Telecom Ramblings

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 →]

It sure didn’t take much of 2011 for the next volley in the low latency battles to be fired.  This morning, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) opened a new European front with two new express routes to Madrid.  They are now offering ultra-low-latency routes to the Spanish capital from both London and Frankfurt, as well as improved latency on routes from [Read more →]

Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) let a deadline pass yesterday without taking action, declining to purchase the exchangeable notes it was entitled to following last month’s foray into the capital markets by clwr.  Including the over-allotment, the WiMAX upstart sold $729M in exchangeable notes alongside $175M in first priority senior secured notes and another $500M in second priority secured notes ($1.4B or so in aggregate).  Sprint had been deliberating whether to follow up with its own purchase, which would have [Read more →]

Happy New Year to everyone!  Now that the northeast has mostly dug out and the hangovers have abated, it’s time to get on with 2011 already.  There were a few management changes of note that took place over the holidays that are of interest.

Over in Europe, Colt Group (LON:COLT, news) has appointed a new CFO.  Mark Ferrari will be moving in fresh from his position as managing director of Fidelity’s Devonshire Investors.  Colt has been jogging in place for several years, churning off voice revenue while growing data, while [Read more →]

It has always been difficult to get information about the network assets of cable MSOs, so it’s nice to find some now and then.  An astute reader stumbled across the maps for Charter Business’s fiber, and passed them along (Thanks!), and I have now added links to their network maps both to the USA Longhaul Maps page as well as to each of the relevant regional metro fiber map link collections.   [Read more →]

Last week, the ITU caved in and redefined 4G to be, well, pretty much anything that has ever claimed it.  So now whether one is talking about current implementations of WiMAX, HSPA+, or LTE, it’s all 4G now, officially even.  Until now there had been this simmering argument amongst the more standards oriented folks over whether any of these were really 4G or not.  But really, I don’t think anyone else cared.  The reason is simple. [Read more →]

Following up on my recent update to the metro fiber and lit building statistics page, here is another quick snapshot taken from the raw data.  Looking at lit buildings neglects different business models, as not all fiber operators chase smaller enterprises or towers.  But a mile of fiber is a mile of fiber, so of those metro fiber operators who list their total route mileage, who has the most?  Here we’re excluding longhaul and regional intercity fiber where possible, just looking at the mileage for metro loops and laterals although I know there is some ambiguity there.  Here are the top twenty, with the data including those M&A’s from 2010 which have already closed: [Read more →]

It seems like three years ago that PAETEC (news, filings) unveiled plans to build a new headquarters in downtown Rochester as part of a rejuvenation campaign there.  Oh wait, it actually has been that long – such are the ways of real estate, the economy, and municipal government.  Yesterday the company reaffirmed those plans yet again , and said construction will soon begin.  Of course, the city still hasn’t quite finished demolishing the old building, but first things first.  They scaled back plans from 37 stories to perhaps just 10 two years ago in the face of the 2008-2009 recession, [Read more →]

Clearwire’s 4G service has finally been officially launched in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Stretching from San Francisco all the way around the Bay to Oakland, plus part of the I680 corridor, coverage just went up by another 4M, ending a very busy year for the WiMAX upstart.  Now, one might wonder why the SF area was so low on the list that 100M other people got WiMAX service first.  My theory is that it’s the part of the country having the most [Read more →]

I have spent part of my December harvesting updated data for my metro fiber and on-net buildings list.  There are still a few data points that are playing hard to get, but for the most part the numbers are in.  A few new faces have been added to the list, and of course a few faces are missing having now merged with others on the list during this year’s metro fiber M&A frenzy.  In addition to the overall list, which you can look at any time, I’ll spend a few posts this week taking a closer look at interesting spots in the data.  First, let’s look at single market leaders. [Read more →]

I hope everyone had a great Christmas weekend!  Now we are in that last week of the year where it is almost obligatory to attempt to predict the future.  Ok, I’m game.  2010 wasn’t exactly as fun as an economic barrel of monkeys, but it was much more enjoyable than 2009.  Right now, 2011 is looking like an extension of 2010 in a macro sense, which could be worse but hopefully we’ll get that barrel of monkeys eventually.  Ok, actual predictions, here we go: [Read more →]

And now for something completely different…

Privately held CLEC TelePacific (news) is preparing to take a walk on the wireless side with the purchase of Covad Wireless from MegaPath yesterday.  The deal makes a great deal of sense, as Covad Wireless offers fixed wireless services to around 3,500 enterprise customers in California and Nevada, which fits perfectly within TelePacific’s footprint.  They also have a bit in Chicago, I wonder where they will take that part.  The ability to offer fixed wireless services gives TelePacific an additional path around the ILEC to their enterprise customer base.  They also have some metro fiber of course, having picked up the [Read more →]

A massive outage hit Skype (news, filings) [a subsidiary of MicroSoft (:MSFT, news)] overnight with users worldwide unable to connect let alone use the service for hours.  Data Center Knowledge has a nice summary of the various reactions.  I myself depend heavily on Skype for voice services, but even still it is not my only connection to the outside world nor is it for many of Skype’s users.  But still, what horrible timing for a public black eye!  Not only is Skype working on an IPO, we have a new potentially formidable [Read more →]

This part of the world may be shutting down for the holidays, but elsewhere business goes on.  Over in the Middle East, the construction of Gulf Bridge International’s cable system has entered its marine phase.  That means TE Subcom is loading the fiber onto the ship Responder up in New Hampshire,  That ship will soon be churning its way toward the Persian Gulf to build the 4750km, 2.75Tbps system. [Read more →]

Ok, despite the fact that its actual contents remain unpublished, just about every pundit on the planet that knows what network neutrality is has weighed in on the FCC’s latest Network Neutrality order.  My own view is rather jaded.  Nothing has been resolved, but the FCC has managed to frame the debate on its own terms for the near future.  But I’m curious what everyone else has to say, but not in the form of a yes or no but rather to take a measurement of the general mood.  So here is another rather non-standard poll: [Read more →]