Telecom Ramblings

International online game publisher UTV True Games will be leveraging services from both Level 3 and its solutions partner Solid State Networks.  UTV True games offers massively multi-player online games (MMOGs), and will use Level 3’s caching and download services, origin storage, and Content Analytics reporting service alongside Solid State Network’s integrated game publishing software. [Read more →]

The consolidation wave in metro fiber continues to grow.  First there was AGL, then there was Veroxity, and Fibertech and NStar are known to be seeking bids as well.  But in the past few days I have heard from no less than three independent sources that the next to go very well may be Intellifiber, which is  of course the metro and regional fiber arm of Cavalier Telephone.  If true, it would surprise me a bit as Cavalier’s [Read more →]

Over on the Telecom Ramblings Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from CENIC, which is seeking an Infrastructure & Facilities Engineer.  The primary responsibility will be to will provide support for the design, acquisition, installation and maintenance of CENIC’s telecommunications fiber and colocation facilities.  For more information or to apply, [Read more →]

In my post earlier this week about dark fiber and unintended consequences, I looked at the new longhaul buildout by Allied Fiber from the point of view of other longhaul fiber operators.  But that made it sound as if Allied Fiber is an unwelcome entrant to the sector, which would be true only for a small subset of the industry.  Allied Fiber has many allies that hope to see it succeed: [Read more →]

Datacenter and cloud specialist Terremark (news, filings) [a subsidiary of Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings)] reported earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2010, which ended March 31.  Revenues for the quarter were $82.5M, up 11% sequentially and up 20% over the same quarter last year.  Likewise, adjusted EBITDA of $26.5M was up strongly from $19.8M in the prior quarter and $22.1M in the same quarter last year.  As strong as that was, it was mostly expected:  slightly [Read more →]

Several interesting items today under the waves that don’t involve oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

Pacnet and Gulf Bridge International have sealed a partnership agreement, whereby both network operators will be able to extend their footprints.  Pacnet will have extra connectivity with the Persian Gulf and on to Europe, and GBI will have access to the new [Read more →]

RCN Metro, the metro fiber division of RCN Business (NASDAQ:RCNI, news, filings), has decided to join the growing Ethernet exchange movement.  Which exchange, you ask?  Why all of them of course!  In New York and Chicago, RCN Metro is adding connections to the exchanges operated by Equinix, CENX, and Neutral Tandem, and possibly other companies and markets as well in the future.   [Read more →]

Another day, another few hundred thousand square feet of colocation space to be constructed.  This time it’s Data Foundry, which operates in Texas and is planning to build a brand new 250K square foot facility in Austin.  It will be able to deliver 100MW of power using feeds from two independent substations in order to handle.  The facility will cost about $150M and Phase 1 (the first 130K square feet) is expected to be finished in Q2/2011.  Here’s what it will look like: [Read more →]

It’s not often we hear about an expansion from Sprint’s Wireline division, as the company has been run to maintain cash flow rather than revenue and capex has been amongst the lowest in the sector.  But yesterday Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) they announced that they have added the Stockton CA, Central and Northern New Jersey, and Baltimore MD markets to their Ethernet footprint, bringing their comprehensive coverage now to 28 markets. Additionally, the company is expanding its presence in [Read more →]

Not a week seems to pass without another aggressive move in the datacenter space.  Today Quality Technology Services took another swing.  The company announced the addition of another 70,000 square feet in its Santa Clara facility, along with 15MW of power and SAS-70 type II certification.  If there was any doubt there is more expansion down the line, QTS’s Chairman and CEO Chad Williams had this to say:  [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) announced today that they have signed a multi-service agreement with GlobeNet aimed at improved service capabilities to and from the rapidly growing South American marketplace.  GlobeNet is a division of Oi, formerly known as Brasil Telecom, and operates undersea cables connecting New York and Miami to Venezuela and, you guessed it, Brazil.  Under this mutual arrangement, both carriers will be able to offer bundled [Read more →]

Allied Fiber’s formal announcement on Monday of its national dark fiber buildout rankled more than a few readers.  The conventional wisdom has been that following the dot com crash, no new national intercity conduit level network builds were even remotely feasible.  Prices had fallen too far, rights of way were too contentious, too much fiber remained untapped in the ground between major markets, and financial backers would simply never go for it.  Whether Allied Fiber succeeds or not in its venture, they may have already blown a fatal hole in that wisdom.  There are many factors that have contributed to this, but for a moment I’d like to focus on how the industry’s view of intercity dark fiber in the USA has changed, and may be changing again. [Read more →]

Lots of news today, here’s a rundown of some of the announcements by larger companies:

Verizon Global Wholesale says that its VoIP minutes grew by 200% in 2009, as the service turns 10 years old.  Of course, ten years ago Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) actually wasn’t pushing VoIP services much, but rather it was [Read more →]

Transatlantic cable operator Hibernia Atlantic put a lot of effort last year into its connectivity to and within Ireland with Project Kelvin, adding a cable landing at Portrush and a land network southward through Northern Ireland and across the border down to Dublin.  All that hard work into some unique infrastructure now seems to be paying off.  Yesterday morning it was a win for their Hibernia Media division at RTE, last night it was the contract with ISP North West Electronics Wireless, and this morning they are announcing a partnership with Tibus. [Read more →]

Northeastern regional fiber operator Lightower is taking consolidation into its own hands, and will today announce the purchase of Veroxity Technology Partners. [edit: here’s the PR]  The news began to break yesterday with an anonymous comment posted here in Telecom Ramblings which has turned out to be right on target.  Strategically, Lightower’s move is a rather easy one to justify, as the network assets are quite [Read more →]

For much of this year, a new company called Allied Fiber has been making waves in the bandwidth sector, promising to do what many have said couldn’t or shouldn’t be done:  build new longhaul dark fiber routes in the USA.  Today Allied Fiber has gone public with its plans, with the first phase already under construction between New York, Chicago and Washington DC (Ashburn).  Here are a few quick highlights and a route map of the NY-Chicago leg: [Read more →]

Irish public service broadcaster RTÉ has selected Hibernia Media for high performance network capacity.  RTÉ will leverage services from Hibernia for secure connectivity to the media hubs around Europe and in North America from which it pulls international content for its programs.  More specifically, they will use [Read more →]

Ethernet exchange operator CENX is continuing to see rapid growth in participation by carriers and service providers.  The latest milestone to be reached is 10 million Ethernet service locations, each of which is a unique physical address with a longitude and a latitude and all that. If it seems like just a short time ago that CENX announced 5 million accessible endpoints in its databases, well yes it was – two months to be exact.  Obviously this number cannot continue to double every [Read more →]

It has been almost six months since I last revisited my list of metro fiber operators, large and small.  For those new to the list, I collect statistics on metro route miles, on-net buildings, and related data, in order to maintain a better picture of the actual competitive fiber footprint available out there.   The larger players are easy of course, but there are many smaller providers out there that fly under the radar – I’m sure I only get a fraction of those and am always looking for more.  For companies that publish public data, if you are already on [Read more →]

It has now been one year since Level 3 began its ‘go local’  initiative, decentralizing resources and decision making power in order to better address the mid-market enterprise segment and finally unlock the value in their 27,000 route mile metro footprint.  The company is now seeing the benefits of this new approach materialize as this portion of its business has stabilized and appears ready at last to contribute to the company’s growth.  Is this the final piece of the puzzle that the company needs to put the past few years behind them at last?  Telecom Ramblings had the opportunity recently to talk with Level 3’s CEO James Crowe: [Read more →]

Yesterday Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) announced a major shift in its product development stance toward 100G.  They now plan to ship a 100G system based on coherent transmission in 2012.  The new system will be capable of supporting 8Tb/s per fiber (80 wavelengths x 100Gb/s each), and will feature next generation PICs in 500Gbps increments (5x100Gbps) with ultra-longhaul reach as well as the [Read more →]

Trans-European operator Interoute offered up some details about its 2009 financial results today.  Privately held by the Sandoz family and Tecom out of Dubai, Interoute nevertheless offers us some valuable data points on the European bandwidth business.  Revenues of €269M were up 9%, showing steady growth despite the continued difficult economic environment in Europe.   [Read more →]

Norwegian regional operator Ishavslink has deployed gear from Transmode across its fiber network in the Finnmark region, the northern corner of Norway up in the Arctic Circle.   Transmode’s intelligent-WDM solution allows them a low cost network that can scale.  Just how far they need to be able to scale traffic in what is perhaps the most remote corner of Europe is an interesting [Read more →]