Today's Top Stories Lumos Networks reported that its fiber to the cell site (FTTC) business continued to perform well in the first quarter of 2014 as the telco added 633 sites, representing a year-over-year increase in total FTTC sites of 56 percent. Total FTTC revenues rose to $4.4 million, up sequentially from $4.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. The service provider has reiterated its goal to reach 825 FTTC sites by the end of the year and its target of selling 500 to 700 what it calls unique and second FTTC circuits this year. It also maintained its target for 1,500 FTTC sites over upcoming years. One of the key initiatives Lumos took to accelerate its FTTC business was to select Cisco as its core router supplier for its 850-mile Project Ark Carrier Ethernet MPLS/IP network overlay that's designed primarily for FTTC traffic. The company expects to complete Project Ark in the third quarter of 2014 and begin migrating fiber bandwidth traffic onto the Ark in the fourth quarter. Besides FTTC, Lumos also raised its target for connecting its fiber to data centers from 20 by the middle of 2015 to 20 by the end of 2014. Lumos cites the data center connectivity opportunity as a major growth area, particularly as more enterprises move their traffic into the cloud. Supporting these initiatives is its growing fiber network. During the quarter, the service provider added 53 fiber route miles and now has a fiber route mile network of 7,467. In addition, Lumos added 43 on-net buildings in the quarter to reach a total of 1,387. The company said it is on track to complete a 53-mile long-haul route from Richmond to Charlottesville, Virginia, by the second quarter. Despite its gains, the service provider still saw softness in its Enterprise Data and Transport segments, which declined sequentially to $10.5 million and $11.1 million from $10.6 million and $12.1 million, respectively. Total company revenue was $50.1 million, down from $52.5 million in the first quarter of 2013 and $51.0 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. Likewise, total Adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter of 2014 was $22.6 million, compared to $24.7 million in the first quarter of 2013 and $24.0 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. "Our focus is to keep operating costs roughly flat in 2014 versus 2013. However, our overriding goal is to continue to invest in our fiber infrastructure in the form of Project Ark, with the booking of approximately 500-700 new FTTC circuits and an aggressive expansion of data center connectivity," said Tim Biltz, CEO and President of Lumos Networks, in the earnings release. "We expect our FTTC revenue growth in 2014 to exceed 40%." Looking toward the rest of the year, Lumos is revising both its revenue guidance from $200 million to $204 million to approximately $200 million and its Adjusted EBITDA guidance from $94 million to $96 million to approximately $90 million. The telco said it is "temporarily suspending providing long-term goals for annual data growth." Shares of Lumos were listed at $13.82 in Wednesday morning trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange. For more:
- see the earnings release Special report: Wireline telecom earnings in the first quarter of 2014 Related articles:
Lumos employs Cisco for its Project Ark wireless backhaul initiative
Lumos to add 200 wireless towers to fiber network in 2014
Lumos Q4 strategic data revenue jumps 11.3% to $31.2M, offsets legacy voice losses
Lumos steps up focus on connecting towers to fiber Read more about: Business Service
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Frontier continued to see its residential broadband customer base soar in the first quarter as it added 37,200 new subscribers, ending the period with a total of 1.9 million customers. The service provider also made some progress with its video business, adding 5,000 net customers, bringing it to a total of 390,300 customers as of the end of March. Total residential revenue was $496 million for the first quarter of 2014 as compared to $501.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2013, a 1.1 percent sequential decrease in the quarter. Average monthly revenue per customer was $59.07, up 28 cents from the first quarter of 2013, but down 37 cents from $59.44 in the fourth quarter of 2013. Frontier said that the sequential quarterly decline in residential revenue per customer includes the impact of a November 2013 through January 2014 promotion with a bundled Frontier Secure offering. In the business sector, revenue was $525 million, down 3.4 percent sequentially from $543.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. It attributes the sequential quarterly decline in average monthly business revenue per customer to lower business revenue from the decline in non-switched access revenue. On a more positive note, the telco improved the rate of decline in business customers by 12 percent, losing about 4,400 customers as compared to 5,100 customers in the three months ended March 31, 2013. During the most recent quarter, average monthly business revenue per customer was $651.53, or 1.0 percent higher than the first quarter of 2013 and 1.9 percent lower than the fourth quarter of 2013. Frontier has been enhancing its business portfolio with new offerings, including its recently launched security suite for small businesses and expanding its Ethernet footprint in New York, for example. Due to ongoing and expected declines in voice revenue, overall customer revenue declined 2.3 percent sequentially to $1.02 billion, which was partially offset by an increase in data services revenue, various carrier dispute settlements, timing on certain CPE sales and lower non-switched access revenue due to the expected decline in wireless backhaul. Ongoing customer retention efforts enabled it to reduce total customer losses sequentially to 9,600 from 18,700 customers in the three months ended December 31, 2013. "First quarter broadband net additions of more than 37,000 established yet another new quarterly record for Frontier, growing share in 91% of our markets," said Maggie Wilderotter, chairwoman and CEO of Frontier, in the earnings release. "In addition, our first quarter go-to-market and retention efforts saw the lowest drop in residential customers in over five years with fewer than 10,000 customers lost in the quarter." Overall revenue was $1.15 billion, down sequentially from $1.18 billion from the fourth quarter of 2013 and $1.2 billion in the first quarter of 2013. Frontier's first-quarter revenue declined sequentially by $26.3 million, or 2.2 percent, from the fourth quarter of 2013 and by $51.4 million, or 4.3 percent, from the first quarter of 2013. Shares of Frontier closed at $5.96, down 4 cents or 0.67 percent, at the end Tuesday trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange. For more:
- see the earnings release Special report: Wireline telecom earnings in the first quarter of 2014 Related articles:
Frontier says FCC's CAF II 10 Mbps proposal isn't realistic
West Va. forced to give $2.5M in leftover broadband stimulus funds to the NTIA
Frontier CEO sees AT&T acquisition as 'easy compared to others'
AT&T, Frontier, other telcos' rural broadband boosted by $255M in CAF-I grants Read more about: first quarter earnings 2014
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CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and Advanced Communications Technology, a Sheridan, Wyo.-based local telco, are among the companies that have been awarded contracts to equip the Wyoming state Unified Network with 100G optical capabilities. According to an article in the Wyoming Business Report, the two service providers will lay dual 100G rings that are tying all state schools and agencies together. The network consists of multiple geographic elements. ACT was awarded two contracts to build out network facilities in the northern part of the state, while CenturyLink will handle the majority of the southern circle of the state, including Casper, Cheyenne, the I-80 corridor and Jackson. Set to be completed in July, the network backbone will be built in eight segments. CenturyLink will construct six segments. Today, Wyoming operates 2.5 Gbps circuits. When this network is completed, it will provide access points in eight communities that will be anchored at schools or state offices. Although the network is being built to provide service to state and local government agencies and schools, Aaron Sopko, general manager of ACT, told the Wyoming Business Report that it could serve as a foundation to provide services to businesses. "Basically because of the state's business and this award, we will be turning up our network," Sopko said. "That way the next guy that comes down the road and says 'I want [a] 100-gigabit [connection] we'll have that capacity in place for the most part. What the state is allowing us to do is make that investment."
For more:
- Wyoming Business Report has this article Related articles:
CenturyLink shakes up public cloud market with new pricing regime
FCC's Connect America Fund II receives mixed response
CenturyLink plans to reduce carbon exhaust by 20% by 2024
CenturyLink restores 911 service in Washington, Oregon
U.S. fiber penetration reaches 39.3 percent of buildings, says VSG Read more about: State Schools, Wyoming
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Telus has launched an ambitious plan to invest more than $1.2 billion to expand its wireline fiber and wireless networks to reach more customers in Quebec through 2016. Under its plan, the telco will invest $640 million across the province in 2014, the final year of a three-year plan unveiled in 2012, and will spend another $700 million in 2015 and 2016 to build infrastructure. By the end of 2016, Telus' investment in operations and infrastructure in Quebec since 2000 will exceed $20 billion. A big part of its wireline investment will focus on bringing its fiber to the home (FTTH) service to more homes. The service provider plans to extend fiber-based broadband service to what it says are thousands of households in nine cities: Cap-Santé, Donnacona, Neuville, Pont Rouge, Rimouski, Saint-Apollinaire, Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures, Saint-Georges and Sept-Îles. The service provider is going to extend the reach of its Optik TV IPTV offering in the Lower St. Lawrence, Gaspésie and Quebec City regions. While it won't release its first-quarter 2014 earnings until tomorrow, Telus reported that it added 38,000 TV subscribers during the fourth quarter. Besides serving residential customers, the company is also connecting more businesses to fiber, particularly in Quebec's industrial parks and business districts. These connections and its data center in Rimouski will serve as a platform to deliver cloud and managed services. It will also deliver information security and risk management through its recent acquisition of Enode. Quebec is just one of many new network expansions Telus is undertaking this year. Earlier, the service provider announced it would spend $121 million in Calgary and $99.5 million in its fiber and rural broadband facilities in the Edmonton region. These investments are part of its three-year, $1.93 billion commitment to expand services in the region. For more:
- see the release Related articles:
TELUS appoints Joe Natale as CEO; Entwistle takes on executive chairman role
Canada allocates another $278M to expand rural broadband availability
Telus increases cloud service power with $67M Kamloops data center Read more about: FierceIPTV
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ATIS is looking to help members in the web ecosystem tackle the emerging HTTP 2.0 concept with the debut of its Open Web Alliance (OWA), an initiative focused on addressing the impact of closed proxies such as those that incorporate the SPDY protocol, which is designed to help reduce the latency of web pages. The organization is focused on developing requirements for an open service optimization proxy while supporting necessary encryption and privacy for Internet consumers. Unlike the early days of the Internet where web pages were static, today's websites are far more complex. "Fast forward to today when you click on a single web page, you're probably accessing upwards of a hundred different sites ... Each have their own sessions established with them," said Jim McEachern, senior technology consultant for ATIS, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "That combined with the very graphic intensive side of the content has an impact on performance and the protocols aren't optimized for that current reality." Developed by Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), SPDY has been submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force for standardization as HTTP 2.0, which ATIS said is set to be proposed as a new standard in November. Although SPDY has the benefit of reducing Internet site latency by redirecting Internet traffic through a single opaque tunnel across the network, ATIS said this bundling could hinder reasonable network management, content distribution and network services. "The problem is if you take all of that traffic and you bundle into one opaque tunnel, and it's opaque because you encrpypt the entire tunnel, it looks to the network like a single fat pipe that goes through and the service provider can't see nothing about where it is ultimately going to," McEachern said. "All of those value added services and functions it is providing can no longer can be provided because they have this invisible flow of traffic going through the network." What's more, the SPDY proxy also could "break" existing content delivery optimization mechanisms used by service providers, which would degrade service quality for consumers. For more:
- see the release
Related articles:
ATIS and SIP Forum aim to ensure IP-level interconnections
ATIS, SIP Forum form IP-NNI task force Read more about: Google
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