Telecom Ramblings

According to a report today over at CNET, Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) is planning to enter the cloud computing race later this year. They plan to leverage their existing data center footprint and their substantial enterprise customer relationships to kick start cloud-based ‘hosted collaboration services’.  Those will apparently start with [Read more →]

clwr has a new CEO, again.  The wireless upstart has promoted its Chief Operating Officer Erik Prusch to the positions of both President and CEO.  The current CEO, John Stanton, will return to his chairmanship on the board of directors as Executive Director.  The change comes five months after Stanton took over the job from Bill Morrow in an interim role, at which time Prusch was promoted from [Read more →]

Ok, earnings season is coming to a close except for the usual stragglers that will finish up shortly.  Time to check on what else went by that got missed: [Read more →]

The evolution of the Ethernet Exchange business continues, as we are seeing each of the early participants taking the idea in their own unique directions.  Today it was CENX’s turn, as they unveiled the expansion of their wireless backhaul offering, as well as a major customer in LightSquared for whom they will be helping the buildout of that 4G LTE network that is planned to start later this year.  For CENX, this means taking more of an active [Read more →]

In parallel with their Q2 earnings report this morning, tndm unveiled a new HD Voice Interconnect product. As they have done with VoIP in general, the company is seeking to connect up islands of HD Voice, which offers greater call clarity via a wideband connection.  The service requires a SIP interconnect, and then will connect via HD Voice if the desired endpoint supports it or else via regular voice as usual. Independent VoIP provider 8x8, Inc (NASDAQ:EGHT, news, filings) has [Read more →]

Fresh off last week’s surprising news that it will be acquired by Windstream, PAETEC (news, filings) offered up its second quarter results.  Revenues were perhaps a tad lighter than analysts had forecast, although that may have to do with the timing of the closing of the XETA deal.  More interestingly, the company saw another solid boost to its EBITDA margins, reflecting the integration synergies they are deriving from the Cavalier deal.  Here’s the usual quick table: [Read more →]

TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) is really picking up the pace when it comes to bringing fiber into new buildings.  According to their second quarter earnings report last night, the company added another 569 buildings to its network, giving them 14,311 in all now.  In the last twelve months, tw telecom has brought 2,035 buildings on-net, far and away the leader amongst competitive providers.  As for the financials, well as always you can set your clock by this company’s numbers.  Here’s a quick tabular summary in context: [Read more →]

Private equity firm ABRY Partners made another purchase in the internet infrastructure space to go along with Sidera Networks and Masergy.  This time they have teamed up with fellow Boston-based investment firm Berkshire Partners to purchase interconnection specialist Telx.   ABRY certainly has developed a well [Read more →]

It’s been several quarters of outsized results for Broadsoft (NASDAQ:BSFT, news, filings) now, following today’s easy beat of guidance and analyst estimates.  With both the VoIP and cloud sectors advancing, the communications software platform provider has been in a sweet spot lately.  Here’s a quick summary of their data in the context of the prior four quarters: [Read more →]

PAETEC (news, filings) is pushing its Ethernet-over-Copper product line to the limit.  In May they bumped up their capabilities to 100Mbps, but today they doubled that again, provisioning a circuit offering bandwidth in excess of 200Mbps.  The link is being used by a ‘prominent web marketing company’ to connect its latest datacenter to the Internet.  [Read more →]

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

This morning, Telecity Group, one of Europe’s leading provider of carrier-neutral data centers, and listed on the London stock exchange, announced its results for the first half of 2011 and also the acquisition of [Read more →]

Several weeks ago, XO Holdings (news, filings) announced its vehement opposition to the pending merger of Level 3 and Global Crossing, citing the combined entity’s likely outsized influence on the IP transit marketplace.  Today however, according to this joint filing with the FCC, XO no longer objects. Here’s the text of the letter: [Read more →]

Don’t look now, but this weekend might just see a strike break out on telecommunications land.  Verizon and its wireline employees are on the brink, with the current contract expiring at 12:01am on Sunday.  The CWA and IBE have already voted to authorize a strike, which would impact 45,000 Verizon workers on the east coast.  I’d like to think this one will be short or even that they could work something out at the last minute, but it could be that the situation is ripe for [Read more →]

When the summer started, abvt was apparently for sale and the bidding was fierce.  But as I suspected, nothing came of it (or has come of it yet) and the speculation has died down and the surge in stock price has ebbed.  So now we get back to business, which in AboveNet’s case is the business of rock-solid, high margin organic growth – as demonstrated by the company’s Q2 report this morning.  Here’s a quick summary of the relevant metrics alongside the prior four quarters: [Read more →]

Two more job postings have popped up on the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board, this time from sidera. With layoffs hitting the news much too often of late accompanied by more ugly macro economic news, it’s refreshing to see much of the competitive fiber sector still hiring. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Tony Poulos, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

I continue to be perturbed by headlines from the telecoms industry declaring staff cuts to reduce costs and improve profitability. Is there no other means to placate investors than to resort to such radical and life-disrupting means for people that have not necessarily failed in their jobs? [Read more →]

Cogent Communications (NASDAQ:CCOI, news, filings) has been eerily quiet this year on the press release front, with nothing other than earnings releases, event announcements, and debt sales going over the wires.  But their Q2 results filed this morning show more of the same, by which I mean steady, solid growth across the board.  Here’s a quick summary of a few relevant metrics in the context of the prior four quarters: [Read more →]

News has been thick this week, time to catch up on a few items that are worth a quick look.

MegaPath has been running a Tech Talk video contest this summer, in which IT professionals are invited to submit videos turning high tech jargon into humor.  They are taking submissions through August 12, but they have a nice crop of videos already available to peruse.  My favorite, hands down is [Read more →]

clwr today reported its usual subscriber positive and earnings negative quarterly results, and finally made a commitment toward building out LTE.  That is, when they get the financing for it of course.  The WiMAX provider demonstrated both solid revenue growth and cost savings, though how much is enough remains open to question. [Read more →]

Perseus Telecom, which specializes in ultra-low latency connectivity, has unveiled a new such route to Brazil.  Leveraging GlobeNet’s submarine cable systems, they are claiming the low latency title between Sao Paolo’s BM&F BOVESPA and New York’s NASDAQ OMX.  The sustained interest in low latency connections for the trading community is definitely spilling over from the Chicago-NYC-London-Frankfurt access and onto other continents, and the Brazilian bandwidth market is red hot these days.   [Read more →]

While its acquisition of Savvis recently has dominated its news for the past few months, it was those pesky details of the merger with Qwest that slowed down CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings) in the second quarter.  Revenues of $4.41B were just slightly below expectations, while earnings per share took a $0.20 non-cash hit amidships as Centurylink’s fair value assessment of the Qwest assets led to an additional $200M in depreciation and amortization.  Without that contribution, earnings per share of $0.64 were within guidance but still [Read more →]

What to do to distract everyone from the pain of a giant restructuring?  Find a new way to publicly demonstrate your coolest technology of course!  Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) today said that its telepresence technology will be featured at the 2011 Rogers Cup.  The womens and mens tournaments will be held simultaneously in Toronto and Montreal, respectively, and Cisco’s telepresence will be there to [Read more →]

As expected, Earthlink (NASDAQ:ELNK, news, filings) is not done with its inorganic push to build itself into a comprehensive business services provider.  This time, however, they didn’t buy a CLEC, but rather a managed services provider with a data center.  Earthlink announced yesterday that it is buying Business Vitals, a Columbia, South Carolina firm specializing in managed IT, security, and professional services.   [Read more →]