Telecom Ramblings

While our awareness of the IPv6 transition peaked in June with World IPv6 Day and has seemed to ebb dramatically since, the work is still going on in the background.  LightReading has this interesting piece on why the mobile carriers have been so quiet on the subject, especially since it is the proliferation of billions of moving IP endpoints that more than anything dooms IPv4. [Read more →]

Recently the DOJ has asked Level 3 for more information about its proposed purchase of Global Crossing, and XO has filed objections claiming the deal would create a ‘global colossus’ that would dominate the Tier 1 backbone market and damage the competitive environment. It seems odd to me that a sector that has suffered from some of the toughest pricing pressures in the industry for a decade would be so delicately balanced that it would swing the other way with one deal, but then the Tier 1 backbone peering/transit system has always been an odd place that nobody really understands. What do you think? [Read more →]

The debt markets continue to be favorable, and so Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) is looking to add to its cash supply in advance of its purchase of glbc.  They announced today a proposed private offering of another $300M in 8.125% senior notes due 2019, adding to the $600M they raised a month ago.  These would also go into escrow, waiting for the time when they would be used to refinance Global Crossing’s debt.  If, like last month, they raise $100M more than originally offered, they’ll have raised [Read more →]

Time to catch up on a few interesting tidbits across the industry:

Internap Network Services (NASDAQ:INAP, news, filings) won an expanded for its colocation and high end IP services, announcing that AudienceScience is using their footprint to support [Read more →]

Cox has long leased various services from Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) to power its national network, and today they expanded that strategic relationship further.  This new agreement spans multiple areas:  [Read more →]

While the goings on at XO and Level 3 have dominated the sector news this week, there have been a few expansionary notes worth a look: [Read more →]

Yesterday, FiberLight has teamed up with Global Capacity to improve its access capabilities.  They’ll be using the One Marketplace Access Exchange to both offer their own last mile services and generate quotes to go off-net.  I haven’t seen FiberLight going off-net that much, they tend to focus on their own fiber footprint – so this could suggest an [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) revealed today that it has received a request for additional information from the Department of Justice regarding the proposed Global Crossing merger.  Commonly known as a second request, this is what the DOJ does when it has more questions about possible anti-competitive aspects of a deal and can involve killing a lot of trees. [Read more →]

Well, it took six months, but the board of directors at XO Holdings (news, filings) finally responded to majority shareholder Carl Icahn’s crazy bid of $0.70 back in January for the common shares he didn’t already own.  They did get a higher price than that original bid, agreeing to $1.40 per share plus contract rights to a share of the proceeds if [Read more →]

This is a guest post by Paolo Gorgò.  To inquire about guest posts, contact the webmaster.

Hardly a week goes by without a new announcement in the financial vertical involving a data center provider. The news, actually, is that most of the times the colocation companies do not even care to put out a proper press release to inform investors about the deals. [Read more →]

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

Equinix’s recent offering of $750 million of 7.00% senior notes put the company in an even stronger cash position to fund its expansion plans – including increasing its footprint in new markets around the world. Add to this the fact that the company should generate in 2011 alone about $400 million in discretionary free cash flow (money that can also be used for expansion CapEx), and we feel authorized to start the guessing game. [Read more →]

DQE Communications has entered the M&A fray with the purchase of Met-Net communications, which also operates in the Pittsburgh metro area.  Met-Net specializes in Metro Ethernet and Ethernet over copper to the enterprise, and they do it via fiber which is largely leased from, yes, DQE Communications – so this is mainly consolidating customers onto the fiber platform and thus increasing depth of penetration.  [Read more →]

According to a report in the Communications Daily newsletter this morning, XO Holdings (news, filings) is planning to file comments this week opposing the Level 3-Global Crossing merger with the FCC and perhaps DOJ.  The grounds?  That it will give Level 3 too much leverage in the Tier 1 backbone market of course. [Read more →]

I was asked recently why I haven’t offered another predictive model for Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) in light of the Global Crossing deal and the dramatic resurgence of their stock over the past eight months.  For what it’s worth, I think there are indeed very good reasons supporting the TTID thesis this time around.  TTID for the uninitiated, is Level 3 investor shorthand for This Time It’s Different – which it wasn’t the last few times.  But those same reasons are making analysis rather challenging in my view, in that [Read more →]

The US employment rate may still be struggling to find a way down, but in the world of fiber things still seem to be picking up – at least if the number of postings to the Ramblings’ Jobs Board are any measure.  This weekend we have another new posting, this time from way down south at FPL Fibernet. [Read more →]

So it has finally happened.  The media industry has finally managed to get US ISPs to agree to help it police copyright infringement.  Under the terms of the deal, a group including Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and TW Cable will now be sending out copyright alerts when its subscribers are determined to have infringed on copyrights.  When ignored for long enough, the ISPs then have the right to limit that subscriber’s connection speed or even block them altogether.  ISPs have fought this for a long time.  And you can’t blame them, consumers already hate when these companies tell them what they can and can’t do, they don’t want to do it even more often.  However, I’m not actually fully convinced by the reluctant act.   [Read more →]

VoIP used to be the vanguard of the tiny challenger to the status quo, the David we could all root for against Goliath.  There have been three big VoIP stories MicroSoft’s Skype purchase that drive home just how much our world has changed:  Microsoft’s Skype purchase, a recent FCC filing by TW Telecom, and Facebook’s Skype integration.  Perhaps its time that we stop thinking of it as that proverbial innocent child swinging on the tire in the back yard who needs his freedom to encourage creativity and more as that slacker with five o’clock shadow who lives in his parents basement with few possessions but fewer obligations. [Read more →]

Along with its convertible debt move earlier today, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) also won a renewal and expansion of one of its most visible contracts today.  The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association (BCBSA), which provides healthcare coverage for 98 million, or perhaps 30% of the nation’s population, has signed on for another two years – we last heard [Read more →]

According to a press release this morning, Fairfax Holdings and Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) have signed an agreement whereby Fairfax’s $127,962,000 in converts due 2013 will be converted into stock.  These are the 15% converts that Level 3 sold $400M of back in the darkest period of the recent financial crisis – November/December of 2008 – with a conversion price of just $1.80.  It was expensive money no matter how you looked at it, but [Read more →]

Western regional operator Integra Telecom announced another new PoP yesterday in Arizona, bringing Phoenix NAP on-net.  While most of their revenues come from the CLEC side of things, Integra has been emphasizing its fiber footprint more and more, bringing key sites on-net across the region.  Continuing in that vein, Integra will use its new PoP in Phoenix NAP to focus on [Read more →]

With the Telstra/NBN deal finally reaching the endgame, Australia’s bandwidth market has been very dynamic lately as everyone in the competitive landscape prepares for, well, a completely different competitive landscape.  iiNet, one of the country’s largest alternative network operators, has decided that what its future needed was a little more bandwidth.  They have been rolling out the first, but surely not the last, 100GbE [Read more →]

Carrier neutral datacenter giant Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) is raising yet more money, announcing today its intention to offer $500M in senior notes due 2021.  They included the usual laundry list of potential uses – capital expenditures, working capital and potential acquisitions – as well as the potential repayment of their 2.5% converts which mature next year.  Those converts total only $250M and would convert to stock above $112.  They have $450M on the balance sheet, so [Read more →]

One of the more vexing problems in the wireless business is handling those temporary but truly high density cases, the most extreme of which is the stadium.  With up to 100,000 people packed into a few dozen acres, nearly all packing cell phones including lots of data-gobbling smartphones, keeping them all supplied with enough bandwidth is a challenge.  It’s like having everyone in a small city temporarily converge on one [Read more →]