David Byrd
Chief Marketing Officer for ANPI
10 Lessons from Volleyball, Part 2
Part 1 of the 10 Business Lessons from Volleyball can be found here. In volleyball, the only play you control yourself is...
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CloudTC and N-Able Acquired
"Australian-owned IP PBX systems company, Vixtel, has completed the acquisition of Silicon Valley based glass phone developer, CloudTC, for an undisclosed figure,"...
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ProfitBricks: Where InfiniBand Meets Cloud 2.0
In a recent meeting with William Toll and Pete Johnson of ProfitBricks, the pair were ecstatic to explain how their company has...
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Proactive Care Puts Operators One Step Ahead
By Thomas Fuerst, Senior Director, Multimedia Solutions MarketingAlcatel-Lucent
Monitoring and analyzing network data proactively saves operators time, money, and customers.
When a network service fails, it makes headlines, ticks off customers, and costs that network operator money. When a failure is headed off in advance, on the other hand, there might not be praise-laden headlines, but it's newsworthy nonetheless.
The traditional approach to customer care has typically been: a disgruntled customer calls customer service and complains of a service interruption or problem; the rep, learning of it for the first time, sends out a technician the next day, and eventually finds a resolution. Often, customers are left feeling put out, and the operator has spent significant time and money resolving the problem. Even worse is the customer who doesn’t call and just feels this is ‘typical’ of their network experience. That is a customer at risk of leaving.
Proactive care flips this dynamic on its head by using predictive analytics to identify potential outages or errors in the network and stop them before they occur. It consists of three main parts: one, constantly monitoring and measuring data on the network; two, real-time analysis of the data; and three, the most important, acting on that analysis to fix the problem.
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10 Lessons from Volleyball
I've played volleyball for over 25 years. I have traveled around the US to watch the pros live - both indoor...
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Emerging Threats Combats a Million Plus Pieces of New Malware a Week
There are 250,000 plus new pieces of malware being produced each day equating to one piece per person in the US in...
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NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability
One of the goals of ETSI NFV is to allow new entrants to provide solutions to carriers based on software instead of...
Full Story »In the Year 2013
January 7, 2013Although it is common to look back on the previous year for highs and lows, I decided to look forward to the top 10 things to monitor in 2013. The order is not of any particular importance but the ten items are of concern or interest to most of us.
- Cloud Services – the growth of cloud services in support of hosted communications, IT infrastructures and application distribution continues unabated. Cloud services appeals to all sizes of businesses and has found useful purpose in the most intransigent businesses that once would have maintained all technology and services in house.
On to 2013
December 24, 2012There will be no more blogs until January 3, 2013.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year!
Free Speech versus an Open Internet
December 20, 2012Most Americans are fervent defenders of the First Amendment right of free speech. The definition of Freedom of Speech has been modified over the years to be both more expansive and in some cases restricted. However, it has persevered and remains fundamental to our political, legislative and judicial practices. I remember during the 2012 Presidential campaign how Mitt Romney was pilloried over his phrase “corporations are people too”.
For Sandy Hook Elementary and Newtown, Connecticut
December 17, 2012When an event as horrific as last Friday’s murders of twenty children and seven adults occurs, it is impossible to not have thoughts and want to comment on the factors that both could have caused or prevented the incident. I ruminated about today’s blog for sometime but cannot find a way to express my sorrow or regret over the loss of so many lives so abruptly. As individuals we cannot effect actions or laws that might reduce such acts of violence in the future. As members of an industry committed to the support and delivery of information, we can solicit our representatives to be responsible to each and every one of us by ascertaining what legislation or policies can be enacted to limit future occurrences.
Ubiquity through Mobility
December 13, 2012For years telecommunications has sought ubiquity of phone service globally. A major impediment to such an achievement was the cost and complexity of building out the required network infrastructure. Cellular/wireless technology reduced the cost, complexity and allowed for phone service to be expanded into rural and third world geographies more rapidly than previously forecasted. For example, as wireline connections fall in the US, wireline connections now exceed the total population with an individual subscriber rate of nearly 250 million people.
What grows at 500% in 12 Months? LTE
December 10, 2012Generally speaking, I haven’t followed the growth of wireless as it relates to 4G and/or LTE. Usually, I look at the total number of wireless subscribers either globally, 6.4 billion, or by region, North America with 320 million cellular connections. However, today I discovered an organization called 4G Americas and learned that this group tracks specifically the deployment and adoption of Third Generation Partnership Project technologies. These mobile technologies include GSM (Global Mobile Services), LTE (Long Term Evolution) and 4G (Fourth Generation) mobile.
RLECs ask to join the Fiscal Cliff Negotiations
December 6, 2012The rules changes imposed by the FCC have caused a great deal of consternation for many RLECs. With the amount of funding or investment recovery uncertain, RLECs have begun to batten down the hatches and reduce their infrastructure spending and existing or future personnel. The Rural Broadband Alliance (RBA), consisting of 200 rural telecommunications service providers, has written a letter to President Obama and congressional leaders requesting that changes to the USF be put on hold until further review by congressional committees and the Federal State-Joint Board which was created by Congress in 1996 to review proposed changes to the USF rules. Apparently, the FCC has not seen fit to submit the revised rules for review.
It would not be out of line for the RBA’s request to be considered since much of the debate surrounding the Fiscal Cliff includes discussion of the impact upon small businesses if we go over the cliff and much of rural America’s telecommunication infrastructure and services is provided by small businesses.
When the Bundle Talks Back
December 3, 2012I may be fighting a losing battle in the defense of privacy. And I, also, recognize that knowing the habits of buyers is very important in determining what and when to market various products to improve the success of sales. Moreover, with marketing as my profession, I consider the collection of information on customers and prospects critical not only to selling but also to enabling the development of products and services that are more applicable to an ever-changing marketplace. However, as we surrender more and more personal information to marketers, I wonder about the apparent lack of boundaries by some companies.
When the Bundle Talks Back
December 3, 2012I may be fighting a losing battle in the defense of privacy. And I, also, recognize that knowing the habits of buyers is very important in determining what and when to market various products to improve the success of sales. Moreover, with marketing as my profession, I consider the collection of information on customers and prospects critical not only to selling but also to enabling the development of products and services that are more applicable to an ever-changing marketplace. However, as we surrender more and more personal information to marketers, I wonder about the apparent lack of boundaries by some companies.
When the Bundle Talks Back
December 3, 2012I may be fighting a losing battle in the defense of privacy. And I, also, recognize that knowing the habits of buyers is very important in determining what and when to market various products to improve the success of sales. Moreover, with marketing as my profession, I consider the collection of information on customers and prospects critical not only to selling but also to enabling the development of products and services that are more applicable to an ever-changing marketplace. However, as we surrender more and more personal information to marketers, I wonder about the apparent lack of boundaries by some companies.
