Telecom Tidbits #2446

According to Lookout Security, “More than six million user accounts and personal records were breached in January alone. Nine major companies were compromised, including Sanrio, the owners of the Hello Kitty brand; Supercell, a popular mobile gaming company; and Popeyes Louisiana Chicken, a well-known fast food chain. And 44 percent of the January breaches included stolen passwords, Social Security numbers or dates of birth. These pieces of personal information are valuable to criminals, since they may be able to sell it online to identity thieves.” Maybe change your password from password or your child’s DOB to something a little secure.

Just as they are getting acquired by Windstream, EarthLink finally gets its stuff together. ELNK announced that in six months they have deployed SD-WAN functionality to about 1700 offices for 41 customers. That is pretty impressive but the technology (SD-WAN) is best deployed at small offices, rural and branch locations. It is where the tech gets the best ROI.

FYI… SD-WAN, like WebRTC, is a technology NOT a product. Stop trying to sell the tech!!!

IPO’s are on the horizon. Fuze got another bag of VC cash and hired a CEO to take them to the public land. I hear that Star2Sar is thinking the same thing.

Speaking of cashing out, my client, Hunt Telecom in Louisiana, got acquired by CS&L aka Uniti Fiber. Congrats to Jason, Kevin, Robert and Troy!!!

LUMOS Networks got grabbed by investment firm EQT for $950 million cash.

One weird acquisition: Atlassian spent $425 million on task management provider, Trello. Altassian owns Hipchat (a Slack competitor) and JIRA. It seems like a good combo.

A head scratcher: Fonality got bought by Netfortis. Asterisk and Genband.

ARRIS is buying Ruckus from Brocade because “Every carrier will need to be in wireless.”

TelePacific is coming into 2017 with its acquisition of UC provider DSCI. They will be re-branding the new nationwide managed services provider at the Vegas CP show. Yesterday at a partner event, TelePacific CEO Dick Jalkut told the room that they had spent $500K on ITx and UCx demo centers around the country as well as building out a SOC (security operations center) in St. Louis. Any current TelePacific partner can visit the SOC. You might want to ask if they will pick up the airfare. TelePacific isn’t giving up on network – it is what made them the regional giant that they are – but all bets for the future of the company lie with the strategic products – like security, managed IT, Office365 and a Broadsoft UCaaS offering – that DSCI strengthens with their own experience and products in those areas..

OTT UCaaS provider, Panterra, has inked another distribution deal; this time with VoIP Supply.

Tags: earthlink, managed it, mergers, SDN, security, telepacific, UC, WAN, wireless
Related tags: provider, security, telepacific, million