Telecom Ramblings

Telecommunications equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) took the wrappings off its next generation mobile packet core product offerings.  The announcement and much of the media coverage are filled with a very thick alphabet soup of technologies and standards and other acronyms regarding its capabilities that I’m just beginning to fully decipher, but Light Reading has one of the better articles.  Basically, the solution is built around its 7750 service router, with a plethora of other new boxes designed to handle the intricacies of mobile traffic and survive the coming wave.  One of the key features is [Read more →]

Here’s another quick overview of some of the news this week that I didn’t manage to write a full article about:

Hibernia Atlantic won some additional business with Italian based Tinet.  The IP and Ethernet backbone operator will be purchasing multiple 10G transatlantic wavelengths.  Specifically they will be buying bigger pipes in and out of [Read more →]

Competitive service provider TW Telecom (NASDAQ:TWTC, news, filings) took further financial steps today in the refinancing activity they announced earlier this month.  First, they have closed their sale of $430M of 8% senior notes due 2018. And second, the early results of the tender offer are in, with $366.5M being tendered and the company receiving consents from 91.6% of holders for the covenant changes.  Amongst those covenant changes was a shortening of [Read more →]

It’s time for a quick poll:

[poll id=”35″]

The wireline division of Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) has certainly had a rough spell lately.  Last week it emerged that its long time VoIP customer TW Cable was bringing the business in house, and this week its smaller brethren Mediacom followed suit.  Both had outsourced much of the infrastructure for their cable VoIP offerings to Sprint since the beginning of the VoIP surge back in 2003-2004.  Is this specific to Sprint or is it a trend across the sector?   [Read more →]

Ethernet seems to be the twinkle in every carrier’s eye at the moment.  Today Level 3 announced a significant expansion to its switched Ethernet footprint.  They will be increasing the number of switches in their network by 400%, i.e. where there used to be one there will soon be 5.  The increased Ethernet footprint will eliminate the need for backhaul of switched metro Ethernet applications and set the stage for [Read more →]

Today is the big day!  The FCC will formally unveil its National Broadband Plan and lead us all into bandwidth nirvana as we catch up to the rest of the world!  *Sigh* Ok, perhaps I waxed a bit too sarcastic there, but I just can’t seem to get excited.  It’s not that it isn’t important – because it is.  And it’s not that they’re doing it all wrong – I’m agnostic on that.  No, it’s the little engineer sitting on my shoulder snickering in my ear at the follies of bureaucracy, not the least of which being [Read more →]

In further news coinciding with the beginning of CompTel, CENX and Covad offered updates on their Ethernet offerings.

CENX announced that its Carrier Ethernet exchange has surpassed 5 accessible million locations, and they expect that number to double by the end of the second quarter.  That’s an interesting metric that I’m sure we will be hearing more about.  It’s not the size of CENX’s exchange so much as the size of the combined [Read more →]

Maryland-based BroadSoft has filed an S-1 with the SEC in preparation for a long awaited IPO.  While the price and number of shares are obviously undetermined at this stage, they hope to raise some $103M in all.  Goldman Sachs and Jefferies will be handling the book running for the offering.  BroadSoft has long been near the top of my personal list of companies that ought to be public, I suspect they would have a couple years ago when the IPO market went cold.  The company’s software underlies [Read more →]

Lots of announcements today as CompTel opens for business, here’s a quick survey:

TelX has linked up with Global Telecom and Technology (GTT)’s GigE backbone. The new connectivity will be available to customers across TelX’s 8 city colocation footprint. These two have worked [Read more →]

Competitive metro fiber operator abvt today launched a low latency transatlantic product aimed at the financial sectors.  They are offering end to end connectivity between Slough, The City and Docklands in London, and various locations in Manhattan plus key facilities in Newark, Weehawken, Secaucus, Carteret, and Clifton.  Each of those contains [Read more →]

I have heard several rumors since the start of 2010 that AGL Networks has been looking for a suitor, all of which have come from reliable sources.  The latest, however, is that a buyer has stepped forth and we shall hear soon.  One source says that it is none other than Zayo that is doing the buying, which would not surprise me much at all – things have been far too quiet over there lately.  Of course, there are perhaps a half dozen metro fiber operators out there for whom AGL’s footprint might [Read more →]

International network operator glbc has unveiled plans to upgrade its MAC, PAC, and SAC submarine cable systems.  These systems work together to link the Caribbean, Central America, and South America to both the east and west coasts of North America and the new capacity will come online during Q2 and Q3.  Global Crossing isn’t the only increasing capacity to and from Latin America, just a few days ago Globenet announced the completion of an upgrade of its own.  However, I was somewhat surprised to see this upgrade, considering [Read more →]

Over the past few days, it has emerged in stages that the wireline division of Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) has lost its VoIP outsourcing contract with Time Warner Cable.  Sanford & Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett broke the story with a reasearch note, and apparently TW Cable has confirmed its new plans to bring the business in-house over the next four years.  Moffett’s calculations apparently peg the outsourcing deal at $10-11 per VoIP subscriber, and that some $250M or 25% of Sprint wireline’s EBITDA is at stake.  I can’t judge the accuracy of those numbers, but if he’s even [Read more →]

A group of New Zealand investors are putting together an effort to build another cable in the Pacific, this one connecting the US directly to New Zealand and Australia, similar to the current Southern Cross cable.  New Zealand is preparing a high speed domestic fiber network effort, and a big part of that is having enough diverse international connectivity to feed it.  However their geographical position often limits their connectivity options unless they take the problem on themselves, which is precisely what they are [Read more →]

abvt was one of the better stories in the internet infrastructure sector during the recession of 2009.  Re-emerging just over a year ago into the limelight after almost a decade of oblivion, the company has quickly taken up the mantle of leadership in the metro fiber space with high EBITDA margins, double digit growth rates, and even a 2-1 stock split.  With us today to tell us where the company is headed now is the architect of that comeback:  AboveNet’s President and CEO, Bill LaPerch: [Read more →]

Competitive fiber operator Zayo has had a couple of news items over the last few days.  First, they picked up a contract in Michigan with managed data center provider Online Tech.  They will be providing a diverse fiber path hooking up the company’s data center in Ann Arbor.  The Ann Arbor metro fiber footprint derives from the former KMC assets that Zayo [Read more →]

Metro fiber comeback story abvt reported its Q4 earnings this morning, closing the book on what was one of the few unequivocally positive stories amidst the economic turmoil of 2009.  Revenues, EBITDA, and capex were all inline with guidance and perhaps slightly above analyst expectations.  Earnings per share of $7.96 included a huge non-cash income tax benefit, probably due to advance recognition of NOLs – GAAP can be strange sometimes.  Here is a quick table putting their results in context. [Read more →]

Telecommunications equipment provider Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) has raised $375M in convertible notes due 2015.  They will be using the proceeds to pay for their acquisition of Nortel’s MEN unit.  The credit markets seem to have looked favorably on the offer, which began at $250M.  The notes priced at an interest rate of 4% and are convertible at $20.38 – a premium of [Read more →]

While I tried to stay out of it, the hype reached stratospheric levels over the last week in the runup to Cisco’s announcement.  What could Cisco possibly have been planning that could “forever change the Internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and government” yet somehow keep it secret this long?  Well, nothing really was going to fit the bill after the media got done speculating.  So what did they have to announce?  Precisely what everyone should have expected them to announce:  absolutely gigantic new [Read more →]

While the news of ABRY’s proposed purchase of RCN Business (NASDAQ:RCNI, news, filings) overshadows all else and led to the canceling of their investor call, the broadband and metro fiber company still reported earnings today.  As always, I look mostly at the RCN Metro segment, which delivers thick pipes to the wholesale bandiwdth and data intensive enterprise segment.   [Read more →]

Several bits of news from the undersea cable front in the last day or two, here’s a quick look.

Globenet and Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) have completed an upgrade to Globenet’s submarine cables connecting North and South America. Along with increased capacity of 110Gbps on its submarine segments, the landing stations in [Read more →]

Verizon says it is now ready to take the plunge.  In another demonstration run on 1,520km of fiber north of Dallas, the telecommunications giant teamed with Finisar, NEC and Juniper put together the most complete 100Gps trial to date.  Rather than just test a piece at a time, this demo sent video traffic via a 100Gbps interface to Juniper T1600, Finisar 100G CFP optical transceiver modules, and an NEC SpectralWave DWDM system equipped with 100G real-time coherent transponders.  Wow, that was a jargon filled [Read more →]