Telecom Ramblings

A bit of a scuffle broke out over a new report from Arbor Networks concerning the state of the internet.  Wired ran an article pegging Google’s bandwidth costs at zero, which was a rather poor choice of words at best.  Dan Rayburn does a good job ripping apart the article itself and Data Center Knowledge added its own two cents, suffice to say that the Wired article wasn’t very well thought out.  But they are hardly alone in their superficial look at bandwidth costs.  The central fallacies here are ones that the press often gets tangled up in, i.e. that transit is always expensive while peering is always free, and that using dark fiber magically [Read more →]

Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) is finally buying its wireless affiliate ipcs in a deal worth a total of $831M.  That’s $24/share plus the assumption of $405M in net debt.  A substantial 30+% premium above the current stock price, but at an EBITDA multiple of about 6 which is not that exorbitant.  Sprint hopes to save $30M annually in synergies on the $550M or so in acquired (but probably overlapping) revenues.  [Read more →]

According to a nice piece from TelephonyOnline, the new metro gear that Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN, news, filings) is introducing today does not use the company’s flagship technology, the photonic integrated circuit or PIC.  The new metro gear is a three rack unit called an ATN, and it carries eight 10Gbps ports.  Rather than saving money when scaling to huge bandwidths, the ATN apparently serves Infinera customers by interfacing more directly with its DWDM gear, saving some transponders and hopefully [Read more →]

Earnings season for telecom and internet infrastructure rolls in this week.  Well, it started last week with a few earlybirds like Nokia but things really get going in the next few days.  What to expect?  The market has been happy lately, hopefully it is foreshadowing numbers that show us emerging from the recession.  However, Octobers with positive expectations scare me so I’m not holding my breath.  At least not for Q3 numbers, which will surely still be weak even if we are seeing some pickup in sales given the usual lag time before they show up in revenues.  As usual, it will be Q4 comments that everyone will be parsing for any signs that this winter won’t be so cold.  Now for a few [Read more →]

Dan Rayburn reports that CDN challenger EdgeCast was profitable in Q2.  That’s quite impressive actually, considering the relatively low $10M of capital invested and revenues in the neighborhood of $15-20M.  To reach scale so quickly when few others have done half as well with twice as much suggests that these guys aren’t going away.  It also throws into a favorable light the choices by [Read more →]

This is turning into quite an interesting battle.  The special committee of the board of directors of international wholesale VoIP provider IBasis (news) [a subsidiary of KPN (NYSE:KPN, news)] has again rejected the advances of Dutch incumbent and majority shareholder KPN (NYSE:KPN, news).  The new price of $2.25 per share may have been some 40% higher than the initial bid, but the special committee still found it ‘grossly inadequate’.  They cite many reasons, but it all boils down to the fact that they feel KPN is trying to [Read more →]

According to reports, Finland has made it a legal right for all citizens to be able to have a broadband connection – in this case a minimum of 1Mbps.  Not instantly, but by next summer – which is close enough to turn a few heads.  They had already planned to make a 100Mbps legal guarantee by 2015, but decided for an intermediate step.  Finland has just 5.3M people, and 1.52M households already have broadband connections.  Even if one assumes an average of 3 people per households that still leaves some work to do.  But the law just says you must be able to get one, not that you must [Read more →]

IDT (NYSE:IDT, news, filings) is now looking to sell off its LMDS spectrum, hoping to recoup some value from the asset. The portfolio, held by subsidiary IDT Spectrum, includes some 931 licenses at 38 GHz and 16 licenses in the 28-31 GHz LMDS range.  Originally, IDT Spectrum planned to use it to build a backhaul network, but that plan fizzled and they mainly just lease it out where they can.  Who might want to buy it from IDT and how much might it sell for?   [Read more →]

Primus Telecommunications today announced that it is opening a Chicago office.  Their main focus will be hosted IP-PBX services for small and medium enterprises.  Primus is known much better in Canada and Australia, in the US they operate mainly in the wholesale voice markets.  And now they’re back in the US market again with a hosted IP-PBX offering.  The effort headed by Kevin Weber, formerly of CBeyond, with whom [Read more →]

Miami-based TeleCuba has received permission from the US government to build the first modern submarine cable between the US and Cuba.  The cable will be only 110 miles long and cost just $18M, but per mile it will probably have the largest effect on communications in its region than any cable has in a long time.  Right now internet traffic goes in and out of the reclusive country via satellite, which means it is slow and expensive.  The new cable, which is planned to go into service in 2011, will supposedly be able to carry as much as 8-10Tbps – a hefty number. [Read more →]

It has been rather quiet over at Internap Network Services (NASDAQ:INAP, news, filings) for a few months, as the company spent some time reorganizing internally after changing CEOs and retooling to increase their focus on colocation services.  But in the last two days, there have been signs of life from the company’s IP services business.  Yesterday, Internap expanded its network into the North Bergen, New Jersey facility of sdxc, which opened just last year.   Then today Internap added Hibernia Atlantic to its already diverse list of providers.  Hibernia’s facilities will give [Read more →]

Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) yesterday announced an interesting initiative for wholesale exchange of VoIP traffic, called the Partner Interexchange Network (PIN).  The switchless routing framework will be based on the SIP protocol, and will allow VoIP providers to exchange voice traffic directly.  This kind of offering of course works best with lots of members, so the key will be to entice those providers to come.  I’m not sure how the economics work out, presumably Sprint charges for the service but on the other hand without scale there’s not so much to charge for yet.  With the [Read more →]

Over the weekend, MicroSoft and TMobile announced that they had managed to lose some subscribers’ Sidekick data.  The media has gone into overdrive blaming this on a failure of cloud computing, although it’s not entirely clear that this in fact had much to do with that.  Data Center Knowledge has a nice summary of various responses.   [Read more →]

Southeastern service provider itcd has announced that it has deployed Infinera’s new ATN metro edge platform.  Deltacom’s Interstate FiberNet group had previously deployed Infinera longhaul gear, and apparently things have gone well.  Infinera has yet to formally introduce the ATN metro edge platform, that step will come at Supercomm next week.  But with the gear in the field already and an announcement already pre-announced, I do wonder why we bother with these formal introductions and such.  [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) said today that it is taking its new approach to local markets to the Philadelphia area.  Level 3 has a very large presence in Philadelphia with over 300 enterprise buildings on-net and more than 100 wholesale targets.  Some of that presence came with the original build, but much of it was part of the Telcove footprint which was huge all throughout Pennsylvania.  It’s nice to see them finally making a real effort to take advantage of their assets in the region. [Read more →]

Adding to my collection of network maps, today I have added a page for transatlantic cables.  Additional pages for transpacific cables will follow, then perhaps pages for intra-Asia/Australia, Africa and the Mediterranean, and Latin America will hopefully be forthcoming.  Now, this list is not meant to supply everything there is to know about these submarine cables, it is just [Read more →]

More news than usual either slipped past my nets this week, got bumped by other news somehow, or rendered me speechless somehow (yes, it happens!).  But news is almost always lighter on Friday, which lets me catch up a bit.  Here’s a few rapidfire tidbits:

Hibernia Atlantic expanded its Global Financial Network into [Read more →]

Bell Canada (NYSE:BCE, news, filings) today announced the Bell Content Delivery Network, making good on Dan Rayburn’s prediction that another carrier would enter the CDN market.  But Bell is not flying solo on this one, they are partnering with Limelight Networks (NASDAQ:LLNW, news, filings) to get it done.  Limelight servers will live and operate within Bell’s data centers and IP network, and the new CDN will act as its Canadian arm expanding its reach in that market. [Read more →]

Yesterday our fearless FCC Chairman made it clear that another of his top priorities will be to free up more spectrum for high speed wireless data services.  Now, I’m certainly not opposed to more spectrum for wireless networks, the more the merrier!  But as I read the various coverage of his remarks, there’s something I just have to mention.  More wireless spectrum is strictly a short term fix, because it is a limited resource.  If a landline runs out of capacity, we just add more fiber.  With wireless spectrum doesn’t matter how much you invest, [Read more →]

nTelos (NASDAQ:NTLS, news, filings), a regional service provider covering Virginia and West Virginia, has announced a deal to buy some 2200 route miles of fiber from Allegheny Power for some $27M. While most of its revenues come from its wireless business in the region, nTelos also operates as both an RLEC and a CLEC and maintains a 2300 mile fiber network throughout the region.  Overall its wireline operations earned some $128M in the trailing twelve months.  The assets from Allegheny will fill in some [Read more →]

Cable MSO giant Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA, news, filings) is apparently buying Cimco Communications, a Chicago area CLEC that serves 2300 small and medium sized business customers.  Chicago is Comcast territory of course, and this purchase is clearly intended to give them a broader footprint amongst those customers.  This acquisition strikes me as a scouting foray.  After integrating a CLEC with an MSO on a relatively small scale in a single market, Comcast may see a path forward toward larger acquisitions across their footprint. [Read more →]

Only two days after officially announcing that they were in advanced discussions with Nortel about buying its Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) division,  Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) came through with a deal.  However, it’s not exactly the deal that had been mentioned before, they aren’t buying the entire MEN division – just most of it.  Ciena has agreed to buy the Carrier Ethernet and optical transport portions of Nortel’s MEN for $390M in cash and 10M shares of stock, for a total of $521M at current prices.  But of course, it’s not a done deal yet since this is [Read more →]

The word is that AT&T has given in on network neutrality over its wireless networks, at least for VoIP.  As pretty much everyone knows by now, there was a clause in the iPhone contract which required VoIP calls to only work over Wi-Fi connections.  The public justification for the rule has been network congestion, while the private one has been one of competition.  However, in light of the unfavorable regulatory scrutiny it appears that AT&T (NYSE:T, news, filings) has decided that discretion is the better part of valor.  Or if you’re cynical, maybe not so much… [Read more →]