Telecom Ramblings

When AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) fired back at Google Voice, complaining to the FCC that it was blocking calls that AT&T was forbidden to block, the response from the blogosphere was rather incredulous.  It wasn’t the same thing, it wasn’t even related to last mile networks and thus network neutrality is irrelevant, and Google Voice isn’t even a real voice service.  I tried to make the point that AT&T wasn’t really trying to stop Google Voice, it was using Google as a foil to be heard on the topic of intercarrier compensation.  In its response, Google surprised me by not taking the the “we’re all-IP so obscure telecom regulations shouldn’t apply” line, they actually picked up the gauntlet. [Read more →]

This seems to be the season for wide ranging visions of the network of the future, or perhaps it’s always the season for that in the tech world.  Today it was Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) who took the stage and laid out its strategy in a blitz of PRs held together by this one.  Personally, I’m still trying to figure out what it all means, however it is clear that Juniper is simply laying out the next generation for a familiar path, i.e. where the internet is routers and routers are the internet.  The main features of the plan boil down to: [Read more →]

After two consecutive quarterly revenue declines, it is nice to see Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) regain its growth bias in its third quarter earnings report.  Since the company dominates the CDN landscape by most measures, we can probably now say that the negative effect of the recession on the sector has eased somewhat.  Earnings per share still declined slightly, but came in ahead of expectations anyway both for Q3 and for Q4 guidance of $0.39-0.41 as well.  Here is a quick summary of the Akamai’s metrics in the context of the past 4 quarters [Read more →]

International IP services provider glbc reported Q3 earnings after the bell.  They continued the growth they started in the prior quarter, falling roughly within my own expectations, and held costs in line.   A fireworks show it was not, but after the results of Verizon, AT&T, and Level 3, it has been clear that while the carrier market may be recovering from the recession it isn’t exactly roaring back just yet.  Here is a quick summary of Global Crossing’s performance so far this year, followed by my own thoughts and what I gleaned from a quick chat with company management: [Read more →]

Barrons’ Tech Trader Daily has an article this morning about a GAO report worrying that a large outbreak of swine flu could take down the internet.  The argument is a fairly simple one:  if too many people stay home from school and work, they’re going to spend all that time online.  Watching YouTube I suppose.  The extra traffic will then overwhelm woefully unprepared ISPs.  Securities markets could suffer as teleworkers have difficulty doing their trades, e-commerce could slow down, and all manner of havoc could result. [Read more →]

Next generation internet backbone Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) checked in with third quarter earnings this morning.   The company has had a rough year as the economic crisis and other factors have compounded to pressure revenue.  I don’t think anyone was expecting much this quarter, but while the revenue pressure didn’t go away it did at least ebb somewhat as promised.  Here is a quick summary of the relevant numbers, followed by my own thoughts: [Read more →]

In the next two days, two next generation carriers that I cover frequently on Telecom Ramblings will report their earnings:  Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) and glbc.  The recession and the wild currency fluctuations that came with it pretty much made financial modeling for these companies into an exercise in futility, but stability has been creeping in across the sector.  Let’s take a quick look at where these two currently stand [Read more →]

Hybrid wireless/fiber backhaul provider ftwr has finally put forth a restructuring plan, but it wasn’t perhaps quite the one shareholders were hoping for.  The recession and frozen credit markets left the company high and dry, with insufficient scale to support its debt load and not enough cash to build the rest of the way there.  So they froze capex in a clearly untenable situation, began buying back debt at 30 cents on the dollar, and negotiating with large debt holders.  The general outlines of their solution will not be surprising to survivors of the last bubble – massive dilution to avoid a worse fate.  The company’s stock price had more than doubled since August in anticipation of a more favorable outcome, hence [Read more →]

In a filing this morning with the SEC, it emerged that Carl Icahn raised its bid for XO Holdings (news, filings) on Friday.  However, the offer expires today at 6pm Eastern. Yes, that’s right – he gave them a whole weekend to think about it, and the company itself hasn’t even issued a PR or made a filing on the subject.  Here is the text: [Read more →]

Ever since it purchased the northern New England wireline assets of Verizon, FairPoint Communications (news, filings) has had a cloud of doom hanging over it.  The combination of service issues and financial weakness just never looked good, and the company’s travails have been painful to watch.  Even lately as some of the service issues have improved, it has been clear that shareholders were probably toast.  And so it shall be, today Fairpoint formally filed for Chapter 11 in [Read more →]

Telecommunications giant Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) reported earnings this morning, and like AT&T last week there weren’t many surprises.  Total revenues of $27.3B were slightly above expectations, as were adjusted earnings per share of $0.60.  There was no iPhone of course, but the net increase of 1.2M wireless subscribers was a bit higher than expected.  Verizon is gearing up to challenge the iPhone with phones based on Google’s Android in the fourth quarter, but even with a big launch it will be a while before that could be relevant.  I doubt very much if Verizon’s Droid series will do the iPhone [Read more →]

Or more likely it was just an obvious target.  In late June, when Julius Genachowski was finally confirmed as the new FCC chairman, I posted a simple challenge for him – somewhat tongue in cheek.    Basically, it revolved around the agency’s website, which at the time ranked amongst the world’s worst.  If you started from www.fcc.gov without knowing the layout or cryptic ID numbers, finding any particular document was nigh impossible.  But whether it was me he listened to (highly doubtful) or not, I have to say that they are making some strides.  On Friday the electronic comment filing systems were upgraded.  [Read more →]

In my poll of a few days ago regarding what map links I ought to collect next, readers wanted three things:  metro fiber maps, Latin American maps, and more European maps.  For metro maps, I am going to have to think about the best way to do it, as there are too many to organize simply so I would have to group them intelligently.  My thought right now is that I make a page for each major metro area or for groups of adjacent or nearby metro areas.  For example:  [Read more →]

I can’t bring myself to add more repetition on network neutrality today – suffice to say the FCC did what it said it would do and everyone else said what they said they would say.  So instead let’s take a look elsewhere in the world for interesting news.

Pacnet has announced plans to accelerate its upgrade of EAC/C2C, planning to add another 3.6TGbps to current inventories with completion in 2011.  This comes on top of [Read more →]

Like all telecommunications equipment providers, router specialist Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR, news, filings) has had a rough year.  While the weather stopped getting worse during Q2, there has been apprehension that it might not get better quickly enough.  Hopefully today’s third quarter results will not be an isolated case of unexpectedly swift recovery.  Third quarter revenues were $824M, up almost full 5% from $786M last quarter.  Earnings per share of $0.23 was also up from $0.19 sequentially.  Both numbers were beyond [Read more →]

Telecommunications goliath AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) gave us our weekly peek into its finances with its Q3 earnings report this morning.  The verdict:  unsurprising unless you were silly enough to think that the iPhone wasn’t selling well.  Revenues of $30.86B were precisely on target, at least according to the analysts compiled by Yahoo finance, and earnings per share of $0.54 were even a bit higher than expected.  The highlights of course were the 3.2M iPhones activated during the quarter and the net gain of 2M wireless subscribers, now totalling 81.6M subscribers.  Those additions were huge [Read more →]

In a PR today, Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) announced a new service for wireless tower access.  Now, that doesn’t mean what I first thought it did, which was that the company was preparing to enter the fiber-to-the-tower market in force.  They still might do that I guess but this offering seems to be more about bringing the tower to the fiber.  That is of course much less capex intensive for Level 3, and allows it to squeeze a bit more revenue out of existing facilities.   [Read more →]

Not only did they announce a blockbuster acquisition, Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) reported outstanding Q3 earnings after the bell.  Revenue guidance was raised last quarter and had already seemed high, but they beat it nonetheless.  Earnings per share continued to outperform the expectations of the street.  No wonder their stock has been pushing $100 again, although naturally news of the M&A is driving it down a bit initially.  Here is a quick table summarizing their third quarter: [Read more →]

In a surprising M&A move, Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings) is planning to buy its smaller rival sdxc for $689M, or $19.06 per share.  That is a solid 32% premium above today’s market close of $14.40.  The acquisition will add 34 datacenters in 22 North American markets totaling more than 1 million square feet to Equinix’s already huge footprint.  16 of those markets will be new, as Equinix’s own footprint is focused heavily on the largest markets.  This acquisition will give them a more balanced footprint across the continent with a presence in smaller (but not small) markets, as well as eliminate one of the few competitors they face with such wide geographical [Read more →]

Having now finished its optical mesh deployments to India, Singapore, and France, Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) is now aiming at the Middle East.  Verizon Business’s optical mesh efforts takes advantage of the company’s tremendous inventory of undersea routes across the Atlantic and Pacific to automatically reroute traffic around trouble spots.  If you encircle the globe, you add even greater potential resiliency.  If every cable [Read more →]

Of course, no sooner did I post about the financial market contracts won by sdxc and RCN Business (NASDAQ:RCNI, news, filings) than Hibernia Atlantic issues a PR of its own.  The company announced that it has been selected by IPC Systems, which in turn provides a variety of communications solutions to financial companies.   IPC will use the company’s Global Financial Network offerings as the foundation for its next generation offerings linking market participants directly to [Read more →]

Telecom equipment upstart Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) announced earnings after the bell, and things look pretty good.  Revenues of $83.4M were up sequentially from both $68.9M in the prior quarter and $80.9M on an adjusted GAAP basis in the third quarter of last year.  That’s a bit higher than I expected, and hopefully is a good sign for the telecom equipment sector.  But does it mean that carrier spending is back to normal?  One [Read more →]

The latency war in financial networking continues, today with a couple of victories for the smaller companies involved.  RCN Metro, the metro fiber division of RCN Business (NASDAQ:RCNI, news, filings),  has won a contract with Lombardi & Co. to provide dedicated Internet service both on the exchange floor and in its headquarters.  Lombardi helps institutional investors with access and trading technologies and chose RCN for its “optimal TCO, minimal latency, as well as high throughput and availability”.  Yep, there’s that latency bit again, and apparently that recent upgrade to [Read more →]