Telecom Ramblings

Following up on its acquisition of Genesis Networks, glbc today announced the expansion of the unit’s broadcast and media services into Central and South America.  The services can now leverage Global Crossing’s transport and IP assets in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela and the Caribbean region.  That makes tons of sense, as those assets give them a competitive advantage in Latin America, whereas in North America and Europe there is more competition with substantial fiber/colo assets. [Read more →]

Amidst speculation it might attract buyout interest from larger providers, colo and cloud provider Savvis (news, filings) [a subsidiary of CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings)] turned in some pretty nice Q4/2011 results this morning.  Total revenues of $252.7M were up 4% over the third quarter, easily eclipsing the expectations of the market which was looking for less than 2%.  Likewise, the company’s EBITDA of $67.8M and loss per share of $0.06 were quite powerful and exceeded [Read more →]

I had forgotten that TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) is releasing its earnings PR the night before their CC, so their numbers are already out this evening.  As usual, you can set your watch by their revenue and EBITDA growth.  But there was a pretty surprising number to be had in the number of lit buildings.  My own guesses on the financials were pretty darn close, though it’s not that hard with TW Telecom.  Here’s a quick table: [Read more →]

Today CENX (news) made what I find to be an interesting addition to its Carrier Ethernet exchange model.  They introduced inter-exchange links, thus allowing a customer connected to one exchange point to connect directly to a customer connected at a geographically distinct exchange point.  That connectivity is not the interesting part, but rather it is that they aren’t actually providing it but are enabling their customers to compete for it.  The new service is callled MemberLink, and lets members offer such inter-exchange links to other members.  This is in direct contrast to the approach taken by [Read more →]

Savvis (news, filings) [a subsidiary of CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings)] has made a move on South Asia via a partnership announced today with Bharti airtel.  The company will soon be offering managed hosting and cloud services on the Indian subcontinent, starting at Bharti’s Bangalore facility and then expanding into New Delhi, Pune, Mumbai and Chennai.  It’s generally best to partner your way into India, else you’ll never get anywhere.  Just what the scope of their investment (and opportunity) in the region will be [Read more →]

This week’s dose of fiber-related Q4 earnings will come from TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings), who set the stage on Thursday by announcing a new multi-year contract to install and managed the internet, voice, and data needs of Fort Bliss down in the El Paso area.  With 25K active duty personnel and 100K when one includes families and civilians, it’s a small city of its own.  Installation is supposed to be complete by May – quite soon.  This sort of contract is TW Telecom’s bread and butter, and it probably foreshadows Tuesday morning’s [Read more →]

Ethernet exchange pioneer CENX (news) has appointed Herb Hribar as its new CEO.  Hribar has been around the block in the telecom executive world, with executive stints at Ameritech Wireless, Ameritech Europe, Sprint, Verio, Eircom, Cablecom, and Kabel Deutschland amongst others.  Other industry watchers have noted that much of this work took place at companies working up to an IPO or sale to a large company, and that CENX might be having [Read more →]

The other big item in the news is that the long countdown is finally over, and the last IPv4 addresses have been handed out.  Or, more accurately, they have been handed out to the people who will actually hand them out to other people who will hand them out to their customers or whatever.  The last batch of IP addresses therefore haven’t been actually assigned to anything yet, so we don’t run out in that sense until later this year.  In the meantime, though it’s time to see who has prepared for this day and who has been lip syncing their IPv6 hymns. [Read more →]

So nearly every single news magazines and blog ran an article yesterday about Verizon’s decision to throttle bandwidth for heavy users of its wireless network, a memo that lands just in time for its launch of the iPhone.  Seriously, though, was it that big a deal?  It’s a 4G device on a 3G network, if you don’t throttle it somehow, then it will throttle itself even more effectively.  Ask AT&T just how effectively. [Read more →]

Unlike the late 90s, it isn’t every day we see a network services provider go public, so I was pleased when a reader pointed me to Wednesday’s updated S-1 filing and a PR from Masergy Communications (news, filings), which suggests the IPO is imminent.  Masergy is a company whose name I run into frequently but which I have never known all that much about.  That’s largely because it is privately held and smaller than its principal giant competitors, who tend to dominate the news.  Masergy serves the large enterprise market with managed network services, leveraging bandwidth leased from wholesale carriers, competing with the likes of Verizon Business, AT&T, BT Global, Tata, and Global Crossing, as well as similarly large system integrators.  So let’s take a quick look at Masergy’s numbers, which now include their Q4 results too: [Read more →]

Catching up with the various network operator news this week that I couldn’t put together a whole post on:

Trans-European network operator Colt Group (LON:COLT, news) has extended its partnership with iPass for enterprise mobility services via a cloud-based services delivery system.  That’s fancy marketing-speak for secure access to [Read more →]

While I have been very glad to see the frenzy over low latency connectivity bringing differentiation and favorable pricing trends to parts of the bandwidth market, in the past I have nevertheless taken a rather dim view of high frequency trading itself.  My feeling has been that HFT adds little to the world except more liquidity where there was usually plenty already.  Its real function is just to enable traders to pick each others’ pockets more frequently in a zero sum game. Well I think that’s still basically true, but nevertheless I like it now, and here’s why. [Read more →]

According to Telegeography and others, Telecom Italia is taking a hard look at a Metroweb, although they have yet to make an actual offer.  Metroweb owns and operates a very deep metro/regional network centered on Milan, with some 5,100km of cable in the ground.  They also have intercity fiber connecting those assets to other Italian cities.  That they are for sale does not seem to be in question, with the price tag said to be in the EUR400-500M range, or $550-650M.   [Read more →]

As expected, the largest of the next generation backbones, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings), reported its fourth quarter 2010 earnings today.  Total fourth quarter revenues of $921 and a loss per share of $0.09 (not including $0.06 in a one time tax benefit) will not surprise the street much.  But with Level 3, one has to look deeper than the overall numbers to understand the company’s trajectory.  As regular Telecom Ramblings readers know, I offered my own detailed guesses on Monday, and just to toot my own horn for once, I pegged the CNS and EBITDA numbers right on, and was quite close across the board: [Read more →]

According to Dan Rayburn, AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) has turned away from its in-house CDN development and worked out a deal with EdgeCast Networks (news) [a subsidiary of Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings)] instead.  They’ll use EdgeCast’s software to build out their retail offering.  If AT&T runs with it, this could be a very significant alliance for EdgeCast, potentially bringing it fully into the top tier of the CDN market.  The other high profile carrier partners they’ve added are Global Crossing, Deutsche Telekom, Telus, and AAPT.  But for sheer size and scope, there is only one AT&T.  Yet we really know little about just how [Read more →]

This evening, Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC, news) announced that it has signed a deal to buy hosting and cloud provider Navisite (NASDAQ:NAVI, news, filings) [a subsidiary of Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC, news)] .  The purchase price of $5.50 per share represented a 33% premium above the stock’s closing price today, and amounts to a total pricetag of $230M.  They will combine NaviSite’s managed hosting and cloud services with their SME-focused Business Class division.  Many will see this as [Read more →]

Dueling PRs in the CDN sector this morning, one from the cutting edge of social media and the other a major government website:

Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) won a deal with WeeWorld, which is a global social game that I haven’t yet come across but has 40M or so registered ‘WeeMees’ (I don’t even want to know).  Since using Akamai to cache their content closer to the consumer, WeeWorld’s interactive website has seen an 8-30% reduction in page load times, which is significant in these low-attention-span times we live in.  Interestingly, they revealed [Read more →]

One of the primary undersea cables linking Europe to Asia is getting an overhaul.  SEA-WE-ME-4 is expanding its capacity by moving to 40G along its entire 20,000 kilometer length.  The cable went live in the early part of 2006 (or was it late 2005?), and consists of two fiber pairs whose total capacity will after the upgrade be 2.4Tbps, or 4.8Tbps total.  Here’s a quick snapshot of the cable’s route: [Read more →]

There was an interesting article over on Light Reading yesterday by Craig Matsumoto, citing an industry source who said that sometime last year Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) got into a tiff with three French ISPs, two of which were supposedly Orange and SFR.  As the story goes, Akamai refused to pay more and got the boot and had to serve data from the UK for a while, though the disagreement was later resolved.  An Akamai representative quickly disputed the account in the comments following the article, but without actually [Read more →]

Two interesting developments lately in the southeastern Asian cable market lately.

The first is the end of Reach as we know it.  Remember Reach, the joint venture between Telstra and PCCW that bought the old Level 3 Tiger assets after the bubble bubble and never found its footing?  Well they’ve been restructured yet again, but this time it looks a bit more permanent.  Telstra and PCCW are splitting [Read more →]

The tide has been turning lately against network neutrality, following the FCC’s action.  Over in Europe, the Norwegian incumbent once fully embraced the concept, even voluntarily signing a NN code of conduct back in 2009.  But apparently they’ve changed their mind according to this ArsTechnica article, and want to charge extra for YouTube and other traffic.  Their argument, however gives me pause.  Not because it’s new or anything, but because it’s so obviously wrong at a factual level: [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) reports earnings on Wednesday morning, and therefore it is time for Ramblings’ quarterly earnings primer.  Level 3 spent 2010 recovering from a 2009 that saw churn eat away their revenue and set them back again from positive cash flow.  Since the first quarter of 2010, the company has been growing core revenues steadily, albeit slowly.  Their fortunes in 2010 depend on one thing: solid revenue growth.  They know it, too – you can hear it in every investor presentation they give.  And investors and analysts know it too.  The debt mountain in front of them cannot be scaled any other way.  With that in mind, here are my own detailed [Read more →]

Several items last week that I didn’t get to but were worth noting in the metro fiber arena:

Axcess Ontario signed a master agreement with Iberdrola USA, under which they will supply dark fiber to Rochester Gas & Electric, hooking up 10 facilities in Ontario County, New York.  The name Axcess Ontario always confuses me as to whether it’s up in Canada, but it’s better than the company’s old mouthful of a name: [Read more →]