Covad and MegaPath Merge, More Activity Expected

Covad Communications Companyand MegaPath say they have agreed to a merger combining their businesses to create a larger managed services company serving business customers, though Covad's wholesale operations will continue as well.

D. Craig Young, MegaPath CEO, will take the post of Executive Chairman of the combined businesses, while Pat Bennett, CEO of Covad, who will continue as Chief Executive Officer.

Covad offers IP broadband services in more than 4,400 central offices nationwide through its commercial and wholesale distribution channels, though the bulk of revenue still comes from the wholesale side of the business, where Covad sells service to wholesale partners including AT&T, Verizon Business, and Sprint.

MegaPath sells hosted VoIP, managed security, MPLS VPNs for connecting multiple sites, and SSL VPNs to19,000 direct SMB and enterprise customers.

Consolidation in the telecommunications industry is not new, nor is consolidation in the competitive telecom industry, so the deal is not a surprise in that regard. The "roll up" is a time-tested growth strategy in the competitive communications, cable and wireless industries. . Nor is it surprising that company executives say more deals are coming.

Telecom is a scale business, and scale is doubly important when margins are under pressure, as is the case for virtually all legacy telecom products. When profit margins get squeezed, financial performance can be maintained by selling more units. And that means more scale.

The combined businesses will be owned by Platinum and MegaPath investors.

Elections Matter: Competitive Carriers Challenge Telco Wholesale Pricing

In the U.S. communications business, some things don't change, and among those unchanging realities is that competitive local exchange carriers believe they should have widespread rights to use access facilities owned by the former Regional Bell Operating Companies (Qwest, Verizon and AT&T), paying wholesale prices with healthy discounts.

The former RBOCs just as vociferously argue that such access should be available, but not on a mandated basis, and only at market-based rates. Those fights were particularly fierce earlier in the decade, but have been relatively muted over the past several years. But nothing is ever completely settled in the communications business.

Eight competitive communications providers and Comptel have asked the Federal Communications Commission to adopt rules that would lead to lower prices for broadband access and transport. The petition for "expedited rulemaking" will not, as its name suggests, result in anything actually happening very soon.

The request must, by law, be circulated for response, and those responses will be vigorous. The request also comes at a time when larger issues, especially the shape of a new national broadband policy, are being weighed as well.

Comptel, 360networks, Broadview Networks, Cbeyond, Covad Communications, NuVox, PAETEC, Sprint Nextel and tw telecom have asked the FCC to create new procedures that would require the former Bell Operating Companies to offer wholesale access at "going-forward rates," plus a "profit margin or markup" of about 22 percent.

The concept is arcane for anybody who is not a communications policy expert or communications attorney, but essentially boils down to a competitor belief that prices are too high, and that the changed political complexion of the FCC will allow changes more in line with CLEC thinking both on mandatory wholesale and robust discounts on wholesale facilities used by competitors.

The perhaps unstated hope is that the forthcoming national broadband plan might address terms and conditions for mandatory wholesale access to optical broadband facilities owned by the former RBOCs, something competitive providers would dearly like to win, and which existing rules do not support.

Still, the petitioners do not expect immediate action, as the request has to be circulated for public comment, and will, as usual, face heated opposition from Qwest, AT&T and Verizon.

Still, it has to be noted that elections have consequences. The new petition might not have been deemed to have a chance of upside in the previous presidential administration.

Covad Dips Toe into Metro Wi-Fi

Covad Communications is trying a different approach to metro Wi-Fi services, targeting services at businesses rather than consumers to create a revenue base.

Covad will build a Wi-Fi test network in a square-mile business district in San Carlos, Calif., using an approach far more narrow than what a regional nonprofit and a consortium including Cisco Systems and IBM had once envisioned. Covad also will limit its downside by agreeing to operate the network for a period of three months.

An earlier proposal by the Silicon Valley Network and Silicon Valley Metro Connect didn't take off, and revenue was the chief culprit. Azulstar, the startup that was to build and operate the network, couldn't get funding for two test networks at about $500,000 each.

That was supposed to be the start of a project serving 1,500 square miles and about 40 cities.

Technology really isn't the issue. Covad wants to find out whether it can get enough small business users to anchor a larger or more permanent effort.

Covad’s wireless business unit already serves business customers in San Carlos, allowing Covad to overlay the Wi-Fi capability on top of its fixed wireless broadband service. Central to the test is discovery of whether a repeatable financial and operational model exists.

Following the completion of the test, Covad Wireless will explore expanding the mesh service to additional locations in the region.

Covad Wireless operates California’s largest fixed broadband wireless network serving businesses, and the company views the trial as a way to test a theory: that it can reach incremental new customers in the very-small and home office segments it so far has not focused on.

Up to this point, Covad Wireless has focused on business customers requiring a T1 or higher bandwidth. So the issue is whether a sustainable business case exists for users who may not need, or are not willing to pay for, nailed up T1 connections.

CLECs Touch Few Buildings in 6 Verizon Markets

By now, you'd think there would be significant optical fiber pulled to commercial buildings in major and secondary markets, even though you'd suspect it is tough getting fiber in outlying suburban strip malls, for example. But it appears optical fiber connections to commercial sites remains a significant work in progress. In six Verizon markets, for example, all competitors to Verizon put together can reach but a small fraction of sites.

Limited Fiber in 6 Verizon Markets

In disclosing for the first time its own facilities-based access to buildings in the New York market, XO Communications provides evidence of just how tough the high-bandwidth metro access business remains.

Specifically, XO has its own facilities in place at just 0.01 percent of all commercial buildings in six markets Verizon serves, and in which Verizon seeks further deregulation of its wholesale obligations.

XO Communications's data on alternate access facilities is consistent with GeoResults data showing the total on-net building presence, XO says. In aggregate, competitors serve only 1.49 percent of commercial buildings in the six markets.

XO Communications also says that even in the areas where Verizon central offices have the highest density of alternate high-capacity facilities, competitors have slight access to most buildings, reaching a bit more than four percent of commercial buildings only in Virginia Beach, Va.

In Boston, less than 1.5 percent of commercial buildings have alternate facilities-based access, even in the areas with the highest density of alternate providers. In Philadelphia and Providence, R.I., less than one percent of commercial buildings have competitive access facilities.

At least one-third of all wire centers in five of the six MSAs have no competitive provider lit fiber at all. In Pittsburgh, nearly 80 percent of all wire centers have no competitor lit fiber connecting any commercial buildings.

$2.4 Billion CLEC Decision Near

Sometime between now and Dec. 5th, the Federal Communications Commission is slated to make decisions that could significantly raise wholesale access and transport tariffs in six markets, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Providence, and Virginia Beach.

Customers can anticipate an additional $2.4 billion in extra charges for communications services, according to a study by QSI Consulting, if the rules are relaxed.

Basically, Verizon argues that market competition in each of the six markets is equivalent to that found in the Omaha, Neb. market, the benchmark used by the Federal Communications Commission to deregulate wholesale access rules and rates that have been favorable to competitors.

Up to this point, competitors in the six markets have been able to buy wholesale access and transport at rates below “retail” special access rates. Should Verizon prevail, it would be free to raise prices as it sees fit, with the likely result that wholesale rates would rise to just about what the retail special access rates are.

QSI estimates increased telecommunications expenses incurred by consumers for retail mass market, enterprise, and broadband access services would be $1.054 million, $747 million, and $565 million.. This amounts to a rate increase of $114 annually for an average household, QSI says.

Users in New York would wind up paying as much as $1.4 billion extra. In Philadelphia costs could rise $345 million; $380 million in Boston; $104 million in Virginia Beach and $177 million in Pittsburgh.

Consumers would wind up paying as much as $1 billion more for services; enterprises $751 million and broadband access users $565 million.

Opponents of the plan tend to think they have done what is needed to make the FCC commissioners aware of how woefully undeveloped access competition is in the six markets. But one never knows.

“The concern is that though the numbers are clear, there are media issues also on commissioner minds,” says Covad VP Angela Simpson. The danger is that the forbearance issue might wind up being a bargaining chip as commissioners grapple with the broader media deregulation issues.

Covad Goes Private

Covad Communications Group has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Platinum Equity in an all-cash transaction valuing Covad at $1.02 a share. Platinum Equity is a global merger and acquisition firm. Irrespective of what it means for Covad as a financial asset, it will be interesting to see how Covad and its customers might benefit.

In some ways, Covad is a hard company to explain in simple terms, much as EarthLink is somewhat convoluted. "National local" possibly obscures as much as it clarifies. It provides fixed wireless, T1, DSL, hosted voice, wholesale and retail services. It does operate a national network to service local access markets. It is a small business specialist but has lots of consumer end users. It has lots of central office co-locations. The problem is that all those things get done by other entities as well.

Covad's line-powered voice offering actually is unique in the market. But that's a position praiseworthy and troublesome at the same time. Whether something is "unique" or "odd" is a matter of perspective. There's no question but that line-powered voice is positioned in its own quadrant, as far as mass market voice services.

The issue is how much effort it takes to make the benefits clear to a typical consumer abd whether the benefits are valuable enough to differentiate the offering. Cable companies decided it was a negative to offer anything other than "digital voice" to customers, with no new features. At the other end of the spectrum, hundreds of millions of people had no problem at all grasping what Skype was all about.

Everything in between takes a bit of explaining.

Covad and McAfee Partner

Make a note of this: Covad Communications and McAfee are partnering to deliver bundled services for small-business customers. The companies say Covad will bundle McAfee Total Protection for Small Business services with its broadband products in a new offering called Business Essentials.

Here's why you need to take note: retailers in the telecom space are used to selling services on a monthly recurring fee model. So the next big shift in business model is to start selling other services in the application realm that are delivered as a service, not a product, not a "box" or "device." Up to this point, most retail points of contact have had difficulty whenver they have been asked to behave in ways different from past behavior.

Data equipment resellers often have stumbled when asked to sell recurring fee telecom services. Telecom resellers have flopped at selling hosted PBX services. Interconnect dealers have not been able to sell Cisco router-based services.

Increasingly, hosted applications, sold just like telecom services, are going to be the way some legacy retailers make a jump "up the value stack" into applications, in a way that is culturally comfortable. This is a big deal and Covad is on the leading edge. Sure, you might argue, security services are a natural, and are sold by cable companies and telcos to consumer buyers.

That's true. What's more interesting here is the move to create a new services model extending beyond connectivity services and up into the applications layer, in a way that makes sense for the retail sales partners. The next step is further in the direction of services for the desktop and back office.

This is going to be a big deal.

Wal-Mart to Sell HughesNet Services

Need a little satellite broadband with your order? Wal-Mart customers will be able to buy HughesNet satellite broadband services soon. Sure, it is a niche. But there are lots of big niches in the communications business. About 10 percent of all U.S. end users live places where the local telephone company is not one of the big brand names. Also, for some of us, wireless is a good way to back up a primary wired broadband connection. In my case, Covad as a primary for primary in-home business and personal use, plus 3G wireless primarily for mobility, but also as the backup in case the primary service fails for any reason.

ISP Subscriber Growth Favors Tier One Providers

Not that anybody should be surprised by the latest ISP subscriber figures, but large tier one telco and cable providers are racking up more market share while independent mass market providers are losing share. The one countervailing trend is that providers focused on the small and mid-sized business, such as Covad, continue to grow.

For those of you familiar with the SME space, it is, always has been and always will be a fertile segment for independent providers of all sorts. The latest ISP figures only confirm that observation, again.

"S*** Happens, Even to Cisco, at&t and Apple

Duke University's campus Wi-Fi network reported was being flooded by Apple iPhone MAC address requests, temporarily knocking out anywhere from a dozen to 30 wireless access points at a time. Turns out that isn't the case. It was a powering issue. Good news for Apple, as the iPhone isn't the culprit at all. Still, the outages are a reminder.

For those of you who continue to think communications infrastructure is easy, this is a reminder that "stuff happens," all the time, in unexpected ways, to the "dumb pipes" we all depend on. I just got a new Linksys Wi-Fi router to hook up to my Covad T1, for example, and though the install wizard was really nicely put together, the Linksys would not talk to the Cisco router.

It is supposed to be so easy there is no indication anywhere in any of the documentation about what Web site to go to, or what support number to call, in case installation failed, which it did, repeatedly. I finally realized I was going to require tech support so figured out where to get that from Linksys. The IM support system worked fast, and well. The connection is up. But not before reinstalling the software load.

I recall remarking to the Best Buy salesperson that I didn't have any questions, and wouldn't need any help, because I expected the hardware choice and install to be "drop dead simple." That clearly is the way Linksys designed the system, and I suspect it almost always works. Unfortunately, in this case we had to reinstall the software.

The Covad install took "longer than expected" because we were getting unexpected packet loss. To make a moderately long story short, it was a physical media failure on a short jumper in the network interface unit. Go figure. That's the last thing one would expect from new wiring.

The point is, even well designed consumer interface procedures, such that put together by Linksys, Cisco, Apple and Covad, will fail on occasion, for all sorts of apparently odd reasons. Nothing is always drop dead simple, even when well-designed processes nearly always have that intention and result.

Just because we use "dumb pipes" to some extent does not mean the networks are not occasionally "surly" and prone to failure. Far from it.