Telecom Ramblings

The wave of consolidation in the metro fiber space took another important turn this morning as Northeastern fiber operator Lightower Fiber Networks has agreed to purchase New York City-based Lexent Metro Connect.  Lexent sells dark fiber solutions in both Manhattan and across the river in New Jersey, and has been a key player in the region when it comes to the low latency frenzy in the financial vertical.   No financial details were provided, as both companies are privately held.  That leaves us guessing for now as to what sort of [Read more →]

There have been lots of expansions and new initiatives from metro and regional fiber operators this week that are worth a comment:

Integra Telecom has expanded its connectivity in Arizona, building new connections into i/o Phoenix in order to offer a full suite of products to business customers there.  Since its restructuring last summer, Integra has been more aggressive in taking advantage of its fiber.  Phoenix is at the edge of its coverage area, maybe soon they’ll [Read more →]

After the market closed, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) announced plans to offer $175M in convertible senior notes due 2016.  The financing is expected to be completed by the end of September, and includes the option for another $26.25M to cover over-allotments.  It has been 9 months since Level 3 last accessed the credit markets, so I suppose they were due.  What will they be doing with this new funding?  It’s tempting to see this as Level 3 preparing to enter the M&A frenzy that has been growing all year, however in this case I tend to doubt it.   [Read more →]

Regional metro and regional fiber operator Zayo Group has reported its results for its fiscal fourth quarter and full year ending on June 30, 2010.  They were very active in adding new buildings and especially towers to their network.  They added 162 structures to their network, of which 132 were towers and most of the rest were enterprise buildings.  They have over 500 more towers in the pipeline, so that sort of trend seems likely to continue.    Here is a quick tabular summary of their results in Q1. [Read more →]

Catching up on a few metro and regional fiber news items:

Over in Europe, euNetworks (news) continued to add heft to its management team, bringing in James Thomas as Chief Financial Officer, effective tomorrow.  Thomas came from TalkTalk Telecom Group Plc, and from Carphone Warehouse before that.  euNetworks is in the midst of an expansion of its lit building footprint, as it moves to take [Read more →]

There had been rumors for several days foreshadowing it, but the deal is now official [EDIT: here’s the PR] according to the Wall Street Journal.  PAETEC (news, filings) has agreed to purchase privately held Cavalier Telephone for $460M in cash.  The fact that Intellifiber, the regional and metro fiber arm of Cavalier, was for sale has been known since we reported it here back in May.  At that time, I even speculated that one buyer that made a lot of sense was in fact PAETEC.  However, it did not occur to me at the time that PAETEC might be interested in buying all of Cavalier, an event which puts quite an interesting slant on things. [Read more →]

We may soon have another pureplay CDN to invest in.  ChinaCache has filed an F-1 with the SEC, preparing to rase something like $100M in an IPO on the Nasdaq under the symbol CCIH.  And with such a filing comes a supply of financial data that lets us see just where the company fits alongside its peers.  In 2009, ChinaCache took in $39.9M in revenue, recording $10.4M in adjusted EBITDA while losing $5.7M.  In the first six months of 2010, revenues were $25.1M with $7.2M in EBITDA and a loss of $3.6M.   So they’re a little under one third the size of [Read more →]

In an SEC filing today, an entity controlled by Carl Icahn announced that it has purchased another 17.5M shares of the common stock of XO Holdings (news, filings).  It was a private transaction at $0.60 per share, roughly at which the stock was trading yesterday when it occurred.  That’s well below the last price Icahn offered to buy the company at last year.  17.5M shares is rather close to the last reported holdings of R2 Investments, which has been locked in several parallel legal tussles with Icahn – one of which includes XO.  If those shares came from R2, then there could have been a settlement of some sort.  But actually, the seller is probably Diamondback Master Fund, whose last reported holdings were 17.2M shares – I don’t know of any other holders of this size. [Read more →]

Two weeks ago, ABRY Partners completed its acquisition of RCN Metro and separated it from the consumer/SME business as planned.  Since the company is no longer part of the RCN world, it comes as no surprise that they have chosen to rebrand themselves.  Today the company relaunched itself as Sidera Networks.    I have gone through my maps pages to account for the change, but I’m sure there will be spots I have missed. [Read more →]

In a surprise announcement after the market closed, tndm says it has agreed to acquire Tinet, the international wholesale provider of IP transit and Ethernet services.  The purchase price is approximately €87.5M ($111.5M), of which €74.5M will be in cash and €13M will be in the assumption of debt net of cash.  That’s a pretty nice return for the investors that took Tinet off Tiscali’s hands a year and a half ago for €47M or so, but Tinet has been growing quite well since.  After closing, Tinet will become a subsidiary of Neutral Tandem, which seems to be metamorphosing before our eyes. [Read more →]

Yesterday, One Communications said that it has hired Blackstone to serve as its advisor as it ‘explores potential strategic alternatives’.  One Communications is a mostly fiber-light CLEC serving the northeast and Midwest, and is just the right size morsel for some of the larger CLECs to gain scale in one bite.  There is also the possibility of private equity interest, but IMHO a strategic buyer is more likely since there is less metro fiber involved. [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) won an expanded relationship with CNN, under which the company has installed its Managed Video Network Services (MVNS) in the network’s global headquarters in Atlanta.  The deal goes beyond the long term video backhaul relationship CNN had with Vyvx, and now includes substantial raw bandwidth as well.  CNN’s Atlanta and NYC centers will have 10G connectivity, and there will be 2.5Gbps wavelengths connecting the network’s data centers and supporting ‘business continuity’ which I presume means backups for disaster recovery etc. [Read more →]

I have returned to my collections of network maps with two new pages added to the set covering Canada and Transpacific Cables.  Now when it comes to Canada, I don’t claim to be an expert.  So I’m really looking for input from readers to fill out the table a bit more.  Also, finding online maps for transpacific cables can be a bit difficult, especially for the older ones like TPC-5, so again please chime in if you have a link that ought to be there or even an image I can host. [Read more →]

All three of the top public, US-based CDNs had announcements this morning, but that was where the similarity ended.

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) had the most technologically exciting news of the three.  They will be demonstrating online 3D technology that will allow the user to customize their smooth streaming, 3D, HD experience using multiple camera angles encoded into the same feed and distributed via the Level 3 CDN.  The demo will be at the Microsoft stand during IBC over the weekend, and will leverage gear from NVIDIA and of course Microsoft’s Silverlight. Sounds really cool – glamour doesn’t pay the bills, but [Read more →]

Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) reported earnings this morning for its fiscal Q3, which ended on July 31.  Revenues of $389.7M were solidly within the guidance of $375-400M and up from $253.5M in the prior quarter, which simply reflects its first full quarter of revenue from its Nortel MEN unit.  This quarter, $221.8M came from that Nortel unit, which means that $167.9M derived from Ciena’s traditional business – up $3.1M from [Read more →]

Several items today in the world of datacenters worth a comment or two:

Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR, news, filings) launched a ‘Risk Free’ initiative, offering to guarantee their datacenter projects will be on-time.  They’ve been building so many facilities I guess they feel they’ve got it down to a science, whereas companies choosing to build it themselves or via the competition are less experienced and more prone to unexpected problems and delays.  Of course, ‘Risk Free’ doesn’t mean you can’t [Read more →]

As some attentive readers have noticed, this morning I introduced two new tools up in the resources box.  Both are for browsing filings for companies within or related to the telecom and infrastructure sector, one is for SEC filings and the other is for FCC filings.  To say that I spend a lot of time gathering information about the companies in the telecommunications and internet infrastructure sector is something of an understatement.  Long ago, I became frustrated with the efficiency of some of the information sources out there.  For instance, [Read more →]

National fiber operator and CLEC XO Holdings (news, filings) this morning announced an expansion of its metro presence in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.  They have had substantial network in the area for some time of course, but will now be adding additional PoPs in the area and extending their reach into the northern suburbs of Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena as well.  This is the second time in a year that XO has put money into the LA market – last November they [Read more →]

Kicking off the short week following Labor Day, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) announced an expanded its multi-year relationship with FOX Sports.  FOX has long been one of Vyvx’s premier customers, and when Level 3 upgraded its VenueNet offerings earlier this year it is likely that they had FOX in mind from the beginning.   [Read more →]

The metro fiber expansion train continues to roll.  Down in Texas just before Labor Day, Alpheus Communications announce its expansion deeper into several South Texas markets.  The company will be lighting its fiber assets in the cities of McAllen, Laredo, and Harlingen.  The new network facilities will enable Alpheus to [Read more →]

Over on the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board, we have a new job posting.  Regional ISP and CLEC Cavalier is looking for a Senior IP Network Engineer/Architect down in Richmond, Virginia.  The position’s responsibilities include design, implementation, and maintenance on Cavalier’s IP/MPLS backbone and to develop solutions that enable the rollout of new IP products and services.  [Read more →]

There have been several items this week in the datacenter sector that I didn’t manage to write a full article about.  Let’s take a quick look at some of them.

Private equity firm Welsh Carson took control of datacenter provider Peak 10, partnering with the company’s management to buy out Seaport Capital and McCarthy Capital.  Peak 10 builds datacenters in tier 2 markets mostly in the southeast – places like [Read more →]

China Telecom Americas, which is the operating unit of China Telecom (NYSE:CHA, news, filings) in this part of the world, has hooked into CENX’s Carrier Ethernet Exchange.  All year, CENX has been aggressively growing its partner base in order to achieve the scale necessary for a true liftoff.  Initially, China Telecom Americas will connect with CENX in Los Angeles and New York, and will be able to leverage the exchange to better reach customer locations.  Likewise, other CENX participants will have new ways to reach endpoints within China Telecom’s footprint, which obviously opens some new possibilities [Read more →]