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Due to all of this activity, the ability to provide

a sheer breadth and depth of offerings has be-

come the name of the game for competitive car-

riers and their channel partners going forward.

“Corporations need secure connectivity, with

the ability to securely connect apps to cloud ser-

vice providers,” said Rick Calder, president and

CEO at GTT Communications, which saw a sig-

nificant amount of M&A activity in 2016 that has

continued well into 2017. “They need to be sure

that their network providers can offer seamless

connectivity anywhere. Consolidation is a real

boon to competitive carriers, because they can

now hold their own against the incumbents.”

Consolidation also allows competitive providers

to move upmarket.

“Multinational corporations have complex

needs, including connectivity and bandwidth

to connect around the world, plus the ability to

reach IT apps in cloud,” Calder said. “Another

big trend is the ability to give app-layer control

to clients via SD WAN, so that they can man-

age that bandwidth themselves. We are well

positioned to be a provider of choice for large

enterprises as they look to change the nature of

their WANs, and it’s a nice opportunity for us to

expand our agent program.”

GTT is putting its money where its mouth is:

It closed its Hibernia transaction on Jan 9, and

recently acquired Perseus, a provider of high-

speed network connectivity serving many of the

world’s top financial and e-commerce compa-

nies, for $37.5 million. That followed the quietly

closed acquisition of the assets and customer

base of Giglinx Global, Inc., in May of this year,

for a reported $21 million.

By

Tara

Seals

Consolidation,

Competition

and the

Channel

C

onsolidation has been ramping up significantly in the

competitive carrier space, with notable transactions

including some of the most well-known CLECs: Windstream

swooped for both EarthLink and Broadview, and CenturyLink

bought Level 3, just to name a few higher-profile transactions.

Core Communications

Channel

Vision

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July - August, 2017

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