Today's Top Stories Rogers Communications (NYSE: RCI) CEO Nadir Mohamed wants the same opportunity to acquire new Canadian wireless companies as U.S. carriers that are allegedly sniffing around the market.  | | Mohamed (Image source: Rogers) | Rogers, which started as a cable company but expanded into the wireline voice, data and wireless businesses with a quadruple play offering, has always been a bit feisty in defending its competitive role. It would welcome the opportunity to compete on level ground with intruders from the U.S., Mohamed said. "We're absolutely against a tilted or stacked playing field where you have a massive incumbent U.S. carrier that would be given favorable treatment, and frankly better treatment than Canadian incumbents," Mohamed said during a second quarter earnings call with analysts yesterday. "We can't have a U.S. foreign incumbent be allowed to buy new entrants at depressed pricing by blocking the ability of incumbent Canadian players to do the same. So it's about parity." The Canadian government has indicated that it wants to increase competition among carriers in the country and is not looking favorably on existing wireline carriers swallowing up any smaller wireless players. As such, the government already blocked Telus from acquiring Mobilicity. This policy has opened the door for the likes of Verizon (NYSE: VZ), which has been said to be interested in acquiring Wind Mobile and perhaps Mobilicity. Verizon CFO Francis Shammo touched on the carrier's preliminary interest during a conference call with analysts after the company announced second quarter earnings last week. "This is really an exploratory exercise for us," Shammo said, noting that at least part of the interest is based on spectrum the Canadians are auctioning in January. "We continue to just look at this market. If you look at the population of Canada, about 70 percent of that population is between Toronto and Quebec. That's adjacent to Verizon Wireless properties." Shammo, too, acknowledged that the regulatory situation could be prickly for a carrier like Verizon to move into Canada. Still, he said, the prospect of purchasing spectrum or moving into Canada has piqued the carrier's interest. "We're looking at all of these, but obviously some of the cautions here are the regulatory environment, a foreign investor coming into the Canadian market and what does that mean," Shammo said. "(We're) cautiously looking at it, not ready to make any announcements today. And we continue to explore and have discussions, but at this point it's just really just an exploratory exercise." Mohamed, in his comments, made it clear he wasn't in favor of that sort of exploration if a Canadian carrier wasn't invited along on the trip. "We welcome competition, frankly, it's in our DNA," Mohamed continued. "Those that know the history of the Rogers company would know that our company has been built on taking on telcos. We always took on the big phone companies and we thrive on competition." Encouraging a giant U.S. carrier to enter the market, however, would unbalance the competition. "We can't have it stacked against us and we don't see how a government policy would make sense that the Canadian government would favor a U.S. player. Frankly, we'd never be able to get the reciprocal rights that are being offered. So our view is very straightforward: we can't have a U.S. foreign incumbent be allowed to buy new entrance at depressed pricing by blocking the ability of incumbent Canadian players to do the same." Mohamed emphasized that his objections carried beyond a company purchase into Verizon participating in the spectrum auction. "If we're going to be restricted to 10 megahertz of prime spectrum, so should everybody else, including very large foreign incumbents," he concluded. For more:
- Seeking Alpha has this Rogers earnings call transcript
- and this Verizon earnings call transcript Related articles:
Canada's new spectrum transfer rules could open door for Verizon
Reports: Verizon makes $600M-$800M bid for Canada's Wind Mobile Read more about: second quarter earnings 2013, Rogers
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Ikanos has reportedly pushed 300 Mbps of aggregate throughput over a standard single pair copper cable over 200 meters using an existing Velocity-3 central office chipset. The chipmaker said that the demonstration is a "significant step towards G.fast," the emerging industry standard designed to wring a gigabit of bandwidth from existing copper facilities using DSL technology. "Ikanos has a history of challenging the industry by pushing the performance envelope and continuing to raise the bar on our competition," Kourosh Amiri, the company's marketing vice president said in an Ikanos press release. "With Velocity-3, in a matter of a few months, we have received widespread recognition of our industry leadership in performance and scalability for high-port-count deployments of 192 lines at distances reaching 500 meters and beyond." The company said that the chipset is an integral part of the company's fiber to the distribution point (FTTdp) architecture that uses existing copper to deliver high bandwidth to residential and commercial customers at distances ranging from 100 to 200 meters and in compliance with the G.fast movement. "While the G.fast promise of gigabit performance is still on the horizon, our ability to demonstrate hundreds of megabits for lower-port-count short-loop configurations using our currently shipping CPE and CO silicon establishes Ikanos as the leader in the pre-G.fast' era as we enable telcos to remain competitive against mounting pressure from MSOs and continue to enhance the consumer DSL experience," Amiri continued. Even as Ikanos offered up hope for triple digit bandwidth, ITU put the G.fast initiative on a fast track that could result in workable standards by 2014. A recent ITU-T Study Group 15 meeting in Geneva resulted in first stage approval of the ITU-T G.9700 standard that specifies ways to obviate interference between G.fast equipment and broadcast services such as FM radio and put the standards body on the fast track for a G.fast standard approval by early 2014. For more:
- Ikanos issued this press release Related articles:
ITU puts G.fast on track for 2014 approval
ADTRAN, Alcatel-Lucent, others participate in VDSL2 plugfest at Univ. of New Hampshire Read more about: rate-reach performance, Ikanos
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Continued impatience about when--or if--traditional service providers will start offering ubiquitous broadband connectivity has led state and local governments to take their own steps forward. Oklahoma, for example, will institute a program that expands rural access, and Leverett, Mass., plans to hire a contractor to build a fiber optic network. In each instance, public money is being used to build necessary facilities. Oklahoma is using a $74 million grant from NTIA to build out the Oklahoma Community Anchor Network (OCAN) to cover schools, hospitals and tribes throughout the state. The project is running under the joint auspices of the state's Office of Management and Enterprise Services, Department of Transportation and State Regents for Higher Education's OneNet Division, a telecommunications network for government and education. The 1,005-route mile network, which is expected to go online Aug. 1, covers 35 counties and includes 33 "community anchors" with plans to partner with local telecom companies operating in rural communities. However it's accomplished, Rep. Todd Thomsen told The Ada News that it will provide better connectivity and that "will always improve the way people function." Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, town selectboard members have awarded New Jersey contractor Millennium Communications Group a $2.27 million contract to build and maintain a fiber optic network that board member Peter d'Errico said is "comparable service to what Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is providing in Kansas City." The goal, he said in a story carried by The Recorder of Greenfield, Mass., is to make Leverett "a desirable place for all kinds of people who work in mediums that require that level of technology." Ninety percent of voters at a town meeting approved spending $3.6 million for the project, which, d'Errico said, will give Leverett a "state-of-the-art worldwide telecommunications capability." The network, which is expected to be completed by December 2014, will connect to the Massachusetts Broadband Initiative's middle mile network. "I see it as having economic benefits for the town, cultural benefits for the town, and when you add in things like telemedicine, it means that it's more than lifestyle; it's quality of life," d'Errico said. For more:
- The Ada News has this story
- and The Recorder has this report Special Report: The Contenders: Municipal fiber providers meeting or beating the incumbent competition Related articles:
Kansas county dumps AT&T, plans own telco and ISP
U.S. broadband speeds increase 27 percent, but EU countries lead growth
Google closes deal to acquire iProvo Read more about: OCAN
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Douglas County, Kan., is looking to save money by ousting incumbent provider AT&T (NYSE: T) and reconfiguring its telecommunications setup. The county approved a contract with nonprofit KanREN (Kansas Research and Education Network) to serve as its ISP and approved the expenditure of $82,289 to replace phone systems in five remote offices. KanREN is a consortium of colleges, universities, school districts and other organizations that promote communications among themselves and provide its members with Internet connectivity via a statewide network. It recently began offering service to local governments. Douglas County, because it's rural, depends on Internet connectivity to communicate between remote areas, including using videoconferencing for some hearings in its district court, the newspaper article said. The county's IT director said moving from AT&T to KanREN will save the county in excess of $5,400 and provide its rural offices with five times the bandwidth they get through AT&T. The telephone system purchase, he added, should save about $34,000 for services previously offered by AT&T. That expenditure is only part of an eventual $200,000 project to replace all the phone systems in the county, the story said. While not specifically citing the Douglas County situation, AT&T did touch on the needs of rural customers during its second quarter earnings call this week where executives touted the rollout of Project VIP, the carrier's broadband expansion into rural areas. That project is expected to benefit U-verse and U-verse is moving to cover small-medium business customers such as Douglas County. For more:
- see this story in the Lawrence Journal-World Related articles:
FTTH Council wants FCC to launch gigabit challenge
Google closes deal to acquire iProvo
Cedar Falls Utilities takes on CenturyLink with 1 Gbps service
AT&T exec: U-verse success shows Project VIP will succeed Read more about: KanREN, rural telecommunications
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Mexican telco Maxcom Telecommunications has filed for Chapter 11 protection in the U.S. bankruptcy court in Delaware as a way of restarting a recapitalization plan that creditors initially rejected. That plan, led by private equity firm Ventura Capital and others, would inject $45 million of capital into the company in exchange for full operating control. It would also allow the investor group to bid for Maxcom's outstanding shares and 44 percent of its current equity interest. Maxcom has had a tough time competing with America Movil (NYSE: AMX), which controls about 80 percent of Mexico's fixed lines. Maxcom's creditors narrowly rejected the recapitalization plan, which includes "an exchange of 80 percent of existing notes for new notes with reduced coupon payments and extended maturity," a Reuters story said. About 48.7 percent of senior noteholders have now agreed to the plan, however, and Maxcom is hoping to use the court-administered bankruptcy process to move forward. In the filing, Maxcom, which provides fixed line services in five Mexican cities--Puebla, Mexico City, Queretar, San Luis Potsi and Tehuacan--said it had assets of $11.11 billion and debts of $402.3 million. For more:
- Reuters has this story Related articles:
Maxcom's shares jump 18 percent on restructuring, Ventura Capital takeover
Mexico may lift foreign ownership cap on telcos Read more about: Bankruptcy, Maxcom
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Parker: Justin Bieber, the cloud and the quest for virtualization
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