CenturyLink will tap dark fiber in 17 states to expand gigabit broadband, benefiting approximately 500,000 small and midsize businesses (SMBs). The fiber-to-the-premises expansion will enable CenturyLink to broaden service options for SMBs and will involve the introduction of cloud-based business services from Microsoft such as Office 365. CenturyLink’s symmetrical gigabit fiber service will now reach… Read more →

Nokia Corp. said that its mainstay network business delivered “unsatisfactory profits” during the first quarter. Nokia’s network division saw its quarterly revenue rise 15% over the year to €2.67 billion ($2.94 billion), the unit’s underlying operating profit for the first quarter fell to €85 million from €216 million, Nokia said in a statement. The network division’s… Read more →

By David Dixon of FBR Captial Markets &Co.  (edited by Alan J Weissberger): Note:  As everyone knows, Verizon acquired all of Verizon WIreless from Vodafone and has sold off a good part of its wireline business to Frontier Communications.   Hence, it’s more of a wireless carrier than ever before! http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/05/us-verizon-comms-divestiture-idUSKBN0L92UG20150205 David Dixon’s Commentary: First,… Read more →

Infonetics Research, now part of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), conducted in-depth surveys with businesses in the U.S. and Canada about the enterprise LAN Software Defined Networking (SDN) market and found that 72% of respondents plan to have campus LAN SDN in live production by the end of 2017. Infonetics interviewed IT purchase-decision makers at medium… Read more →

Posted on behalf of David Dixon, FBR Capital Markets Sprint CEO Marcello Claure has undertaken a strategic review of Sprint’s competitive positioning according to our vendor checks. Claure is an entrepreneur who seeks to move quickly to reposition the company. While he is not a network engineer, he understands that the network is a strategic… Read more →

Infonetics Research, now part of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), forecasts that bare metal switches (which decouple hardware from software and offer greater agility and cost savings over traditional data center switches) will make up just under a quarter of all data center ports shipped worldwide in 2019, up from 11 percent in 2014.   Infonetics’ fourth… Read more →

Introduction: Google’s keynote talk on this topic at last Thursday’s Light Reading New IP conference was very profound.  Google and its eight partners (identified below) in this OpenConfig initiative want to specify a vendor neutral type of provisioning & configuration system that will work with any type or brand of network equipment.  It’s called OpenConfig.  In… Read more →

NOTE:  An update to this article is at:   https://techblog.comsoc.org/2015/06/20/cuba-to-expand-internet-access-and-lower-price-of-wifi-connections Introduction: Recognizing the urgent need to improve its infrastructure and bolster the private sector economy, Castro & company felt the need to engage the U.S. in dialog to get U.S. companies to invest in the island, especially in telecommunications and information infrastructure.   We were… Read more →

Infonetics Research released vendor market share and analysis from its 3rd quarter 2014 (3Q14) Service Provider Routers and Switches report.  Author & Infonetics co-founder Michael Howard writes that Carrier Ethernet Switches had a terrific quarter and year:   “…Carrier Ethernet switches (CES) had an unprecedented quarter, with global revenue up 32% from the previous quarter… Read more →

by David Dixon,  – FBR Capital Markets [edited by Alan J Weissberger] Backgrounder: The FCC has long sought to impose rules requiring Internet providers to offer “net neutral” treatment to all Web traffic but has faced  litigation over its legal authority at every step. The FCC’s next move  following Verizon’s successful appeal of the FCC’s Open… Read more →