Telecom Ramblings

Sources tell me that Zayo Group is preparing what would probably be its largest acquisition to date:  American Fiber Systems.  Both Zayo’s Dan Caruso and AFS’s Dave Rusin have been amongst the most vocal proponents of metro fiber in the sector, both having their own blogs and both even frequenting this site’s comment section as well.  They’ve been unusually quiet lately, which has had me wondering what each was up to.  The idea of the two joining forces seems, well, formidable.  [Read more →]

Several items in the news today that are worth noting:

24/7 Fiber Network, a relatively new entrant into the metro and regional fiber business in the Maryland and Delaware markets, has completed phase 1 of its buildout.  The new 432 count fiber build connects the company’s Baltimore area metro network through Salisbury to the eastern Virginia shore, cutting across the [Read more →]

The market may not be showing much love for Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) these days, but professional sports broadcasters sure seems happy with them.  Yesterday we heard about the streaming of World Cup matches over in Europe, and today we’re back across the Atlantic with an expanded deal with MLB.com, the official site of Major League Baseball.  MLB.com has had a relationship with Level 3 for CDN services in the past, but that has now expanded to include [Read more →]

Three interesting items went across the wires in the datacenter sector yesterday:

Colocation’s 800lb (and still growing) gorilla, Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) is building another datacenter down under in Sydney.  The new facility, named SY3, will add some 1000 cabinets to the company’s sellable footprint in its first phase, and some 3000 when complete.  SY2 opened a little over [Read more →]

The WiMax parade just keeps on marching.  clwr formally opened the doors on three new substantial markets for its next generation wireless network.  One on the east coast, one on the Mississippi, and one in the mountains.  In St.Louis, some 1.2 million people across 600 square miles will be able to access the network.  In Salt Lake City, some 790,000 across 450 square miles from [Read more →]

I figured they must have won a decent piece of the World Cup CDN business.  This morning Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) confirmed my suspicions, announcing that they have been delivering the World Cup matches in HD to online audiences for several European broadcasters.  Of particular mention was Telecinco in Spain, whose relationship with Level 3 was already known.  Some 220,000 people watched Spain vs Switzerland live online concurrently.  That was the biggest online event that Level 3 and Telecinco have put on so far, but I’ll bet they eclipse that record with ease when [Read more →]

On Friday, southeastern metro fiber operator FiberLight announced further fiber expansions, this time in the Atlanta area.  They have added fiber routes both downtown and in the surrounding counties of Fulton, Gwinnett and Cobb in response to demand from both the wholesale and large enterprise segments.  Atlanta was already one of the company’s deepest individual markets, and also perhaps the most competitive – the metro area has a  [Read more →]

More activity in the metro and regional fiber space today.  DukeNet, the telecommunications arm of Duke Energy, has brought in private equity money to fund its expansion.  Alinda Capital Partners and Duke Energy will form a 50/50 joint venture, with Alinda injecting some $137M in cash for the privilege.  DukeNet covers both North and South Carolina with some 5300 route miles of metro and intercity fiber, focusing on wholesale customers and large enterprises with a fair amount of [Read more →]

I had a very interesting conversation yesterday with a purported representative of DeepBore Networks, yet another startup said to be taking aim at the low latency bandwidth market from a very unique angle.

TR: I thought all reasonable routes for fiber between NYC and Chicago were already in use, how do you intend to reduce latency by yet another couple of milliseconds? [Read more →]

This is a guest post by Jaymie Scotto Cutaia of Jaymie Scotto & Associates.  If you have something pertinent to say and would like a turn at the microphone, let me know.

As Rob’s recent blog states, “having a connection has always been both an opportunity and a risk.”  And today, with our utter reliance on technology, it’s a risk we need to protect as having no connection or communication with other continents, countries or neighborhoods would be [Read more →]

Competitive service provider XO Holdings (news, filings) may be shrinking its workforce this summer, but they’re still adding products to the mix.  Today they announced the addition of VPLS to the XO Ethernet Services portfolio.  XO’s VPLS service will be sold to enterprises seeking to turn isolated local area networks into [Read more →]

The steady stream of bandwidth and managed data contracts serving the financial community just seems endless nowadays, but when it’s hot it’s hot!

Savvis (news, filings) [a subsidiary of CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings)] announced this morning that they will be providing strategic elements of the hosting infrastructure for Thomson Reuters Elektron, an ultra-high speed network and hosting environment aimed at traders.  Savvis has already built out the [Read more →]

Internap and Level 3 both had dual CDN and data wins over the past day or so:

We haven’t heard too much lately from colo and IP services specialist Internap Network Services (NASDAQ:INAP, news, filings), and especially not from its CDN products.  Today though they announced an interesting streaming win with Ottawa’s Carleton University, which serves some 24,000 students.   Carleton has long dabbled in distance learning, having started with Carleton University Television all the way back in 1978, progressing into DVDs and podcasts, and has now adopted an [Read more →]

There is no shortage these days of tests with 100G somewhere Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) in the title, but today Verizon announced the successful completion of a 100 Gigabit Ethernet field trial on a metropolitan Ethernet infrastructure.  The test was performed using Alcatel-Lucent gear deployed in Verizon’s Switched Ethernet Services network and successfully transmitted data over approximately [Read more →]

The international carrier arm of Swedish telecommunications giant Teliasonera is opening a new node in the southwest at i/o Data Center’s Phoenix One facility.  Teliasonera has been relatively quiet in North America for a long time, selling wholesale bandwidth out of the top ten or so markets but not much else.  They don’t need Phoenix for that business, but rather they seem to be actively trying to more effectively reach national and multinational corporate clients and are moving beyond.  That shift in focus suggests [Read more →]

There were three other interesting networking deals focusing on the financial vertical this morning:

Colocation provider Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) announced that CFN Services has connected to its Chicago, Frankfurt, London, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle and Toronto IBX centers.  From them CFN will be able to offer its [Read more →]

International IP services provider glbc is enhancing its CDN portfolio by adding the latest version of Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings)‘s SITE acceleration service, which includes added control over cache management, Secure Sockets Layer support, increased failover options, and integrated content security options.  Global Crossing began reselling the CDN products of both EdgeCast and Limelight since back in early 2009, and they still seem comfortable in addressing the CDN market from that position.  Actually, except at [Read more →]

Yesterday I posted about the apparent arrival of Spread Networks based on their website, and it turns out I was just a day early.  This morning the company has made it official, they are opening a sub-13.33ms route between New York City and Chicago that is specifically tailored to the financial community.  The business plan is to sell both the dark fiber and the management of the gear, and therefore they also announced what gear has been certified to achieve their latency targets.  Two of those have been announced thus far: [Read more →]

If you thought Allied Fiber was the only new longhaul fiber being put in the ground you may have been mistaken, at least on the New York to Chicago route where according to a recently unveiled website Spread Networks is preparing to go live in July.  Thanks to the kind reader who sent that link!  But where Allied Fiber did not have financial traders in mind when it was started has national dreams, Spread Networks’ vision begins with and does not yet seem to extend beyond the trading community.  The latency they seem to be promising?  [Read more →]

Colocation and cloud specialist Terremark (news, filings) [a subsidiary of Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings)] is planning a NAP of Amsterdam, leasing some 25K square feet from inside the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol Area.  Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR, news, filings) will develop the infrastructure under a build-to-suit contract.    The new facility will feature massive connectivity with the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) via [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) announced today that it is making its Manchetser PoP in the UK resilient, meaning that it will now be independent of the company’s hub in London and will feature diverse routing.  There is apparently an effort underway in Manchester to stimulate the economy and attract new businesses, and Level 3 is taking advantage of whatever carrots the city is offering.  They also stated that [Read more →]

Over the weekend there was a bit of discussion on the blogs about AT&T’s Femtocell and its value proposition.  Over on BroadbandReports, AT&T’s Seth Bloom was quoted as follows:

3G MicroCell is primarily intended to enhance the voice call quality experience in your home.  While it can carry mobile data traffic, that’s not the primary solution it provides.  Wi-Fi is the optimal solution for home mobile data use. We encourage people to take advantage of Wi-Fi capabilities – that’s why all of our smartphones include Wi-Fi radios, and usage on Wi-Fi doesn’t count against your mobile data usage bucket.

Now as that site is consumer focused, its main beef was [Read more →]

At its meeting yesterday the FCC voted on party lines to proceed with the discussion of the ‘third way’ of enforcing network neutrality that was proposed last month by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.  As is so often the case with the FCC, nothing has actually happened other than an agreement to hold more discussions about possibly doing something someday.  Anyone who was surprised by this step just wasn’t paying attention, and in fact both supporting and opposing forces surely [Read more →]