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L3 Sells Coal Mine

November 28, 2011

Not many people knew that Level3 owned a coal mining operation. It was sold off last week. I do not know if L3 still owns the software integration business. (I can't find any indications in the earnings reports.)

According to the earnings, it looks like L3 is bringing less than $4B in revenue at $927M in 3Q2011 and $913M in 2Q2011.

Posted in channel, fiber, mergers, video, voip

So Who is Going to Buy XO?

November 3, 2011

I got asked this question again today: Who is going to buy XO? I think we can almost all agree that Carl Icahn would like to sell his company.

XO had 2010 revenue of $1.5 billion, only $8 million more than 2009. So that's flat. XO just laid off 400 employees - probably to make the numbers look better.

Who would buy them?

WIND just received approval to acquire PAETEC, so that takes 2 names out of the running.

Level3 didn't win Paetec and just grabbed Global Crossing, but I could see L3 making a pitch to Icahn, because it would be revenue for L3 and a good portion of it is VoIP revenue.

Posted in CLEC, cloud computing, fiber, mergers, telco, voip, xo

360, OpenRange and Hosting.com

October 11, 2011

It looks like Zayo Group is going to buy 360 Networks. Back in May, Zayo and 360 entered into a long-term dark fiber deal that must have set off talks of an acquisition. (It explains why 360 was too busy to keynote this week.) Zayo, backed by M/C Ventures, reported sales of $77.8 million and a profit of $11 million in 4Q11. Instead of being acquired, Zayo is grabbing its 17th sale.

Hosting.com acquired Neospire, a Dallas based mission critical, managed hosting provider. It adds higher margin services to its portfolio.

OpenRange went bankrupt, Gary Kim reports.

Posted in CLEC, fiber, mergers, wimax

MVNO and Name Changes

October 3, 2011

Here at COMPTEL there have been some announcements. The big one is that Sprint has signed up two new MVNO's - XO and Easton Telecom. Easton Telecom is a reseller CLEC that has contracts with 100+ carriers (according to its PR). The interesting move comes from XO whose interim CEO inked an MVNO deal with Sprint.

Posted in cellular, expo, fiber, wireless

A Couple of M&A Items

September 9, 2011

It seems that Apple put in a bid for Dropbox for $800M (for $100M in revenue). But Dropbox decided to get another round of funds and think IPO instead. [BusinessInsider]

Cablevision will resell Sprint wireless service through its Optimum Business unit. Quad play for SMB.

WAN optimization is buzzing.

Posted in broadsoft, cellular, cloud computing, conferencing, fiber, hosted uc, mergers, smb, unified communications, wireless, wireline

A Strange Way to Start Monday

August 1, 2011

The party might be over at the PAETEC, as they announced today an $891M stock only sale to WINDSTREAM. USLEC, AllWorx, CavTel, McLeodUSA, Quagga, Xeta, US Energy Partners - all acquired by PAETEC to create a billion dollar CLEC. As if hitting the billion dollar mark was meaningful. Intermedia was the first billion dollar CLEC and HAD to sell itslef to MCI, as short-term debt became due.

Posted in CLEC, VAR, agents, channel, fiber, mergers, telco, wireline

Ethernet is Spreading

July 18, 2011

So many notices this week about Ethernet. It's the preferred protocol for most businesses. (No one wants to buy a DS3 card and configure it, I guess). Ethernet is becoming more and more available as the delivery protocol for Internet bandwidth, MPLS, IP/VPN, and Private Line.

The M&A targets are all fiber guys like FiberLight, AboveNet, Zayo, Sidera, Fibertower, Fibertech and XO. All are Ethernet players.

AT&T announced that come August 1st it is almost doubling the Metro Ethernet rates in the 9-state BLS region.

Posted in Internet, agents, bandwidth, channel, data center, ethernet, fiber, mpls, saas, technology, telecommunications, video, xo

Tele-Pacific Buys into Hosted

May 6, 2011

Tele-Pacific is buying its way into Hosted PBX with its acquisition of Telekenex. TelePacific will gain approximately 1,000 business customers and 122 employees along with the hosted PBX platform. Tele-Pacific will run Telekenex as a separate channel, which is a good thing.

This is a good move for Tele-Pacific as it continues to dominate its region with more services plus another data center. It also gains a nationwide MPLS backbone and a fiber network in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay area.

Some telcos think they have to get into Cloud, so they are buying Savvis, Terremark and data centers.

Posted in CLEC, PBX, data center, fiber, mergers, mpls, telco, voip, wireline, xo

The Number from Above(Net)

March 16, 2011

Here is AboveNet CEO Bill LaPerch presenting the business numbers to the channel partners at their private event at the CP Expo in Vegas this week. AboveNet has some interesting numbers:

2400 lit buildings including 450 data centers

1400 customers, most of whom are not wholesale. Dark fiber sales are growing at 8%.

AboveNet's aim is to capture the clients that have big bandwidth needs, like media production houses (like Pixar); content companies; Radiology centers; and the like.

AboveNet is building where the need is. For example, they built out on the Upper East Side in NYC because they didn't have fiber there but there was a need for it along hospital row.

Posted in agents, channel, fiber

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