Telecom Ramblings

Cisco’s Surprise: the CRS-3

Rob Powell — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:31:44 +0000

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 … [visit site to read more]

Amidst Buyout News: RCN Metro’s Q4

Rob Powell — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:46:47 +0000

While the news of ABRY’s proposed purchase of RCN (RCNI: chart, news) 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. … [visit site to read more]

Undersea Tidbits: Globenet, Pacnet, and Tyco

Rob Powell — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:55:16 +0000

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

Globenet and Alcatel-Lucent (ALU: chart, news) 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 … [visit site to read more]

Verizon: 100G to Fully Arrive This Year

Rob Powell — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:14:16 +0000

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 … [visit site to read more]

Verizon’s Testing Says LTE is Faster than 3G

Rob Powell — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:12:07 +0000

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 … [visit site to read more]

Monday Roundup: Orange, XO, and Level 3 CDN

Rob Powell — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:45:16 +0000

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 (FTE: chart, news) 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 … [visit site to read more]

NTT’s Arcstar Looks for Efficiency, Adds Russian Access

Rob Powell — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:48:52 +0000

Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Communications (NTT: chart, news) 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 … [visit site to read more]

Level 3 Expands in Northern California

Rob Powell — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:21:45 +0000

Level 3 Communications (LVLT: chart, news) 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 … [visit site to read more]

RCN Sells to ABRY, Metro Fiber On the Market?

Rob Powell — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:58:25 +0000

Competitive broadband provider RCN (RCNI: chart, news) 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 … [visit site to read more]

FiberTower Reports, Shows Off New Balance Sheet

Rob Powell — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:39:41 +0000

Hybrid fiber/wireless backhaul network operator Fibertower (FTWR: chart, news) 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? … [visit site to read more]

Ciena Checks In, Nortel’s MEN Looms Large

Rob Powell — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:03:03 +0000

Network equipment manufacturer Ciena (CIEN: chart, news) reported its fiscal Q1 results today. That’s for the three months ending January 31st, which means we get an early glimpse of some early first quarter effects. Revenues of $175.9M were down slightly from the prior quarter and were below analyst expectations in the 180s. The company blamed delays in revenue recognition associated with initial deployments for several customers for … [visit site to read more]