* Also: Nortel and Qwest financials
XO Communications said it is upgrading the capacity of its intercity links to 100Gbps. XO said the upgrade will allow it to more than double network capacity and offer 10Gbps services for content providers, enterprises and service providers in the 37 U.S. cities it serves. Previously, XO services topped out at 2.5Gbps. XO’s upgrade will initially deliver 10 x OC-192 of capacity between any two cities on the XO nationwide network. XO said it will also be able to provision or upgrade customer circuits in a matter of hours vs. days
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Nortel posted a second quarter profit of $366 million on revenue of $2.74 billion. Sales were up from the $2.62 billion for the second quarter of 2005, and $2.38 billion for the first quarter of 2006. Nortel recorded losses of $33 million and $167 million for those periods, respectively. Net earnings in the second quarter of 2006 included a shareholder litigation recovery of $510 million, special charges of $45 million for restructuring and a loss of $10 million on the sale of assets.
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Qwest posted second quarter net income of $117 million on revenue of $3.5 billion. For the same period a year ago, Qwest recorded a loss of $164 million. Sales were driven by high-speed Internet, advanced data products, long distance and wireless. Consumer and small-business primary and secondary access lines, high-speed Internet subscribers, wireless and video customers grew 318,000 from the year-ago quarter.
