Telecom Ramblings

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 →]

Several interesting items from the data center side of things today: [Read more →]

Pan-European network operator added some more cloud services to its portfolio today with the purchase of Quantix. Based in Nottingham, Quantix offers cloud-based database management for Oracle and SQL, as well as other services via their Nimbus-Q cloud platform.  Interoute will add them to their enterprise-focused ICT portfolio, and expand the customer focus beyond Quantix’s current [Read more →]

As longtime readers know, I’m a sucker for maps. So when someone puts together an interactive compilation of connectivity covering virtually every active or planned undersea cable on the planet, I take notice. The folks over at Telegeography did that earlier today, combining their extensive database with some really nice and lightweight javascript mapping software [Read more →]

That Chinese telecommunications companies are becoming more aggressive is certainly nothing new, but this case is a bit intriguing. China Telecom and Huawei have teamed up to build a new submarine cable between Australia and New Zealand, or more specifically Sydney and Auckland.  The new cable will cost just under [Read more →]

If you haven’t already heard, the internet is afire with the amazingly ordinary news of a mere re-branding. Netflix’s DVD-by-mail offering will now be called Qwikster. And I’m going to swim against the tide here and call Reed Hastings a genius. [Read more →]

Yes, I know that AT&T could still win in court, or that they could find some magic formula of divestments that would let them eek their way through. But in practical terms, I think we may have passed over the hump of reasonability. Winning this battle may come at too high a cost, whether it be in changes to the deal, bridges burned along the way, or more importantly [Read more →]

P&TLuxembourg has established a 100Gbps IP connection between Frankfurt and Luxembourg with the help of equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings), giving them a huge low latency pipe into the key bandwidth market and financial center. The buildout lets Alcatel-Lucent answer yesterday’s [Read more →]

There’s nothing quite like an election year to spice things up. Two different congressional forays into the wireless business came to light yesterday, one from each party and both leave one wishing Congress had something better to do. Oh wait, actually it has a long list of things it isn’t actually willing or able to do.  But I digress. [Read more →]

This article was authored by Michael Carroll, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

I came across an interesting article in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s newsletter outlining how Moore’s Law is now largely redundant because attention is switching from processing power to [Read more →]

In an announcement that investors will welcome, Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) today formally unveiled its next generation of PICs based on coherent 100Gbps technology. Each DTN-X PIC will support 5x100Gbps of traffic, ten of which can be linked up to behave as a single 5Tbps virtual switch. It will have OTN switching built in as well as MPLS, and is being positioned as [Read more →]

Indian telecommunications giant Tata Communications (news, filings) has launched a new cloud-based service. They’ve moved both Intelligent Call Routing and Interactive Voice Response onto a cloud infrastructure. The call center industry can use them for routing and distributing calls to their locations around the world.  The solution features [Read more →]

The Vyvx division of Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) is making progress in the college sports market. They announced today a new service aimed at bringing their professional sports broadcast services to universities, entitled Vyvx VenueNet Lite. It uses a university’s existing fiber infrastructure for connectivity across campus. That eliminates the [Read more →]

Gazettabyte has an interesting piece about where the next boost in bandwidth is going to come from now that 100G is making its way into production networks. They detail the efforts of a European research group, called MODE-GAP, looking for ways to multiply the total capacity of an optical fiber by another 100.  If we can put 10Tbps on a single fiber now and perhaps 20-25Tbps in a few years, then [Read more →]

EdgeCast’s focus on enabling content delivery for telecommunications providers took on a new dimension today. In a deal with transparent caching technology specialist PeerApp, they have created a joint CDN solution that addresses both managed and unmanaged content streams. [Read more →]

Seems like nobody in the wireless space is where they want to be right now. The summer season has seen a whole series of contentious issues go unresolved, or in some cases get worse: [Read more →]

Pacific bandwidth specialist Pacnet is making a substantial move deeper into the CDN business. Two years ago, they stuck a toe into the CDN pool by starting to resell Internap’s CDN services.  But as with many telecommunications companies efforts at the time, little had ever come of it.  Today though that has changed, as Pacnet announced their intention to deploy [Read more →]

Yesterday, LTE wholesaler-in-waiting LightSquared made another attempt to mollify the GPS Industry over interference concerns.  They offered to cut power substantially, a move that will require them to have more towers for the same coverage.  They also offered to reserve a specific band for high precision signals, which would help with particular applications.  But while the offer reduces the potential problems, it obviously doesn’t eliminate them completely.  And since the GPS industry has little incentive to compromise, we’re probably still not done yet.  You can read that in the GPS industry’s cautious response to the offer.  I’ll try my hand at translating bits of it from Publicity-English into English: [Read more →]