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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