Today's Top Stories AT&T (NYSE: T) has set an ambitious goal to expand its U-verse broadband to about 57 million locations by 2015 by upgrading its last mile network with more IP DSLAMs and VDSL2. U-verse broadband has become one of the telco's key wireline growth engines and a viable competitor to cable MSOs in the markets where it offers the service. The telco recently reported that as of the end of the third quarter it had 10 million U-verse broadband subscribers in its 22-state footprint, a factor it says is largely due to its $14 billion Project VIP network upgrade plan. Since launching Project VIP last November, the telco has enabled 2.5 million new broadband customer locations. During the quarter, total U-verse high speed Internet subscribers represented about 60 percent of all wireline broadband subscribers, compared with 43 percent in the year-earlier quarter. As of the end of this period, it had a total of 9.7 million U-verse Internet subscribers and 5.3 million TV subscribers. Total U-verse high speed Internet subscribers represented about 60 percent of all of AT&T's wireline broadband subscribers, up from 43 percent in Q3 2012. The telco is not resting on its laurels, however. AT&T now offers a 45 Mbps speed tier, which is available to nearly two-thirds of its U-verse customer base and has plans to offer a 75 Mbps and a 100 Mbps speed tier sometime in "the future." U-verse growth has gotten the attention of Zacks Equity Investment. In a recent report, the financial analysis company said that they "believe the expansion of U-verse services will continue to boost data revenues and ARPU (average monthly revenue per user) in the wireline segment." Interestingly, AT&T's U-verse growth came at a time when two of the largest cable operators, Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), reported that they lost broadband subscribers during the quarter. Cablevision lost 13,000 broadband customers while Time Warner cable lost 24,000. A new MoffettNathanson report said that while cable still commands a dominant 78 percent flow share (share of net adds) of the terrestrial broadband market, during the third quarter it declined year-over-year. Despite this downward trend, Time Warner Cable isn't sitting pat. The cable MSO said during its Q3 earnings call that it is going to launch an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at 4.5 million DSL homes in its footprint, which could have an impact on AT&T particularly in areas where it does not offer U-verse yet. For more:
- see the release
- see this report Special report: Grading the top 13 wireline service providers in Q3 2013
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Level 3 Communications (NYSE: LVLT) has expanded and upgraded its Latin America network in four of the region's largest countries--Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela--to support what it says is a growing desire from carrier and business customers for higher speed integrated IP solutions. Focusing on Buenos Aires, the service provider expanded its Argentina metro Ethernet network, including upgrades to a number of its optical rings in the Macro/Microcenter. In Brazil, Level 3 expanded its national backbone network by deploying a new metro network route in Porto Alegre and enhancing the capacity in Rio de Janeiro to meet increasing demands in the Botafogo and Barra neighborhoods. Being Brazil's largest city, the provider has also upgraded existing fiber paths in the Curitiba-Sao Paulo-Rio de Janeiro route. By adding more submarine capacity to the Sao Paulo-Rio de Janeiro route, Level 3 said it can increase the availability of business services and new IP capacity connecting Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to the most important hubs in the United States and Europe. Finally, in Colombia and Venezuela the service provider extended network coverage. In Venezuela, it added Chuao and La Salle to its Metro plan by deploying new fiber solutions and expanding the capacity of Gateway La Urbina, the main site in Caracas. The service provider's build outs come during a growth surge in the region. During the third quarter, Level 3 reported that Latin America CNS enterprise revenues rose 13.1 percent to $149 million. From an overall trend perspective, a TeleGeography report revealed that international Internet traffic in Latin America is doubling every two years, making Latin America one of the world's fastest growing regions. For more:
- see the release Related articles:
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Liv Garfield, CEO of BT Openreach (NYSE: BT), will leave the UK incumbent telco this spring after nearly three years on the job. She will take the CEO post at Severn Trent.  | | Garfield (Image source: BT) | Garfield became BT Openreach's CEO in April 2011, replacing Steve Robertson, who had led Openreach since the UK incumbent service provider founded the division in 2005 under a government mandate. During her tenure at Openreach, Garfield spearheaded the telco's expansion of its fiber-based broadband service, which is delivered via its hybrid copper/fiber to the cabinet (FTTC) and fiber to the home (FTTH) platforms, from about 4 million premises to over 17 million. Also, the number of customers that subscribe to the fiber-based broadband service has risen from 100,000 to over 2 million. As the organization that oversees BT's last mile copper networks, Openreach has expanded the number of unbundled local loop (ULL) lines that it sells to competitors such as Talk Talk from 7.6 million in April 2011 to 9 million. "It is a huge wrench to leave Openreach but I feel the time is now right to take on a fresh challenge," Garfield said in a release. "Our commercial programme to bring fibre broadband to two thirds of UK premises is almost complete, whilst BT's public sector broadband partnerships are making good progress."
Although Openreach revenue declined 1 percent during its recent second quarter financial reporting period due to regulatory price changes, fiber broadband revenue more than doubled. It began rolling out in another 13 communities including Cornwall, North Yorkshire, Wales, Surrey and Rutland, passing more than 100,000 premises. BT said that they will announce a successor "in due course." Garfield is not the only BT executive to recently leave the UK-based telco. Earlier this year, BT CEO Ian Livingston resigned to take up a new post as the British Minister for Trade and Investment. For more:
- see the release
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TeliaSonera International Carrier is responding to the growing demand for bandwidth from its growing mix of carrier and social media company customers by adding 11,500 dark fiber miles to its network. Through this network expansion, it will extend its reach into 44 American cities by the end of next year. "It's been 13 years since we made this kind of acquisition of fiber in North America specifically," said Ivo Pascucci, sales director, Americas, TSIC in an interview with FierceTelecom. "This give us deeper coverage to more Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets, adds diversity into our existing dark fiber footprint." In addition to North America, this network expansion will provide a diverse connection into South America, where TSIC said it is experiencing rapid growth. "We now have two routes in and out of Miami and Southern Florida," Pascucci said. "With all of the new subsea cables coming in from South America and the growth of traffic and Internet in the region, it's important to get that fiber into that market so we can further build up our gateway for the Latin American region for customers looking to reach the region and traffic coming out of Latin America." This fiber expansion is not based on a "build it and they will come" strategy. In 2013, the service provider added 50 new large customers. For more:
- see the release Related articles:
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Savvis will enhance its reach into Canada with the debut of a second data center in Toronto next summer. Already reserving pre-orders, the CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) data center and cloud services subsidiary said the 100,000-square-foot TR3 data center will support up to 5 megawatts of IT load. Upon completion of this center, Savvis will have a total of four data centers in Canada, two of which are in the Toronto area. Canada has been a major growth point for Savvis and the services it offers large business customers. A recent Vanson Bourne survey revealed that within five years, 70 percent of Canadian IT leaders plan to outsource a majority of their infrastructure to colocation, managed hosting and cloud services. Besides building up the country's data center capacity, the service provider appointed IT and telecom veteran Ash Mathur in October as its new regional VP and country manager for its Canadian operations. The new data center is part of a broader growth effort Savvis is taking to fulfill new and existing customer needs. During the third quarter, it added nearly "80,000 sellable square feet" of data center space. For more:
- see the release Special report: Grading the top 13 wireline service providers in Q3 2013
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