Today's Top Stories Windstream (Nasdaq: WIN) reports that it is suffering a "widespread" outage on its voice network, an issue that's affecting the ability of customers in several states to make long-distance and toll free calls. The number of customers affected is not known at this time. The telco said on its website that the outage occurred around 11:30 a.m. EDT. In addition to long-distance and toll-free voice services, the telco said on its Facebook page that the outage is affecting its ability to receive inbound calls to its support centers and that it is "investigating reports that local inbound and outbound calling also may be disrupted for some customers." Windstream added that it "is working with the manufacturer on a resolution to the issue," but "an estimated time for restoral is not known." The service provider added that service will be "intermittent" until all of the problems are fixed. A number of FierceTelecom readers, commenting on an earlier report about a separate outage in South Florida, said that the the voice network outage is in 23 states. Earlier today, the telco reported that it experienced a failure on one of its switches Sunday afternoon, which interrupted service to about 30,000 local business and residential lines in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and surrounding areas. Scott Morris, senior consultant, corporate communications for Windstream, told FierceTelecom he could not confirm "how many states are involved" and that "customers are beginning to come back in service." Not surprisingly, the hardest-hit segment of the outage has been Windstream's business customers. One customer commenting on the outage said that "those customers of ours who have reached us by email or cell phone have not been happy, and I fear we have lost some loyal clients." FierceTelecom will continue to provide updates on the Windstream outages as needed. For more:
- see Windstream's Facebook page
- and its support page
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Windstream switch failure affects 30,000 lines in South Florida
Windstream extends its WAN reporting tool across U.S. footprint
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CenturyLink, Frontier, Windstream ask FCC for more CAF-I broadband funding Read more about: Windstream
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Texas-based cloud and hosted solutions provider GENBAND is setting its sights on the entrepreneurial and SMB (small to medium sized business) market, announcing the Innovation Exchange, a "collaborative business and technology exchange" which it says will enable SMBs to partner with Fortune 500 companies on application development. It also announced that it has partnered with F5, an application delivery networking provider, in a move to enhance its own cloud-based application delivery service. While the announcements are only slightly related, the provider's goals become clearer in the details. The Innovation Exchange "brings together Fortune 500 organizations, such as IBM, Intel, and Samsung Mobile with smaller, entrepreneurial companies to address operators' critical needs by rapidly developing, testing and deploying new solutions," the press release said. Applications will be delivered using GENBAND's unified communications and "smart networking" technologies. At the same time, GENBAND's partnership with F5, and an in-tandem release of a new diameter signaling controller, the QUANTiX DSC, signals that the provider is making sure it can deliver on that rapid deployment goal, as well as meet existing market demand, by making it easier for IMS and LTE operators to scale their data roaming and voice capabilities as demand rises. "Subscriber demand for bandwidth-hungry apps is placing strains on mobile networks and creating new complexities at the network edge for handling surging signaling traffic growth," said B.G. Kumar, president of GENBAND's Multimedia Business Unit, in the F5 announcement. "Mobile operators around the globe are adopting LTE at a significant rate." A number of applications developed via the Innovation Exchange will be showcased at GENBAND's Perspectives13 conference, being held this week in Orlando. For more:
- see the IX release
- and this release Special Report: Network equipment vendors rake in service revenues Related articles:
BT employs GENBAND for its IP interconnect expansion effort
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Verizon (NYSE: VZ) is investing $100 million on solar and fuel-cell energy projects that will enable it to power 19 of its network facilities located in seven states, while reducing their carbon footprint. The project will be completed in 2014 at corporate offices, data centers and central offices located in seven states: Arizona, California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina. Through this initiative, Verizon said it will be able to generate over 70 million kilowatt hours of its own green energy, while eliminating more than 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. James Gowen, chief sustainability officer for Verizon Communications, declined to tell Reuters how much money the investment would save them other than to say that it would have an impact on overall operation costs. "I have a CFO and a CEO who are telling me quite often, 'We are not going green for green's sake.' So we absolutely have a positive return on investment based on a 10-year net present value," Gowen told Reuters. For this project, Verizon will install ClearEdge Power's PureCell Model 400 fuel cell systems at Verizon sites in California, New Jersey and New York, which they say will "generate more than 60 million kilowatt hours of electricity and result in a carbon reduction of approximately 6,000 metric tons per year." Another side benefit of the project, reports Reuters, is increasing network uptime. During Superstorm Sandy, Gowen said that the fuel cells at its Garden City site on Long Island enabled it to keep network operations running when various segments of the traditional power grid were still being repaired. For more:
- see the release
- Reuters has this article Related articles:
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CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) has filed suit in Denver District Court challenging the Colorado Public Utilities Commission's move to eliminate the state's $54 million rural phone service subsidy program. The telco, which gets about $50 million every year from the Colorado High Cost Support Mechanism (CHCSM) as a provider of last resort (POLR) for voice service, wants the Denver District Court to review the PUC's plans. "The commission's new 'effective competition' criterion is a legally improper basis for determining CHCSM funding meant to cover the increased provider costs of rural service," CenturyLink wrote in its lawsuit filed on April 11. "The commission's new CHCSM rules will harm CenturyLink by reducing its CHCSM funding and by requiring it to expend significant resources to participate in legally flawed adjudications to maintain funding to which it is legally entitled." Last December, the Colorado PUC decided to stop paying subsidies for phone service in remote parts of the state. It argued that the growth of competition between service providers in Colorado "no longer justifies subsidies to those providers." Colorado's lawmakers also have their own ideas about what to do with the funds. State Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) would like to use them to subsidize broadband service in unserved and underserved communities. In a draft version of his bill that was obtained by The Denver Post, Morse defined "unserved" areas as those that can't get access to a 4/1 Mbps connection, while an "underserved" community is one where "a substantial number, but not a majority" can't get access to these speeds. Morse's proposal aims to use the money the PUC says is no longer necessary to subsidize phone service in areas where there are various options for phone service by 2025. Based on estimates the PUC issued last year, the figure would be between $10 million and $20 million. A similar telecom reform bill, SB-157, was postponed indefinitely last May in the Colorado State Senate Appropriations Committee. For more:
- The Denver Post has this article Related articles:
Colorado PUC phases out remote telephone service subsidies
Colorado legislators look to map broadband availability
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CenturyLink sets video sights on Centennial, Colo. Read more about: Colorado Public Utilities Commission
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EAGLE-Net Alliance got the green light from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to restart network construction on its middle mile network serving school districts and other local organizations throughout Colorado. The project has been suspended since last December due to environmental concerns. EAGLE-Net was awarded a $100.6 million Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grant in September 2010. Although it can now resume building, the NTIA said that the project will now take another year and an additional $10 to $15 million in private funding to complete. It was originally scheduled to be completed by the end of August. "NTIA has been working closely with EAGLE-Net over the past few months to address the environmental requirements needed to get the project back on track, and it has met those requirements," said NTIA Associate Administrator Anthony Wilhelm, in a Denver Post article. "We'll continue to vigorously oversee the project to protect taxpayers' investment." Wilhem added that lifting the suspension "will allow the organization to take advantage of the spring construction season and focus on helping western Colorado school districts get access to high capacity broadband." Despite the promise that EAGLE-Net is proposing with its network, it has faced criticism from various service providers, including incumbent telcos and cable operators that claim EAGLE-Net is overbuilding in areas of Colorado that already have enough broadband access. Regardless of the criticism, the NTIA said that there are 29 school districts and communities that EAGLE-Net will focus its attention on extending its services to hard to rearch areas of the state such as Buena Vista School District. The NTIA said that EAGLE-Net will connect 100 school districts by the end of the year and the remaining 58 will be completed in 2014. For more:
- The Denver Post has this article
Related articles:
NTIA suspends EAGLE-Net Alliance's middle mile project
EAGLE-Net: We're not overbuilding in Colorado
Zayo adds 162 miles of fiber to EAGLE-Net's Colorado network footprint
Zayo lights up new fiber capacity for EAGLE-Net Alliance Read more about: NTIA, EAGLE-Net
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