Today's Top Stories Telus continues to see strong adoption of its TV and broadband services, adding 23,000 Telus TV subscribers and 15,000 high-speed Internet customers during the second quarter. Total Telus TV subscribers rose 16 percent to 865,000, while broadband Internet connections were up 5.6 percent to 1.4 million. However, total TV additions were down from the same period a year ago due to what Telus said was slower market growth. The telco's broadband Internet net additions of 15,000 were up 2,000 year-over-year. The high-speed subscriber base of 1.43 million is up 76,000 or 5.6 percent from a year ago. Growth of TV and broadband drove up second-quarter 2014 wireline results 2.4 percent, or $28 million, year-over-year to $1.23 billion. The service provider said that this "growth was generated by increased data revenue, partially offset by continued declines in legacy voice local and long-distance revenues." Telus also narrowed its total network access lines (NALs) losses to 15,000, down from 38,000 a year ago, a 61 percent year-over-year improvement. Residential NAL losses of 19,000 improved by 13,000 or 41 percent over the prior year period, while business NALs increased by 4,000 compared to a loss of 6,000 a year ago. Total NALs of 3.2 million were lower by 109,000 year-over-year, reflecting an improvement of 54,000 in NAL losses compared to the same period a year ago. Telus said the improvement in NAL losses "reflects the success of Telus' customers first initiatives and bundling strategy, offset by ongoing wireless and Internet substitution and competition." From an overall financial perspective, Telus' operating revenue grew 4.4 percent year-over-year to $2.69 billion, while earnings before interest, income taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased by 7.5 percent to $1 billion. Likewise, net income increased by 33 per cent to $348 million, while basic earnings per share (EPS) rose by 41 percent to 62 cents. For more:
- see the earnings release Special report: Wireline telecom earnings in the second quarter of 2014 Related articles:
Telus' Natale: We'll build fiber to the premises on a modular basis
Telus to invest over $1.2B to expand fiber network to Quebec-based businesses, residential customers
Canadian telcos using fiber to woo video customers Read more about: IPTV, Broadband Internet
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AT&T (NYSE: T) is upgrading existing fiber to the premises (FTTP) network users in Austin, Texas, to 1 Gbps, joining cable overbuilder Grande Communications as the second provider to support such speeds. Customers that already subscribe to the U-verse with GigaPower service with 300 Mbps will see their Internet speeds be automatically upgraded to 1 Gbps at no additional cost over the next few weeks. In addition, AT&T launched a new interactive TV app exclusively for Austin area residents, called Austin Found, which provides Austin U-verse TV customers personalized information on Austin food, entertainment and other events with just a click of the remote. As an added incentive, AT&T also introduced a new promotion for Austin area residents to entice existing wireless customers to sign up for GigaPower. Subscribers will get a one-time $100 promotional credit on their wireless bill through Nov. 8. Likewise, customers that have GigaPower and want to add AT&T wireless service can also get the wireless credit. The telco is beating out Google Fiber, which plans to start rolling out its own 1 Gbps service sometime later this year. In April, the Internet giant's plans hit a snag when the company revealed it still had to gain approval for 36 active or pending rights of way use permits. However, no other details about geographic locations of the Google Fiber service have been revealed. AT&T and Google aren't the only games in Austin's 1 Gbps town, however. Grande has begun offering its own 1 Gbps service to about a quarter of the cable provider's existing 75,000 Austin customers. The cable overbuilder's service is competitively priced at $65 a month without a contract. Customers who bundle other services such as video and voice will pay even less. For more:
- see the release Related articles:
AT&T to roll out Austin 1 Gbps FTTH service in mid-2014, but pricing not revealed
AT&T extends 1 Gig service to Charlotte, N.C.
AT&T makes San Antonio the next stop for its 1 Gig fiber-based broadband service
AT&T gets green light to bring 1 Gig fiber-based broadband service to Nashville Read more about: FTTH, Grande Communications
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XO Communications is giving its business customers more options to connect to Amazon Web Services' (AWS) cloud computing platform by serving up network connections at speeds ranging from 50 to 500 Mbps. Initially, XO only offered a 1 and 10 Gbps connection to AWS. Having these additional lower speed options will enable XO to target an even broader audience of customers that don't require a Gbps speed connection. Similar to its earlier offering, XO will also offer customers the option to leverage its Bandwidth-on-Demand (BoD) feature and bundle the AWS connection with its IP-VPN technology. Since many businesses will have fluctuating bandwidth needs that could be driven by specific events like data backup, they can use the BoD feature to allocate and pay for the bandwidth increase they need at that time. And by combining the AWS connection with an IP/VPN connection, a multi-site business can connect all of their locations locally, nationwide or internationally over a private connection that is not prone to the security risks of the public Internet. For more:
- see the release Related articles:
XO deploys Infinera's DTN-X across its 100G network
XO introduces new self-service portal
XO serves up new bandwidth-on-demand capability
XO lays path for network expansion, completes $500M financing round
XO names Qwest exec Christopher Ancell as new CEO Read more about: Xo Communications, Amazon AWS, Network Connections
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Openreach, BT's (NYSE: BT) access network unit, is inviting its service provider customers to participate in a trial where a drop card will be left by engineers asking for feedback from residential customers. The service provider said it plans to run the trial in the North West (Mersey area) for both contractor and Openreach engineering teams. In addition, the service provider plans to run the trial in North/East London patches (Kelly's contractors) and West-Central London (Quinn's contractors). Service providers have until Aug. 20 to register to opt into the trial. By conducting this trial, Openreach wants to see if there are any differences during the trial between Openreach engineers and contractors. Set to be completed by the end of September, the trial is focused on provisioning services for residential customers. Despite reporting flat first-quarter year-over-year revenues of $2.1 billion, Openreach continues to see growth in fiber-based broadband revenue, which rose 46 percent. Over the past year, the physical line base grew by 12,000 and has increased by 82,000 over the past 12 months. To date, Openreach has passed 20 million premises with its fiber broadband rollout. For more:
- see this report Related articles:
Report: Google Fiber eyeing UK as next broadband stop, poses challenge to BT
BT, CWU hammer out new 33-month labor contract
BT drives wireless/wireline integration with One Phone service for SMBs
BT has potential to disrupt with UK business mobile service
BT Openreach faces Ofcom mandate to accelerate repair, installation times Read more about: Service Provider
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The submarine cable industry just gained another new player as six major service providers have formed a consortium to build and operate a new trans-Pacific cable system to be called "FASTER," with NEC Corporation as the system supplier. Participating companies include China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), KDDI and SingTel. According to these companies, the name FASTER was adopted to represent the cable system's purpose of rapidly serving surging traffic demands. Connecting the United States to two landing locations in Japan, the total amount of investment for the FASTER system is estimated to be about $300 million. FASTER will include six-fiber-pair cable and optical transmission technologies, with an initial design capacity of 60 Terabits (100Gb/s x 100 wavelengths x 6 fiber-pairs). Complete with landing stations at Chikura and Shima in Japan, the FASTER cable will feature seamless connectivity to many neighboring cable systems to extend the capacity beyond Japan to other Asian locations. Connections in the United States will extend the system to major hubs on the West Coast covering the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle areas. The consortium said the building out of the FASTER network will begin immediately and the system is targeted to be ready for service during the second quarter of 2016. FASTER is just one of a number of new trans-Pacific cables to emerge in recent years. Other submarine cables like UNITY offer service providers and other entities a five-fiber-pair trans-Pacific submarine communications cable that links Chikura cable station in Japan and One Wilshire, a major carrier hotel location in Los Angeles, for example. For more:
- see the release Related articles:
Hibernia Networks, TE SubCom begin work on Express submarine cable system
GlobeNet wraps up submarine cable build between Miami and Colombia
Telstra Global adds 100G to Asia Pac UNITY submarine cable
CenturyLink traces San Juan Islands outage to severed submarine cable Read more about: Google, Submarine Cable Industry, China Telecom
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