Telecom Ramblings

There are few companies out there giving off as many contradictory signals as wholesale wireless carrier-to-be LightSquared.  This week, we had no less than three news items that just left me generally puzzled.  First there was the news that the company was talking with AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) about leasing 4G network capacity.  The fact that it was one 4G network that doesn’t yet exist talking to another 4G network that also doesn’t exist about was dissonant enough, but [Read more →]

Making friends is a valuable skill, and northeastern fiber operator sidera has been working overtime lately to get it right.  Last week they teamed up with the UK’s Exponential-e, and this week it was the turn of Colt Group (LON:COLT, news) and Spread Networks (news). [Read more →]

Back in February, Milan-centric metro fiber company Metroweb was said to be up for sale, and that Telecom Italia was the frontrunner.  Well the wind must have shifted since then, because Bloomberg is reporting that infrastructure fund F2i and Intesa Sanpaolo’s IMI Investimenti unit have won the auction for some €436M, or $628M.  Given the impressive price tag, they must have been doing rather well – this was obviously not [Read more →]

As you may have noticed by now, a lot of fiber appears to be on the market, with AboveNet, Sidera, Fiberlight, and others rumored.  But prices are high and some of the historically more active buyers aren’t looking that eager.  Notably, in the past week or two both PAETEC and Level 3 have indicated they aren’t likely to be out there bidding.  Here’s a quote from PAETEC’s CEO Arunas Chesonis from the company’s recent investor day: [Read more →]

Lots of news this week from the colocation sector: [Read more →]

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) has never been shy about making bandwidth projections, and today they issued some new ones.  Their fifth annual Visual Networking Index Forecast says that in 2015 global internet traffic will reach 966 exabytes per year, just shy of a zettabyte.  Remember when people worried about (or praying for) the exaflood?  Yep, it’s time for the zettaflood now, and the culprits are [Read more →]

This is a guest post by Paolo Gorgò, who blogs over at both Nortia Research and Seeking Alpha.  If you might be interested in a guest post may contact the webmaster.

21Vianet Group (NASDAQ:VNET, news, filings), the largest carrier-neutral Internet data center services provider in China, will be reporting Q1 2011 earnings today, after market [Read more →]

Three deals closed earlier today, let’s take a quick look: [Read more →]

Nothing burns bandwidth like video, and so when Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) announced two television-related contracts it certainly can’t be a bad thing.  The first is for bandwidth at Information Television Network (ITV) down in Florida, which produces ‘health and wellness broadcast programming’ which must be on the channels I usually skip over.  ITV will be initially leveraging a fiber build into their studio to support their production needs plus a [Read more →]

The US may pause on the last Monday of May, but the rest of the world still goes on.  Here are a few things that happened since: [Read more →]

Last week, news broke across various media outlets that abvt has hired JP Morgan Chase to advise it on a potential sale of the company.  Since then, I have seen lots of speculation about who might actually do the buying if such a deal came to pass.  My own opinion is that CenturyLink probably has the most optimal combination of means, motive, and opportunity, but I am hardly the last word on the subject and others make solid cases for private equity, Verizon, TW Telecom, Level 3, and even Sprint.  So here’s a poll of Rambling’s readers to help clarify the waters a bit, or perhaps muddy them further: [Read more →]

To those of you in the US, stop reading this and go outside for Memorial Day!  Unless you’re in the Midwest, in which case you should probably hide because Mother Nature still seems to be pissed off about something.  But if you’re still here, let’s take a moment and contemplate Google Wallet.  Because I just don’t get it. [Read more →]

When the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan back in March, one of the bits of infrastructure that did manage to withstand much of the devastation was telecommunications networks.  But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t damage.  Several undersea cables were in fact knocked offline, but the loops did the job they were designed to do.  One of those cables was Pacific Crossing’s PC-1, whose north link between Ajigaura and Harbour Point and west link between Ajigaura and Shima were both damaged.  Yesterday Pacific Crossing and its owner telecom announced [Read more →]

Lots of fiber and network news this week.  We wouldn’t want the colo guys to feel ignored, so let’s catch up before the long weekend gets rolling:

European carrier-neutral colocation provider InterXion (NYSE:INXN, news) has completed its expansion at its DUS1 facility in Dusseldorf, which houses the DE-CIX Düsseldorf and ECIX exchanges amongst a bevvy of [Read more →]

Some of you may have noticed the banner at the lower right already, but Telecom Ramblings is proud to be a media sponsor of the Telecom Exchange this June 29.  In fact, I expect to do something I have rarely managed to do when it comes to conferences and meetings.  Assuming the travel gods [Read more →]

This summer, AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) will finally get around to deploying LTE in its first five markets.  I say finally because both Verizon Wireless and MetroPCS managed to pull that step off in 2010, and because the company has been selling the iPhone on its 3G network for years now – a device that really ought to be on a big bandwidth connection.  But actually AT&T is hurrying things up a bit, they had planned to wait longer.  The reason is obvious though, they don’t want the lack of an LTE foothold to add to the headwinds they may face from [Read more →]

The market’s recent surge in interest in metro fiber has benefited tw telecom’s stock price lately as well, and I have speculated that they might be interested in M&A following Level 3’s big move and the many assets that appear to be for sale.  They have one of the best strategic platforms on which to [Read more →]

Quite a news week leading into Memorial Day weekend in the US.  Time for another quick look at a series of interesting items:

Down south, DukeNet has joined the Telx Ethernet Exchange in Atlanta.  DukeNet has been rather quiet publicly since receiving a capital influx from Alinda last year.    However in this PR they revealed that they have been very actively fibering up the [Read more →]

Rumors may have them on the block, but life does go on and sidera announced two key expansionary moves yesterday.

To the east, Sidera entered into a strategic alliance with Exponential-e, under which the two companies will expand each other’s network reach.  The deal is aimed in particular at the financial vertical and makes a lot of sense, as both companies lack [Read more →]

Reports today say that abvt has retained JP Morgan Chase in order to find a buyer, with potential suitors mentioned being Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings), TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings), and several private equity firms.  AboveNet operates one of the premier Tier 1 metro footprints on the market, covering 15 of the very largest markets and expanding into a half dozen more with fiber connecting more than 2,600 buildings.  On top of that they’re profitable and growing at a nice clip – something that doesn’t come up for sale every day in this business.  Let’s take a closer look at these and other potential suitors: [Read more →]

Apparently, everyone was saving up some news for the start of ITW, because the cup runeth over and over.  Here’s a few more noteworthy announcements:

Northeastern fiber operator sidera has enhanced its switched Ethernet services, adding CoS capabilities with guaranteed service levels.  The company just began offering [Read more →]

Hibernia Atlantic added a new Chief Operations Officer and picked up a transatlantic deal as well.  Kathy Perone will take the helm as COO at a time when Hibernia is busy on multiple fronts, building the first new transatlantic cable in some time, aggressively targeting the financial sector, and apparently looking at M&A possibilities.  Perone is an industry veteran, having most recently led [Read more →]

As expected, super-CLEC PAETEC (news, filings) is taking the trend toward cloud services for the enterprise quite seriously.  The company yesterday announced a major expansion of its datacenter and cloud computing footprint.  They plan to add 13 data centers nationwide by the end of 2012, which will give them twenty in all.  This year, they expect to add locations in [Read more →]