| | Watch for someone to try acquiring Level3. The commenters here are barking up the wrong tree. Watch out for AT&T or Verizon to try to acquire Level3's nationwide fiber network. Even though this would cause very, very unhealthy market concentration in the backbone bandwidth market. | |
|
 patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY
kudos:1 | Re: Watch for someone to try acquiring Level3. said by SuperWISP:The commenters here are barking up the wrong tree. Watch out for AT&T or Verizon to try to acquire Level3's nationwide fiber network. Even though this would cause very, very unhealthy market concentration in the backbone bandwidth market. They don't need it, unless to knock out a competitor. AT&T has AT&T CLEC/LD's global fiber network, and SBC's smaller fiber network, still not merged. Verizon has the mother of all backbones, Verizon Business/UUNet/MCI. | |
|
 tubbynetreminds me of the danse russePremium,MVM
join:2008-01-16
Chandler, AZ | is l(3) hurting? for some reason i have always felt that they are one of the most stable carriers/clecs. they also have a large presence of backbone in most areas that verizon serves (save for the southwest). some of their routes might take different paths, but it would almost seem like a moot purchase, unless you are strictly looking at the "puchase just for the sake of ownership" angle, in which i would hope that the regulatory powers that be deny such a request.
q.
--
"...if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself..." | |
|
 | | | Re: Watch for someone to try acquiring Level3. Their financials have been disaster for awhile now. They are very slowly starting to claw themselves out of their hole. The debt Level3 has is enough to discourage anyone from trying to buy them right now.
--
"This is a bus. You know how big a bus is?" | |
|
| |  trparkyApple... YUMPremium,MVM
join:2000-05-24
Cleveland, OH
kudos:1 | Re: Watch for someone to try acquiring Level3. But Level3 was one of the best backbone providers in the US.
--
Tom | |
|
| | | | | Re: Watch for someone to try acquiring Level3. said by trparky:But Level3 was one of the best backbone providers in the US. The problem is, during the dot ka-boom, a lot of backbones were built (unfortunately very little local access fiber though).
Many of those companies went into bankruptcy and did a debt for equity swap (I don't believe Level 3 did), and now can offer bandwidth for next to nothing.
Bandwidth is a commodity product today. | |
|
| | | | |
| | | | | | | Re: Watch for someone to try acquiring Level3. said by trparky:But good quality bandwidth is expensive. I won't touch Cogent with a barge poll ever since they started having peering disagreements with many of the other backbone providers. When looking for a web host I always look for one that doesn't use Cogent. Cogent isn't likely to have anymore major peering disputes. They basically called the bluff of a lot of their competitors, and won against much bigger companies.
They've been a default-free/transit-free network for a couple years now, that's not going to change. | |
|
| |  rawgerzThe hell was that?Premium
join:2004-10-03
Grove City, PA | So they just go into bankruptcy then sell the network | |
|
| | | | | Re: Watch for someone to try acquiring Level3. said by rawgerz:So they just go into bankruptcy then sell the network No one is buying right now... And two, they don't need to since their cash flow is improving. They were cash flow positive not long ago, before the economy screwed everyone over.
--
"This is a bus. You know how big a bus is?" | |
|
| | Like patcat and tubbynet pointed out, this deal wouldn't happen as they don't need Level 3 to provide those services.
It would be purely for the sake of removing a competitor, and no regulator would approve such a blatantly anti-competitive deal like that.
AFAIK, Level 3 never went bankrupt, so it's still carrying massive amounts of debt compared to Cogent et al. And thus, as NetAdmin pointed out, their financials are ugly (though improving). | |
|
|
|
·
·
·