Telecom Ramblings

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 →]

International network operator glbc announced two expansions yesterday.  First, the company is adding an additional 40 locations to its EtherSphere product line, which complements its MPLS IP VPN service with various flavors of layer 2 Ethernet including VPLS.  In North America and Europe, the additional Ethernet sites will be within key PoPs, while in China the expansion will go through the company’s partner [Read more →]

Privately held PacketExchange is being acquired by global network integrator gtlt (GTT).  PacketExchange operates a tier-2 international IP and Ethernet network, and itself acquired Mzima just last year.  This does seem to mark a change in strategy for GTT, which has traditionally been carrier neutral but will now own its own backbone, at least at layer 2.  PacketExchange also took a swing at the cloud earlier this year, unveiling a [Read more →]

XO Holdings (news, filings) has turned its attention overseas again, announcing today their intention to expand the company’s international services to include IP/MPLS IP-VPN nodes in Europe as well as access throughout Europe, Asia/Pacific, both Americas, and various US territories.  XO has been traditionally quite US focused, but this move is another step in a steady plan by XO to increase it’s international presence.  Back in 2009 XO added capacity on on PC-1 to increase their presence in Japan.  Then in 2010, they started up an international customer referral program.  This new effort though is obviously a bit bigger, in that [Read more →]

Level 3 won yet another European gaming company’s CDN business, announcing Frogster as a customer.  No, not the Frogstar from the Hitchhiker’s Guide lore, which was widely held to be the most totally evil place in the Galaxy.  And not the classic Frogger video game either, which is a good thing since I never liked it anyway.  Based in Germany and publicly traded in Frankfurt, Frogster operates two massively multiplayer online games, Runes of Magic and Bounty Bay Online, and has two more in the works [Read more →]

According to a report on Data Center Dynamics, Google has taken all available space at the key New York City colocation facility of 111 8th off the market.  They bought the 3M square foot building over the winter for $1.9B, taking charge of a facility populated by a who’s who of the datacenter and carrier world.  Equinix, Digital Realty Trust, and Telx all operate huge tracts of space there, and the facility is home to a very wide range of network operators. [Read more →]

Over on the Jobs Board, we have a new job posting from Kalamazoo-based Lynx Network Group, a wholesale and retail telecommunications service provider in the Midwest.  Lynx is looking for a Layer 3 Manager / Network IT Manager.  Last year Lynx along with several partners won stimulus funding for about 1,000 miles of fiber connecting various parts of rural Michigan.  Already underway, half of that buildout is expected to be done by the end of 2011, with the rest in 2012.  And of course part of that buildout means jobs, and this appears to be one of them.  You can find a link to the map of the proposed fiber route over in [Read more →]

Time to catch up on a few deals:

Optimum Lightpath continued its offensive in the education vertical by adding yet another New Jersey school district.  The 1,615 middle and high school students and 142 faculty of the River Dell Regional School District now have a 100Mbps Ethernet connection to the internet, replacing a paltry 3Mbps connection.  And by paltry, I mean [Read more →]

Telecom Ramblings wishes to know more about its audience.  This survey contains only three questions and will take less than minute.  Please [Read more →]