Telecom Ramblings

Occasionally, the planets align in a certain formation or something and everyone in the sector picks the same day to release earnings.  This November 4 is one of those times, with a dozen or so providers deciding that there is strength in numbers, or perhaps just safety.  Four of those providers are operators of substantial metro and intercity fiber that I cover regularly – TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings), abvt, Cogent Communications (NASDAQ:CCOI, news, filings), and PAETEC (news, filings) – and therefore in the interests of brevity I will limit myself to this group when making projections in advance of the announcements. [Read more →]

Here’s a quick look at several international items that hit the wires yesterday:

Down in Australia, they are still haggling over the NBN and probably will be for years yet.  But yesterday Telstra stirred up a new hornets nest when it pegged the value of the network it has already agreed to sell to the government at AU$16B – saying that the often quoted $11B was a post-tax number.  It’s really a bizarre negotiation isn’t it, where the agreement to sell comes before an agreement on price?  If that weren’t odd enough, [Read more →]

Some days the news is slim pickings, and other days it just pours.  Here is a quick look at several items in the datacenter and cloud space that were of interest:

Back in February when Pacific operator Pacnet (news) announced a plan to turn some of its landing stations into datacenter space, I was somewhat skeptical.  Today they unveiled the first such facility in Hong Kong, dubbed a Data Landing Station.  As I suspected, [Read more →]

It’s not often we get so much news on one subject in one morning, even for Ethernet Exchanges which have been hot for a year.

Independent exchange operator CENX announced that it has reached 15 million Ethernet Service Locations served through its exchanges around the world.  That’s just four months after it reached 10M, and suggests continued growth ahead.  Another major operator also announced its participation in CENX’s exchanges as well.  This time it was [Read more →]

The jury may still be out on its overall revenue growth path, but there have been several items lately that demonstrate that Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) is on offense when it comes to the CDN sector.  The latest data point is today’s announcement of its expansion in both capacity and reach.  They have added 1.65Tbps in total capacity to their CDN capabilities and added nodes in Toronto, Montreal, Hamburg, Brussels, and Munich.  They had mentioned in their earnings conference call last week that a large chunk of their higher capex during the quarter went to [Read more →]

Colocation and cloud provider Terremark (news, filings) [a subsidiary of Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings)] turned in a strong fiscal Q2 yesterday.  Revenues of $84.9M were up 7.5% sequentially and 22% over the same period last year, not to mention above both guidance and analyst estimates.  EBITDA of $22.9M was likewise above guidance, up some 28% from last year.   That should push further into the background any worries about the colocation sector seeing [Read more →]

International network operator glbc announced their Q3 earnings results after the bell, but the results didn’t match up to earlier projections of a big second half.   The company therefore reduced its guidance for revenue growth from $2.3-2.375B down to $2.275-2.3B, and cut its free cash flow estimate back to straddling the break even line – it had been $10-60M.  OIBDA guidance remained generally inline, as they narrowed guidance a bit below the midpoint of what it had been previously.  Here is a quick tabular summary of the company’s results in the context of the past four quarters: [Read more →]

WiMAX operator clwr finally added the biggest city in the country to its coverage list today, turning up service in New York and surrounding areas and adding some 11M people to its total.  Over in NJ, they also added Trenton and New Brunswick with another 250K and 630K respectively.  Up in Connecticut, it was New Haven and Hartford that came online, with another 1.5M.  And down in Florida, it was the Tampa-St.Petersburg-Clearwater area with nearly 2M.  Maps are better than words, as always, so here are some quick snapshots off their coverage maps: [Read more →]

When it comes to M&A, glbc has gotten more than its fair share of attention as a possible target – not the least of which has come from me of course.  However, today they are the ones doing the buying, and the target is one I did not anticipate.  Global Crossing has purchased Genesis Networks, which specializes in video over IP services for broadcasters that operates a network reaching PoPs in 70 cities worldwide.  Genesis Networks will become a distinct business unit within Global Crossing. [Read more →]

We hear a lot about the construction projects around world by national and international colocation providers, but there are some major projects going on at the regional level as well.  Down in Texas, Data Foundry is making a big bet on a brand new 250,000 square foot facility in Austin originally called ADC2 but which is being renamed as Texas 1.  Data Foundry owns and operates several smaller data centers in Texas, but nothing of this scale until now.  The privately held company’s heritage derives from its days as the ISP Texas.Net back in the 90s, and they have deep, longstanding relationships throughout the region.  They broke ground on the Texas 1 in August, and as you can see in the image fragment to the left from their construction blog, the structure is starting to take shape.   With us today to offer some additional detail on Data Foundry’s plans is the company’s President and CFO, Shane Menking. [Read more →]

Catching up on a few notable contracts announced this week that I didn’t get to:

TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) picked up one of its bread-and-butter contracts up in the Albany area.  Pioneer Bank will be using their converged IP VPN and Ethernet solutions to hook up 16 locations across the Capital Region, by which they mean all or parts of Albany, Rensselaer, Saratoga and Schenectady counties.  No idea how many of those locations will be on-net with fiber, but I sort of doubt that [Read more →]

Both Telx Group (news, filings) and Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) announced further steps forward for their Ethernet exchange businesses.

Telx formally opened its Ethernet Exchanges at five initial five locations:  111 8th Avenue, 60 Hudson Street, 350 East Cermak, 56 Marietta, and 200 Paul St out in San Fransisco.  Along with the 14 locations of their partner tndm, they now have a presence in some 19 facilities.  Further deployments are in the works for [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) reported its Q3/2010 earnings this morning, managing to find sequential growth across all of its core segments as well as in total revenue for once, while holding costs down quite well also.  The result was that they actually managed to beat composite analyst estimates for revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and earnings per share.  But with Level 3 the devil is always in the details, so here’s a quick look in greater detail alongside the past 4 quarters: [Read more →]

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 →]