telco

Telecom Peek

November 10, 2008

Cbeyond Reports $90.2 in Q3 Revenues, up 25 Percent
Sprint Nextel $600 Million of Debt Coming Due Is Only One Worry - but they have $3B in cash??? Use it to buy a cool phone - T-Mobile, AT&T and VZW are killing Sprint because they have better phones. Handsets drive cellular. Period.
EarthLink has a $54.7M profit last quarter!
I forget that taxes play a huge part in mergers - that's why Embarq & Windstream didn't merge; it plays a part in XO's life (NOL's); and it certainly played a role in the VZ New England spin-off to Fairpoint.
Sprint and Cogent re-connect but continue fighting
JD Power's ISP Ratings are in (here).

Posted in economy, mergers, telco, telecommunications

Where Does AT&T Get the Money?

November 10, 2008

Fresh off of buying Wayport for global wi-fi expansion, AT&T buys Centennial Wireless - $944M for 1.1 million cell subs. AT&T is either at the point that they have to keep buying to keep the growth going or they have Monopoly Madness.

Posted in channel, mergers, telco

FCC Voted Today too

November 4, 2008

The FCC voted today too. They took the Inter-Carrier Compensation and USF off the agenda, much to Martin's dismay.

"Federal regulators have approved a plan to open up unused, unlicensed portions of the television airwaves known as "white spaces" to deliver wireless broadband service." [Y! news] [fcc.gov]

FCC approved, with conditions, the mergers of Sprint-Nextel/Clearwire and Alltel-Verizon. [fcc.gov]

FCC opened an investigation into the pricing policies of major cable operators and Verizon. "The agency wants to ensure the companies' customers are getting treated fairly, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in an interview with The Associated Press." [Y! news]

Posted in FCC, broadband, cableco, cellular, mergers, telco, wireless

Frontier Adds a Cap

November 3, 2008

Frontier Communications has added a download cap to its Internet service. It will charge folks for heavy usage.

The company caused confusion and some dismay among customers earlier this year, when it said it would charge for Internet use above 5 gigabytes per month, starting next year. [tbo.com]

What's most interesting is the comments. People are not happy about caps.

Caps are not new. We had time limits in the dial up days. (When you can only access at 33K, time is the limiting factor.) Satellite has always had bandwidth caps on its Internet service. It will become more pervasive as revenues for ISP's decline in this economy.

UPDATE: AT&T Trials Tiered Broadband in Nevada

Posted in Internet, bandwidth, telco

Call for Telecom Startups

October 29, 2008

from today's HARO:

"The Telecom Council of Silicon Valley is now accepting applications to present to their Investor Forum on December 5th, location in Silicon Valley (TBA).

Over the past 6 years, 50% of presenters to our Service Provider and Investor Forums have started talks with our members and 20% of those lead to a deal.
This Quarterly Investor Forum meeting attendees include both the Service Provider and Investor members of the Telecom Council who gather for one purpose - to invest in new telecom technologies and companies. As a start-up in the telecom industry, there is no better room to be in, and no better audience to pitch to.

Posted in conferences, telco, telecommunications, vc

Sprint is at risk of default

October 27, 2008

According to Businessweek, telecom could get squeezed by the credit crunch - and Sprint could get hurt the most.

"To start with, rising capital costs are likely to take a bite out of earnings. In addition, the softening economy will probably crimp demand for such telecom services as land lines, cell phones, and Internet connections."

AT&T sounded the first warning signal in late September, when CEO Randall Stephenson said the telecom giant was unable to sell commercial paper for terms longer than overnight. AT"T is the industry's biggest user of commercial paper, with about $8.5 billion in paper outstanding at the end of June.

Although Verizon is not a big player in the commercial paper market, it does have $7 billion of debt coming up for renewal in 2009. The company also needs to borrow another $22 billion to pay for its acquisition of wireless carrier Alltel Wireless....

Sprint is the most leveraged carrier.

Posted in cellular, telco

Every Where But Here

October 27, 2008

There is a lot of activity in the International arena. Here are some highlights:
Vodacom is acquiring Gateway Communications in West and Central Africa. C&W is partnering with Vietnam Data Communications Company and BSNL in India. France Telecom (Orange) acquired 51% of Telkom Kenya. Telefonica now has a 9.9% stake in China Netcom. XO reaches into China with China Netcom. Google, Liberty Media and others are launching 03b, a satellite internet service that will consist of a cluster of 16 satellites delivering wholesale internet access to Asia, Africa, Mid-East, and Latin America.Verizon and Google are launching Trans-Pacific cable (separately).That's the round up in a nutshell (thanks to Capacity magazine).

Posted in telco, telecommunications

FCC Doing Heavy Lifting

October 23, 2008

The FCC is holding a meeting on Nov. 4. On the agenda: Inter-Carrier Compensation, Alltel-VZ merger, Clearwire-Sprint merger, and a vote of White Spaces. Lots of heavy lifting on this agenda. Martin wants to give his pals at VZ one more gift before he goes.

Posted in FCC, duopoly, mergers, telco, telecommunications, voip, wi-fi, wireline

Is Nuvox Buying One?

October 21, 2008

Nuvox is out kicking tires to see who they can buy. Rumor has it that Greenville-based Nuvox is looking to buy One Communications in the Northeast to expand their footprint, especially their MPLS reach. (I didn't know Nuvox sold MPLS. I thought they were just a cheap Integrated T1 supplier).

Posted in mergers, telco

IMS isn't Killing It

October 10, 2008

In a discussion on LinkedIn, it seems that IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) isn't killing it in terms of measuring up to the hype. According to Ericsson, an IMS proponent and vendor,

"IMS is defined by 3GPP/3GPP2 as a new core and service 'domain' that enables the convergence of data, speech and network technology over an IP-based infrastructure. It is the operator choice of control and service logic for primarily IP/packet-based person-to-person communication but also for person-to-content communication.

For users, IMS-based services will enable communications in a variety of modes - including voice, text, pictures and video, or any combination of these - in a highly personalized and secure way.

The most widely deployed application on IMS are: Instant Messaging, Presence, Push-To-Talk and Video Sharing. There is lackluster customer appeal so far.

Posted in im/chat, telco, telecommunications

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