Telecom Ramblings

Content delivery networking giant Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) had no trouble at all meeting the market’s expectations with their Q3 earnings report.  I had worried that the market has been a bit on edge lately when viewing the sector, but my fears now seem unwarranted.  Revenues came in above guidance, while earnings per share was mostly inline.  Here is a quick table summarizing the numbers: [Read more →]

And several other bits of news this week on the home front deserve a look as well:

Yesterday Telx Group (news, filings) announced nine new charter customers for its Ethernet Exchange offering.  KDDI, Expereo, FiberLight, Intelepeer, Intellifiber, IPNetZone, OneSource, Packet Exchange, and RRSat will leverage the exchanges to expand their addressable market.  That’s quite an interesting collection [Read more →]

Several items on the international front this week that deserve a look:

tinet announced a win in the financial vertical this morning.  Global online Forex and CFD broker FXCM Holdings will be using the company’s IP transit services, including dual stack IPv6 support and network based dDoS protection, to add reliability and coverage to their current infrastructure.  That’s Tinet’s first [Read more →]

The larger the company, the longer the turnaround seems to take.  Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) has been at it now all year, and with their Q3 earnings they kept on trudging through the process.  Revenues actually grew sequentially to $8.15B, while their loss per share also expanded to $0.30.  The former was ahead of expectations, while the latter missed slightly.  Seems to me that the [Read more →]

Earlier this month Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) lowered the bar on its Q3 and full year revenue while raising EBITDA guidance.  What followed was a loss of some $1B in marketcap.  Today, just three weeks later, they hurdled both numbers and offered an optimistic initial viewpoint on 2011, and the stock has rallied some after hours.  For a company with very tight guidance ranges, they have seemed uncharacteristically [Read more →]

GlobeNet, the wholesale bandwidth arm of Brazil’s Oi, has announced an upgrade of its undersea capacity, adding 200Gbps to its current 360Gbps, i.e. adding some 55%.  GlobeNet’s submarine cables land in New Jersey, Florida, Bermuda, Venezuela, and of course, Brazil, putting it in an excellent position to benefit from [Read more →]

On Thursday morning, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) will become the first of the competitive fiber operators to report their Q3/2010 results.  There is some sense amongst watchers of this company that this quarter is a critical one, and I agree.  They have been forecasting solid growth in the second half, and they really need it because their current scale is not sufficient in the long term to manage their debt load and everyone knows it.  Few analysts seem to be expect them to demonstrate much in Q3, but I have been seeing some [Read more →]

Verizon Business, the international networking arm of Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings), announced today an alliance with Gateway Business that will bring it MPLS connectivity to 14 additional countries in sub-Saharan Africa.  Gateway Business is a Vodafone Group (NYSE:VOD, news, filings) company which bills itself as the leading pan-African wholesale provider, but I’m still looking for a network map to give me a better idea what sort of assets they have.  Which new countries, you ask?  Well, for the geographically unstudied and those who like me prefer a visual depiction, I put together a quick map: [Read more →]

On Wednesday we hear how the third quarter went for the dominant player in the CDN space, Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings).  Well, we hear from Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) on Tuesday of course, but after their pre-announcement there isn’t much suspense left there.  But it strikes me that Akamai and Equinix ended the third quarter in similar positions.  Both are the nextgen leaders of their segments, both spent the past few quarters exceeding the expectations of the market and being rewarded for it, but both have yet to [Read more →]

Friday again.  Time to play some catch up on the news this week:

We learned a bit more about the European expansion of abvt with this announcement that the fiber operator has selected ancotel’s Frankfurt facility at Kleyer 90 as part of its expansion in the city.  Abovenet formally kicked off its expansion across the English Channel last month, and Kleyer 90’s [Read more →]

That’s right, 5.2 million of them.  AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) reported its Q3 earnings per share of $0.55, which was inline with consensus estimates.  Total revenues of $31.6B was on the high side of estimates which seemed to be around $31.2B.  But the wireless business clearly had a great quarter, adding 2.6M net subscribers to reach 92.8M total.  They also saw good pickup in their U-Verse offering, which enabled consumer wireline to post a sequential improvement.  However, the thing with trying to take the measure of AT&T’s earnings is that [Read more →]

European alternative carrier Colt Group (LON:COLT, news) made its interim Q3 report this morning.  Revenue fell to €392.7M from €398.2M in the prior quarter and €400.1M in the same quarter last year, as voice revenues continued to bleed off while data revenues were flat and managed services saw growth.  EBITDA on the other hand grew to €83.8, up €3.0M from the prior quarter and €4.3M from the same quarter last year.  That pulls their EBITDA margins up to 21.3% – solidly above 20% now, an improvement which they attributed to [Read more →]

Not content to leave the rapidly shifting financial vertical to the next generation networks, British Telecom (NYSE:BT, news, filings) is readying its own entry into the European ultra-low latency business.  The company’s BT Radianz Ultra offering is being expanded into the exchanges and MTFs in London and Paris, it has previously focused on New York and Chicago.  That surprised me more than a little, you’d think they’d already be in the thick of the fight in London, right?  I’m not sure why they aren’t in Frankfurt yet, which has emerged as a major destination.  Perhaps [Read more →]

glbc just made itself a bit more global, expanding further eastward from its original European footprint.  They have added new PoPs in data centers located in Sofia, Bulgaria; Bucharest, Romania, and Bratislava, Slovakia.  Tenants in those facilities will now have easy access to the company’s IP and data services.  Driving the expansion is growing demand from the wholesale sector, including [Read more →]

Both XO and TW Telecom announced news in upstate New York of late:

XO Holdings (news, filings) has expanded its IP network into Western New York, adding PoPs in Buffalo and Rochester.  The are now able to offer internet access and connectivity solutions, converged VoIP, IPVPN, VPLS, and business continuity solutions across both metro areas.  I hadn’t realized that XO didn’t have much of a presence in the area – it’s a pretty competitive region, though according to their maps they did have some legacy voice business in Rochester.  XO seems to be [Read more →]

In a comment on last week’s article about the introduction of Spread Network’s Ethernet wave services, a reader asked whether there was much aerial fiber on Spread’s new route and whether that added risk to its ultra-low latency proposition.  My first thought was that a bunch of aerial fiber might help explain the stealth of their buildout, the directness of the route, and lower costs as well.  But as speculation goes it was obviously guesswork, so yesterday I asked them straight up and a Spread Networks’ representative sent me this response: [Read more →]

The market does not appear to be particularly forgiving at the moment when it comes to telecom equipment stocks.  Routing giant Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) reported its third quarter earnings today, and its stock is of course down 3% after hours even after being down 4% in anticipation.  The reason?  Well, Q3 revenue was ever so slightly light but Q4 revenue guidance was actually above estimates.  Likewise, earnings per share was inline and Q4 guidance was a bit above estimates.  Here’s a quick table of Juniper’s numbers in the context of the full year: [Read more →]

There are several interesting items from fiber operators this morning that are worth a look:

Transaction Network Services has selected the Ethernet Hub Service of XO Holdings (news, filings) to grow its business nationwide.   Having raised a bit of money and announced plans to raise a bit more via a rights offering, XO’s next task is to [Read more →]

We hear so much about the consumer applications of 4G mobile speeds that it is easy to forget the commercial applications alongside all those twenty-somethings watching surfing tournaments on their iPads.  Today, Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) and AirStrip announced a collaboration designed to leverage Sprint’s 3G/WiMAX network and devices to provide better care for medical patients.  3G works also of course, but one can more easily imagine the potential future impact at 4G speeds. [Read more →]

Network equipment maker Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) reported earnings this afternoon, garnering initial rave reviews by beating estimates handily – much as they did in the prior quarter.  But when the CC rolled around, things apparently didn’t look so rosy anymore and traders reversed themselves – the stock is down some 20% after hours.  What happened?  Here’s a quick table: [Read more →]

As another part of its increasing efforts to target enterprises of all sizes, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) today lifted the curtain on a new product.  The Converged Business Network service offers to take all the voice, internet, and data networking off of an enterprises hands through ‘one carrier, one circuit, and with one bill.’  The theme of simplification via outsourcing the network is a familiar one of course, but it still works – especially alongside the arrival of [Read more →]

The UK’s largest transport operator, FirstGroup, has selected glbc for a nationwide secure WAN.  I must admit that from this side of the Atlantic, I actually thought ‘transport operator?  I wonder if they own fiber or lease wavelengths’.  But of course I soon found that FirstGroup specializes in transporting people and things rather than mere photons.  Their business include a quarter of the passenger rail network in the UK as well as a host of bus services in both the US and the UK.   [Read more →]

Consolidation has been coming to the VoIP space as well.  The other day, it was the news that BroadSoft was picking up Casabi, and now it is merger plans between Broadvox and Cypress Communications.  Peter Radiseki broke the news (again!) last week, and the company has since acknowledged their plans.   The combined company will have more than 10K customers and 300 employees.  The details of this deal are a reminder that while VoIP platforms may [Read more →]