Telecom Ramblings

Content delivery giant Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) took a public lump or two last month with the news that they lost some Netflix business to Level 3, but yesterday they showed a bit of their own aggression.  Akamai and Rackspace Hosting (NYSE:RAX, news, filings) announced a strategic relationship under which Rackspace’s dedicated and cloud hosting portfolio will leverage Akamai’s CDN.  Rackspace’s cloud services don’t get as much press as those of Amazon, [Read more →]

Yesterday, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) announced an agreement with eSchool Solutions in which the educational software provider will leverage the company’s CDN to deliver a training program and also to enhance its voice needs as well.  eSchool Solutions is a provider to more than 600 school districts and thousands of schools across the US and Canada.  They will use the CDN services to support a new virtual training platform, while both [Read more →]

Renesys has put out its traffic rankings for the end of 2010, and the field continues to shift.  In general, the trend is the old guard treading water or even dropping, with the alternative US carriers and Asian and European PTTs rising in response. I always find Renesys’s year-end graphs fascinating, even if they track traffic rankings which doesn’t necessarily translate to progress in revenue or EBITDA.  But it does give insight into who is [Read more →]

So, it’s official now, Tata Communications (news, filings) has agreed to purchase BitGravity.  While financial terms were not disclosed, Dan Rayburn pegs the deal at about $35M.  If true, then since $11.5M bought them about 15% of the company back in 2008, there wasn’t much of a premium here.  Tata had partnered with the company to power its own CDN services, and they will now take all of that technology in-house.  [Read more →]

Zayo’s zColo unit is undertaking a substantial expansion, adding five new markets.  The company has leased space down in Memphis, in the three largest Ohio markets of Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland, and in Plymouth MN which lies 15 miles northwest of Minneapolis.  In all, the company is increasing its colocation footprint by 46,404 square feet of space, or 40%.  They will use that space to offer interconnection and other services to their customer base, including [Read more →]

Quite a bit of news in the datacenter space lately, here’s a quick look:

Telehouse America is moving deeper into the Manhattan Datacenter market.  Today they announced the acquisition and opening of a 60,000 square foot facility in the Chelsea-Meatpacking District at 85 [Read more →]

Cogent isn’t the only one seeing a window of opportunity in the debt markets.  Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) today announced its intention to raise $300M in senior notes due 2019 in a private offering.  In parallel, the company reaffirmed its guidance for the fourth quarter of 2010, i.e. that free cash flow will be positive and that [Read more →]

The latest low latency foray over in Europe comes from Interoute (news).  This morning, the trans-european network operator announced that it has added major financial hubs in Milan and Amsterdam to its Fast Trade offerings.  More specifically, they added connectivity to Borsa Italiana in Milan and to the Equinix IBX in Amsterdam.  They did not give actual latency metrics between any particular points, however.  They are, of course, targeting the [Read more →]

Is it just me, or has the last year and a half of media frenzy over when Verizon get the iPhone been lame for about a year?  Verizon has called a press conference for Tuesday, and by universal acclamation we now know that they will soon (perhaps in less than a month) be selling the miraculous device.  The short version of the implications: [Read more →]

Spread Networks (news) isn’t just talking low latency in the long haul, today they made a move on the metro.  The company has trenched a new route between its longhaul endpoint in Carteret and the NY4 facility of Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings), claiming the fastest path between Carteret and Secaucus.  The new Low Latency Metropolitan Dark Fiber Network name suggests that they are not done, and that there is more metro trenching in their future.  I suspect though that this is limited to [Read more →]

Few companies in the sector were as uncharastically quiet as Cogent Communications (NASDAQ:CCOI, news, filings) in 2010, but perhaps that is about to change.  The alternative network operator announced this morning that it is accessing the credit markets to the tune of $150M in senior secured notes due 2018.  The question is, what will they use it for?  They have no immediate needs, and the PR simply states: [Read more →]

According to the beltway-contractor-centric publication Washington Technology, the US Postal Service handed three major six-year contracts to three telecoms.  As always, the incumbents got the lion’s share: Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) got the biggest share of $186M, while AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) got $100M.  But competitive operator XO Holdings (news, filings) managed to walk away with $45M.  The Postal Service is aiming to fully integrate [Read more →]

On Friday, PAETEC (news, filings) announced that it has named former Intellifiber chief Clint Heiden to its senior leadership team.  Heiden will take on the title President of National Accounts and Fiber Services, and will be leading the company’s new ‘national fiber division’ as well as overall strategy for large enterprise customers.  There was a time when PAETEC and fiber weren’t used in the same sentence, but nowadays they are sitting on [Read more →]

Over on the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from Mapcom Systems.  Mapcom is looking for a Database Specialist to assist with the databases underlying their GIS applications.  Mapcom is based in the Richmond, Virgnia area.  We also had another job listed by Zayo following the last two I mentioned before Christmas.  Zayo is looking for [Read more →]

After Tuesday’s poll looking at which network providers will be buyers in 2011, several readers suggested a followup poll looking at the most likely sellers.  As it happens, I had already anticipated that suggestion but didn’t want them to run the same day.  I also decided to give some different polling software (PollDaddy) another trial.  Those of you who found Tuesday’s poll to be broken for a while that morning, it should be all fixed now so go back and have your say!  I’ll give my own take on both questions next week. [Read more →]

Time to catch up on a bit of fiber news that has crossed the wires since ’10 flipped to ’11:

abvt has built out its network into the Philadelphia Technology Park, a key hub in the MidAtlantic region that is located in Philly’s Navy Yard.  Just one more example of [Read more →]

According to Dan Rayburn, Tata Communications (news, filings) is about to buy out its CDN partner, BitGravity.  If true, we will soon have another major international backbone with both feet fully in the content delivery business.  Dan is usually right about CDN M&As, and it does have a ring of truth to it regardless.  Tata invested $11.5M in BitGravity back in the Fall of 2008, thereby staking out its position alongside all the other network operators seeking a bit of CDN exposure.  They have since then [Read more →]

Lightower Fiber Networks has started 2011 by making its fourth deal in the past 8 months to expand its footprint by taking out NSTAR Communications.  In this case though, it’s not quite an M&A but rather the acquisition of all remaining network capacity from NSTAR’s subsidiary.  NSTAR is keeping those parts they already use for their energy business I suppose.  The NSTAR network covers 280 route miles with access to 225 buildings throughout the Boston metropolitan area.  I managed to dig up an old copy of their network map below: [Read more →]

Hibernia Atlantic’s new transatlantic cable project seems to be picking up steam.  Today they announced $250M in funding for the buildout.  The money is coming from Huawei Marine Networks, which is of course one of Hibernia’s main vendors. I guess we know who’s got their eye on the equipment contract for the new cable, eh?  The new cable is aimed squarely at the low latency marketplace, promising sub-60ms round trip between [Read more →]

Last January, I asked this question and got a ton of responses, most of which missed the mark entirely.  PAETEC came in third, and nobody else on the list did any buying while two actually sold.  But partly it was my list that was deficient, as it didn’t include the privately held companies who actually did most of the buying, and neglected Windstream entirely.  So with that in mind, let’s try to do better in 2011.  This time: I’m including US providers generally valued at $500M or above, public or private – though I don’t claim the list is complete: [Read more →]

When it comes to data, the US government seems to operate in an entirely different dimension to the rest of us.  Or at least that’s how it feels when reading articles like this Information Week piece detailing the travails of the Social Security Administration’s infrastructure.  Apparently, a report by Inspector General Patrick O’Carroll Jr says that the current SSA National Computer Center is so severely strained that it ‘may not be able to function’ by 2012.  Yes, that’s next year.  That it is strained seems like a no-brainer given that [Read more →]

Privately held IP voice and data supplier GENBAND made another aggressive M&A move today, snapping up Cedar Point.    Cedar Point of course is the technology powering the voice offerings of many cable MSOs, including Comcast, Liberty, Charter and Kabel Deutschland but also many smaller providers as well.  They do have other service providers on the rolls too, but the cables are their main customers.  While GENBAND does [Read more →]

Some time back, at the time when every network operator was publicly flirting with the CDN space, British Telecom (NYSE:BT, news, filings) indicated it would build its own content delivery network rather than buy or resell an existing CDN’s services.  Whatever they did after that has been pretty quiet, until their new wholesale Content Connect product came out.  A Financial Times article immediately pounced on it, with supporting quotes suggesting that BT is now providing ISPs with the tools for a two-tier internet in violation of network neutrality principles.  Ooh, that sounds like trouble [Read more →]