Telecom Ramblings

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 →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) announced a nice CDN contract today in the gaming sector.  The company has already been providing caching and download services to Metaboli in Europe since early this year, and will now also be serving the US operations which operate under the name GameTap.  GameTap used to be part of the Turner Broadcasting empire, but was sold two years ago to Paris based Metaboli.  The transition for that transaction is now complete, and they are re-launching the GameTap brand. [Read more →]

It always seems like Ethernet is already everywhere, so it can be easy to forget that one network’s Ethernet services don’t generally talk directly to another’s.  Of course they *can* talk directly given an agreement between two networks, however having each network negotiate a separate agreement with every other network doesn’t scale at all.  To the rescue today comes Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX, news, filings), which is planning a carrier neutral ethernet exchange.  Using gear from Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) they hope to act as a meeting point for carrier ethernet traffic, and by extension to bring standard interconnection to [Read more →]

Isn’t there a law against that?  Oh wait, wrong capitalization.  Blockbuster news it was not, however the announcement by Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) that it is in advanced discussions with Nortel over its Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) business did help to clear the air a bit.  Their expected interest in purchasing the unit has been mentioned for many months, and supposedly somebody even jumped the gun last Friday with an early PR according to an article on SeekingAlpha.  At least now we can get beyond speculating about talks everyone ‘knew’ were happening, but didn’t actually know were happening. [Read more →]

Last month, Vonage (NYSE:VG, news, filings) rumors filled the web for a week or two and the stock surged unexpectedly, all apparently due to the company’s imminent iPhone application approval.  Well, that day is now here, and the iPhone app is now available – alongside Blackberry and iPod Touch versions.  It’s not quite what I expected, but then nothing ever is.  So what is it?  And what is it not? [Read more →]

Dutch telecommunications giant KPN (NYSE:KPN, news) has raised its bid for IBasis (news) [a subsidiary of KPN (NYSE:KPN, news)] by 45%, from $1.55 to $2.25.  The initial bid of $1.55 was met with a rather loud rejection from iBasis’s board and a lawsuit to boot, the claim being that KPN was trying to snap up the company on the cheap at the expense of minority shareholders.  KPN owns some 56% of iBasis after merging its own international voice assets into the company several years ago, and the remaining 44% would cost a mere $70M.  KPN would like to own iBasis outright because [Read more →]

On his own message board, regular commenter Frank Coluccio suggested in response to an Abovenet PR recently that we have a latency war on our hands.  Indeed, a war has been escalating all year in the financial vertical relating to high frequency trading, next generation networks, and ultra-low latency fiber paths.  To refresh my memory I thought I’d go back and find the half dozen or more or so press releases I remembered on the subject since the beginning of the year and look for patterns. [Read more →]

For a while there it seemed like everyone was accessing the credit markets except the one company that always does.  But at last Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) showed up, announcing today an agreement to sell $275M in convertible notes due 2015.  The new notes will bear interest at 7% and be convertible into common stock at $1.80.  They already issued $200M of notes just like these in June of this year. [Read more →]

Reminding everyone just who it is that has the cash to make deals right now, telecommunications equipment giant Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) announced today that it will be purchasing Norway’s Tandberg for some $3B.  That’s an 11% premium above the company’s current stock price.  Tandberg makes videoconferencing equipment, and its technology is a great fit for Cisco given the focus they have been putting on video in the corporate marketplace, e.g. [Read more →]

Telecom Italia Sparkle plans to formally announce its entry into the CDN market via a resale agreement with CDNetworks, according to Dan Rayburn. If there were an award given to carriers for ‘Most Likely to be Forgotten by the US media’, Sparkle would probably win it.  But their network is international in scope and they are big in Europe.  Reselling the services of an existing CDN is perhaps the least aggressive way to enter the market, but nowadays if you run an IP network it is almost imperative that you have CDN in your portfolio somewhere.   [Read more →]

If you were hoping that the job situation in the telecom sphere had turned around, it may not be over yet – at least not for ILECs.  In a press release today, Windstream (NYSE:WIN, news, filings) announced that it will cut about 5% of its workforce, or 350 out of 7100 jobs, and will take a $15M charge in the fourth quarter.  They say they will look for volunteers and attrition to reduce the impact, but in this environment there won’t be that many willing so there will surely be layoffs – good luck [Read more →]

Commenting on Monday’s article on rejection of Icahn’s offer by the board of XO Holdings (news, filings), regular reader Brian Scully asks:

In a world without Icahn, what are the XO assets and revenue stream worth?

A fair question, first let’s have a poll and see what readers think. [Read more →]

Talking at the FTTH Conference and Expo, Verizon CTO Richard Lynch said out loud what is almost certain to be many ISP’s response to network neutrality:

At the end of the day the concept of a flat-rate infinitely expandable service is unachievable. We are going to reach a point where we will sell packages of bites. Now I’m not announcing a new pricing plan. But we have already gone this way in wireless because that is where the resource is most constrained.

In other words, unlimited broadband will soon be a historical [Read more →]

Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) had promised an announcement today regarding a new strategic direction for video delivery.  And what did it turn out to be?  Why the Akamai HD Network of course!  The new platform is billed as “the first platform to deliver HD video online to viewers using Adobe Flash technology, Microsoft Silverlight, and to the iPhone, at broadcast-level audience scale.”  In other words, they’ve rolled out the infrastructure to support HD streaming across most of their worldwide network of some 50,000 servers. [Read more →]

The special committee of the board of directors of XO Holdings (news, filings) has responded to majority holder Carl Icahn’s proposal to buy the 10% or so of shares he doesn’t already own.  In an PR released today, the special committee said: [Read more →]