Lightower has added a New Jersey-based office in response to the state’s demand for fiber and Ethernet-based services from service providers and business customers.  

Following the recent opening of offices in both New York City and Boston’s financial district, the new office is located at 101 Eisenhower Parkway in Roseland, N.J.

Currently, Lightower provides fiber-based services to a number of business buildings, data centers, and carrier hotels in 11 New Jersey cities, including Piscataway, New Brunswick, Edison, Carteret, Morristown, Parsippany, Patterson, Newark, Westwood, Secaucus, and Hackensack.

A key customer segment of the New Jersey network and nearby New York City serving area is the financial industry, a segment that’s been clamoring for low latency connectivity as the foundation for algorithmic trading. In November last year, the service provider announced it had brought its low latency services to 15 locations throughout New York City and New Jersey.

New Jersey and the New York City area have been major expansion areas for Lightower in recent years. Complementing its own internal fiber network build outs in these regions, including a new express route across the Hudson River, the service provider made two key acquisitions including both Long Island-based Open Access and New York City-based Lexent Metro Connect.

For more:
- see the release

Special report: In detail: Tracking the 100G path

Related articles:
Lightower lights up commercial 40G and 100G services
Lightower extends fiber network to Mass Broadband Institute’s middle mile initiative
Lightower brings low latency services to 15 NY and NJ locations
Infonetics: Service provider 40G/100G optical transition gains momentum

Source:Fierce Telecom

Sidera Networks has established an agreement with Global Capacity to use its One Marketplace Access Exchange as a way to augment its off-net network arrangements where it needs to work with partners to augment its own network reach.

While Sidera is a fiber-rich service provider with strong presence in various markets throughout the Northeast, as well as Chicago and into Canada, the reality is that in order to deliver service to larger businesses that have multiple sites they have to often work with other carriers to reach those locations that may be outside their network footprint.

Augmenting its well-established off-net arrangements with other carriers, the One Marketplace Access Exchange will provide Sidera with an automated online pricing platform to order, provision and manage off-net access services. 

“As a facilities-based provider Sidera is focused on driving the utilization of high margin on-net services on their infrastructure, but there are times when they have to go off their network to deliver the service the customer requires,” said Jack Lodge, Chief Operating Officer at Global Capacity in an interview with FierceTelecom. “The way they were dealing with off-net requirements today is a manual process where they are throwing bodies at it by dialing for dollars and negotiating MSAs and trying to get rates.”

However, Lodge added that downside of the traditional process is that “there’s no way through a manual process that you will ensure you have the most competitive market rate.”

By working with Global Capacity, Sidera will be able to automate off-net rates they have already negotiated and providing access to competitive suppliers that participate in the One Marketplace program. The competitive advantage to Sidera is that they will be able to more quickly respond to customer requests.

The relationship with Global Capacity will also augment Sidera’s on-net wholesale service capabilities by making their services available to other service providers that need off-net capabilities in the One Marketplace system.

In addition to making the automated platform available on the buy and sell side, Global Capacity will do an optimization analysis of Sidera’s embedded base of off-net infrastructure to help them find ways to drive costs out of their existing base.

For more:
- see the release

Related articles:
Sidera Networks connects Europe’s Flexenet to its low latency network
Sidera Networks bolsters colocation footprint with Cross Connect Solutions acquisition
Sidera Networks to acquire Long Island Fiber Exchange
Sidera Networks establishes express low latency route with ancotel USA
Sidera introduces three new Ethernet Classes of Service

Source:Fierce Telecom

Brazil’s Telemar Participacoes, the service provider that oversees Oi-branded services via Brasil Telecom, Tele Norte Leste Participacoes and Telemar Norte Leste, are proceeding with their plan to simplify the service provider’s structure.

With this new structure in place, the management team will be able to start making network investments again and create a new dividend policy.

Last August, each of the division’s boards green lighted a plan to create a common company that will become the country’s second biggest wireline and wireless operator in terms of revenue.

Per the original plan, Brasil Telecom, Tele Norte Leste Participacoes and Telemar Norte Leste will be merged into a single company and will trade on the BM&FBovespa SA exchange in Sao Paulo and the New York Stock Exchange under the name Oi SA.

 ”It is positive for the group, as it simplifies the structure,” Fator SA Corretora de Valores analyst Jacqueline Lison, said in Bloomberg article. “Now the company can focus on the operational performance.”

While the minority shareholders had shot down three previous proposals, CVM, Brazil’s securities regulator, dismissed the 10 complaints made by minority investors and allowed controlling shareholders to vote.

For more:
- Bloomberg has this article

Related articles:
Brazil’s Telemar gets board approval to merge its 3 units
Brazil’s broadband plan is now present in 692 municipalities
Brazil’s Oi may name its IPTV suppliers soon
Brazilian government gives tax breaks to attract new fiber network rollouts
Four Brazil service providers stake claim in country’s broadband plan

Source:Fierce Telecom

Nokia Siemens Networks continues to hint at that it may be soon selling more of its wireline assets to willing buyers as it realigns its focus on becoming a wireless-centric vendor.

Suri

During Mobile World Congress, the wireless industry’s flagship tradeshow, NSN CEO Rajeev Suri told Bloomberg that it plans to shed more elements of its company following the sale of three units in 2011.

“We are already negotiating with buyers to sell some assets,” Suri said. “We are taking other assets into maintenance mode, shifting investments out into other segments.”

Suri added that the assets that will be put up for sale are will be its “perfect voice” VoIP unit, carrier Ethernet (formerly Atrica Networks), wireline narrowband and business support systems.

At the end of 2011, the vendor previously made three key deals, selling its microwave division to Dragonwave, its WiMAX business to SkyView’s NewNet Technologies, and its wireline broadband access unit to ADTRAN (Nasdaq: ADTN).  

These pending sales are part of an overarching strategy the vendor announced in November to cut $1.3 billion in annual costs from its budget. In addition to shedding assets, the vendor said it would lay off 17,000 employees, or 23 percent of its workforce, over the next two years.

For more:
- Bloomberg has this article

Special report: The most important M&As of 2011

Related articles:
ADTRAN snaps up Nokia Siemens Networks’ wireline broadband access unit
NSN sells WiMAX biz to Skyview’s NewNet
Nokia Siemens Networks to shed 17,000 employees, exit segments outside mobile broadband
NSN gets $1.36B cash infusion from Nokia and Siemens, appoints new executive chairman

Source:Fierce Telecom

Telstra (ASX: TLS.AX) has gotten the regulatory go-ahead to take part in the country’s National Broadband Network (NBN) as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has approved its revised Structural Separation Undertaking (SSU) plan.

The ACCC’s acceptance of comes less than a week after Telstra submitted an updated version of its SSU. A number of the telco’s rivals including AAPT, iiNet, Internode and TrasACT argued that the first revised version was “fundamentally flawed.”

In August, Telstra submitted its SSU and draft migration plan to the ACCC. Under the SSU, Telstra will structurally separate by July 1, 2018 and decommissioning its copper network in 2020. During that interim period, the telco had to put in place a number of provisions to ensure that wholesale competitive customers can get fair access to its network.

Among the changes included in the new SSU plan is a provision to deliver equivalent prices for its copper-based access services and exchanges via new wholesale contracts. In addition, Telstra agreed to renegotiate existing wholesale ADSL contracts if a customer requests it.

“In particular, Telstra has made substantial improvements to its interim equivalence and transparency commitments, which are intended to ensure that wholesale customers gain access to key input services on an equivalent basis to Telstra’s retail business units during the transition to the National Broadband Network,” said, Rod Sims, the chairperson of the ACCC.

Besides getting its SSU accepted, Telstra made another step forward with its relationship with NBN Co. by establishing a 12-month wholesale broadband agreement (WBA) with the service provider. Following agreements by Optus, Primus, iiNet and TPG, the incumbent service provider is the last large service provider to establish an agreement with NBN Co.

For more:
- Computerworld Australia has this article

Related articles:
Telstra serves up wholesale fiber service in South Brisbane
Australian competitive providers say Telstra’s revised separation plan is inadequate
Telstra International extends Ethernet private line service reach
Australia’s NBN reaches 4,000 connections, but critics question its financial viability

Source:Fierce Telecom

There been a lot of hope and hype surrounding the broadband stimulus program since it was launched in 2009. Despite the promise of many projects that received funding from the National Telecommunications and Information Association (NTIA) and the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), there has been no shortage of projects that faltered due to poor management. FierceTelecom takes a look at some notorious missteps in U.S. broadband expansion. Read more…

Source:Fierce Telecom

How are broadband stimulus funds being used in the United States? Are providers and contractors meeting the goals set out in their respective network buildouts? While many broadband expansion projects are moving forward, others never got off the ground. Let’s take a look at some notorious missteps in U.S. broadband expansion.

Louisiana dithers, and loses an $80.5 million grant

In October of 2011, the U.S. Dept. of Commerce  revoked an $80.5 million grant provided to the state in the first round of broadband stimulus funding. Why? Because although the money was awarded in 2009, state officials including governor Bobby Jindal dithered and bickered and failed to start any meaningful construction.

Governor Jindal held up the construction because he wanted the state to use existing network facilities owned and operated by incumbent carriers. But the Commerce Dept., which was administering the Rural Utilities Service-provided funds, felt that “it was not in keeping with the broadband infrastructure program’s mission of funding new network construction,” reported Joan Engebretson at Telecompaper.

The governor’s move was the cherry on top of a big messy sundae of “schedule delays, uncertainties and contingencies,” Commerce wrote in a letter explaining why it was taking the funds back, adding that the state demonstrated “a lack of management ability and control by Louisiana to get this project built on schedule and on budget.”

What’s at stake? Loss of the grant means that the expansive plans of the Louisiana Broadband Alliance (LBA), a collaboration of six state agencies, are indefinitely on hold. The LBA planned to lay 900 route miles of fiber across some of the most rural and economically impoverished areas of the state, and to directly connect more than 80 institutions to the network–schools, libraries, healthcare facilities, and universities–at 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps.

North Florida jeopardizes its middle mile build

Florida in general is a blooming garden of bad press around mismanaged stimulus funds, so the suspension of a $30.1 million grant earmarked for use by the North Florida Broadband Authority (NFBA) in September 2011 may not have come as a surprise to some.

The trouble in this case is conflicts of interest. “According to a Miami Herald article, some of the NFBA’s members argued there was a conflict of interest between the manager of the project’s government services group and Capital Solutions, which will ensure the grant money is being administered correctly,” FierceTelecom reported in September.

Robert Sheets, who serves as the government services group’s CEO, owns a 25 percent stake in Meridian Services group, a company led by CEO and president Lisa Blair. Blair also serves as the CEO of Capital Solutions.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is overseeing this particular stimulus grant, decided to suspend it while it investigated the conflict of interest allegations.

What’s at stake? The rollout of the fixed wireless Ubiquitous Middle Mile Project to 14 rural counties in north central Florida. Calix (NYSE: CALX) and Level 3 (NYSE: LVLT) are two of the providers already signed to provide ESANs (Ethernet Service Access Nodes) and HSIP (high-speed Internet Protocol) services, respectively.

Political opposition ends funding in Tallahassee

A similar conflict of interest case led the city of Tallahassee to give back $1.2 million in stimulus funds, after a political opponent of Mayor John Marks pointed out that the mayor was also a paid employee of the Alliance for Digital Equality. Additionally, the mayor admitted that the first phase of the project for which the funds were slated would not meet its July 2012 completion date.

What’s at stake? A program that would pay for high-tech training for youth and adults at the Apalachee Ridge Technology Learning Center in the city.

Wisconsin hands their funding back

The first state to hand back millions of dollars in federal money was Wisconsin, which in February 2011 returned $23 million in funding to BTOP.

While not really scandalous, it was an unusual precedent: In a time of economic uncertainty, a state handed back millions of dollars in basically free money. Why did they make such a radical decision? Political pressure by Republican lawmakers to reject what they called wasteful spending was one factor. The state’s relationship with incumbent provider AT&T (NYSE: T), which has a vested interest in Wisconsin’s current intranet, BadgerNet, was another, perhaps bigger, factor.

When Wisconsin made the move to build BadgerNet–an internal intranet largely unknown to residents–it decided to lease hybrid fiber-copper facilities from AT&T at five-year intervals rather than invest up front in broadband infrastructure. “Currently BadgerNet largely exists as an extension of AT&T’s network in Wisconsin.  That is a critical point,” Phillip Dampler wrote in a Stop The Cap article last year reviewing the funds return. ”Had BadgerNet initially been created as an independent entity, today’s stimulus rejection might never have happened.”

What’s at stake? The stimulus funds were slated to replace Wisconsin’s existing BadgerNet, which uses leased facilities from AT&T, with a state-owned middle mile network stretching to 380 Wisconsin communities, including libraries, schools, and public safety offices.

There is a ray of hope, however. The University of Wisconsin in July 2011 won a decision allowing it to go forward with a $37 million project, funded through federal broadband stimulus, to provide connectivity to several public institutions including schools, hospitals and first responders.

Delays threaten more stimulus projects

Revocations, suspensions and handbacks of portions of the $3.53 billion in broadband stimulus money granted across the United States so far is not at huge levels. But that could change. The RUS is warning other states to get a move on with their projects–or hand back their money, too. While some broadband projects are already shaping up to be success stories, including Chattanooga’s 1 Gbps municipal fiber build being managed at a profit by EPB Fiber, there’s a risk that others will not even get off the ground.

Source:Fierce Telecom

Cross River Fiber, a dark fiber provider, is driving more of the low latency networking craze by providing what it claims to be the shortest route between 1400 Federal Boulevard in Carteret and 165 Halsey Street in Newark, N.J.

As the first completed route of the low latency dark fiber network it is building in New Jersey, Cross River Fiber will immediately appeal to the financial services industry, where milliseconds can mean the loss of thousands or millions of dollars in potential revenue.

The new 23.25 km network route connects to two carrier hotels focused on the financial segment.

In addition to the financial industry, Vincenzo Clemente, CEO of Cross River Fiber, said the new network route will appeal to “government, education and healthcare sectors throughout the State of New Jersey.”

Other routes that are currently in the process of being built include network routes to other large data centers in New Jersey including Edison, Piscataway, Somerset, Secaucus, Weehawken, Nutley, Clifton, Rochelle Park, and various large business campuses.

While Cross River Fiber is still an up-and-coming service provider that’s still in the process of building out its network footprint, it will likely find appeal with businesses that want private connections and service providers looking for alternative interconnection partners.

For more:
- see the release

Related articles:
Cross River Fiber adds telecom veterans Mike Sevret, Jim Martini
Making sense of the Tier 2 wireline service provider consolidation wave
10 competitive telecom executives to watch in 2011

Source:Fierce Telecom