →]

Western regional fiber operator 360Networks is helping California CLEC power TelePacific power its expansion efforts in the northern California town of Chico.  360Networks has upgraded one of its regeneration huts into a POP in order to deploy capacity into the city, which lies [Read more →]

International network operator glbc won a substantial bandwidth expansion over at privately held cloud and hosting provider SoftLayer.  They have deployed 14 new 10Gbps dedicated internet access ports for the company to help meet demand for virtual data center connectivity.  [Read more →]

Rumors that Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings) was talking M&A turned into reality this morning, but not in the direction of its CDN – yet anyway. Limelight is selling its EyeWonder business to DG, formerly DG FastChannel, which specializes in ad delivery across a variety of media.  The purchase of EyeWonder will give DG a greater [Read more →]

Making data centers environmentally friendly has been an rapidly rising theme in both the US and Europe over the past year or two.  Today Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) took a solid swing at decreasing its carbon footprint, announcing that two of its colocation facilities in London and one across the English Channel in Amsterdam are now 100% powered by [Read more →]

Orange Business, the international arm of France Telecom, announced a major initiative in Latin America.  They will be increasing capacity across their network by a factor of ten, none of this incremental stuff for Orange I guess.  The whole region has [Read more →]

Even as Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) is busy with the hard part of its slimming down program, they are still out there buying companies.  Earlier this summer, they announced a downsizing of 6,500 employees as part of a $1B savings program aimed at turning the company around after its recent bouts with M&A indigestion.  [Read more →]

So Irene was bad, but not *that* bad and hence time to get back to work.  A quick look at a few metro fiber-related items: [Read more →]

This is a guest post by Paolo Gorgò.  If you might be interested in a guest post, then contact the webmaster.

Last week, the East Coast of the United States was rocked with a 5.8 magnitude earthquake and that was soon followed by Hurricane Irene, in what seems to represent a unique historic pairing.  Such a combination of natural disasters, in a very short period of time, has never happened before. [Read more →]