Telecom Ramblings

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 →]

Ok so I skipped the word ‘significantly’, but still the headline seems like a solid candidate for the ‘Well, duh…’ files to me.  But anyway, Verizon Wireless has been field testing 4G LTE in Boston and Seattle, and has been seeing peak speeds of 30-40Mbps down and 15-20Mbps up.  Those are of course welcome numbers, but nothing particularly surprising.  The key of course will not be peak performance, but the speeds you get under load – more specifically when surrounded by smartphone users. Verizon says that ‘real world’ conditions yielded speeds of [Read more →]

It’s been a busy PR morning for network operators – busy enough to bring on a ’roundup’ post that I more commonly do on weekends.

Orange Business Services, the international services arm of France Telecom (NYSE:FTE, news, filings) announced today it is enabling the unified communications (UC) strategy of NXP Semiconductors BV worldwide.  Some 15,000 employees have been migrated to the Managed Microsoft Office Communications Server (Release 2) service hosted by Orange.  According to NXP, the key features are [Read more →]

Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Communications (NYSE:NTT, news, filings) has been giving its global network services division, Arcstar some focus lately. The company has made another move into Russia with the interconnection of its own IPVPN with those of operator TTK, whose fiber runs along the railroad tracks across those vast distances.  It’s not the first time the two have worked together, having collaborated on the Hokkaido-Sakhalin Cable System a few years ago.  This new move expands the reach of Arcstar’s Global IPVPN services throughout [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) brought its local markets initiative to northern California.  They will be grouping together the markets of San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and Sacramento with a general manager, and will be adding both capacity and staff in the region.  This is the second such initiative on the west coast, the first being up in Seattle last summer. No doubt we will see a southern California initiative at some point as well, however [Read more →]

Competitive broadband provider RCN Business (NASDAQ:RCNI, news, filings) on Friday announced that it has agreed to a buyout offer from private equity firm ABRY Partners.  The price of $15/share represented a 22% premium to the stock price before the announcement, and along with the assumption of debt the total value of the deal is $1.2B.  It’s not a done deal yet, as RCN can still solicit competing offers for another 40 days.  In the meantime, the company has canceled its Q4 earnings call. Whether they get any depends on how prospective buyers view [Read more →]

Hybrid fiber/wireless backhaul network operator ftwr reported Q4 earnings last night.  With all the restructuring activity, it is somewhat difficult to make sense of the company’s numbers right off the bat.  However, the balance sheet now has $50.7M in unrestricted cash and $154.5M in long term debt, much easier to support but at the cost of three times as many shares outstanding.  They have bought themselves time, so where are they operationally? [Read more →]