CenturyLink in Advanced Talks to Merge With Level 3 Communications - Interweb is doomed

Sat Oct 29 00:32:18 UTC 2016

It's funny you should mention that. I just learned that our CL traffic rides on a single lambda is a Level3 fiber. Oddly, though, the cost to buy that same circuit directly from Level3 is twice as high.

Which bodes ill for circuit pricing in the reduced-competition environment following the merger. A similar thing happened to us when L3 bought TWT. In both cases L3 says "but you're getting such a better network!" Alas, that turned out to be not the case with the TWT acquisition, as merger mishaps caused numerous outages. 

 -mel

> On Oct 28, 2016, at 7:25 PM, Jared Geiger <jared at compuwizz.net> wrote:
> 
> Savvis 3561 still exists on Centurylink's side too. 6 networks down to 1
> ... How much of that fiber for each network was running in the same conduit
> to begin with anyway?
> 
> Centurylink
> Qwest
> Savvis
> 
> Level3
> Global Crossing
> TWTC
> 
>> On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 12:24 PM, joel jaeggli <joelja at bogus.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 10/28/16 12:18 PM, Mel Beckman wrote:
>>> Level3 hasn't even finished migrating its TWTelecom customers to the L3
>> AS yes, and it's been years. So I don't think you can expect any faster
>> transition for CL.
>> 3549 still exists...
>>> -mel beckman
>>> 
>>>> On Oct 28, 2016, at 2:16 PM, Timothy Lister <incudie at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> So if this went through, how would it happen? Does 3356 (L3) absorb
>> 209's
>>>> (CL) infrastructure and slowly make customers change their peering
>> config
>>>> to hit 3356 instead?
>>>> 
>>>> You make a good point, I have at least a couple clients that peer to
>> both
>>>> providers for redundancy. One of which just recently signed an agreement
>>>> with CenturyLink for the sole purpose of fail over.
>>>> 
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> Re: CenturyLink in Advanced Talks to Merge With Level 3 Communications -
>>>> Interweb is doomed
>>>> From: Jima <nanog at jima.us>
>>>> To: <nanog at nanog.org>
>>>>>>> On 10/27/2016 12:36, Nevin Gonsalves via NANOG wrote:
>>>>>>> :-)
>>>> http://www.wsj.com/articles/centurylink-in-advanced-talks-
>> to-merge-with-level-3-communications-1477589011
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> This is great! Except for all of their mutual customers who had circuits
>>>> from both for redundancy. (See also: Level 3's and TWTC's mutual
>>>> customers, and probably a long list of other M&A I'm not thinking of
>>>> off-hand.)
>>>> 
>>>> OK, I lied about it being great anyway.
>>>> 
>>>>     Jima
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> Re: CenturyLink in Advanced Talks to Merge With Level 3 Communications -
>>>> Interweb is doomed
>>>> From: Jima <nanog at jima.us>
>>>> To: <nanog at nanog.org>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 