June 2008 Archives

AT&T's billing page contained an image that has got people up in arms (see Om, Alex, and Boing). At a time when it is trying to get retro immunity for warrant-less wiretapping (which is obviously illegal or they wouldn't be fighting for the immunity), someone at Ma Bell decided to have fun with it via this screenshot from the billing page.

As Alex at ISP-Planet.com writes, "The page has photo of a woman with a laptop and the tag line "Ms. Suspicious Has Nothing To Hide".... So stop worring about the Constitution, you. . . . women. Does this ad combine disrespect for America with backhand misogyny? Double bonus bad!" When you consider that way more than half of buying decisions are made by women, this is a marketing mistake. Monopoly power corrupts brain cells.

BlitzTime takes social networks one step further. One of the downsides to connecting with people on LinkedIn is that you can't easily communicate with them. With BlitzTime you set up a profile, including education, interests, etc., then log in, join an event, or start one of your own - thus able to have a conference call with people you might want to meet.

More Conference calling apps are popping up. Vyew is a cheap knock off of Webex for collaboration and file sharing. A new one is Mikogo is a free online desktop sharing tool with many features for you to host web conferences or online presentations - for up to 10 people.

Another one I found through Twitter was Yakkle which combines IM, Twitter, Voice and Desk Sharing. It seems a little daunting to me, so I have not given it a whirl yet.

Dell released a Video Chat app designed by SightSpeed. It seems funny to me. Video chat is enabled on MSN, AOL and Yahoo! IM clients, Skype, SightSpeed, toxbox, Talk Fusion, and many others. Video chat has not picked up much traction. Neither has video email. Even video blogging is a chore compared to podcasting or just plain old blogging (like this!). You have to have a good webcam; a good Internet connection; no network blockage from the ISP; probably fiddle with the whole set-up to get it to work; bad lighting; and, oh, I have to shave and get dressed. No thanks!

Maybe more video apps means it is coming. They built it, right? So people will come. Eventually. Maybe. We'll be talking about it at IT Expo in LA in Sept. as well as at BarCamp Tampa in Oct.

the last of the MVNO players folds its cards. Helio was sold to Virgin Mobile for $39M - in equity! SK Telecom and EarthLink spent over $275M to build this loser and gain a whopping 170K users. This number is amazing because I thought they were at 300K. This marks the end of the MVNO movement. A few CLEC's like Cbeyond have a cellular component but stand alone MVNO brands are gone.

MVNO is the new UNE-P offering. It didn't work for UNE-P after the TRRO decision and neither did the MVNO. Either the ILECs sell wholesale at a ridiculous rate or they sell at retail underwater.

There also was talk of SK Telecom, widely known to be interested in expanding its U.S. presence, buying Virgin Mobile and merging Helio into that brand. Instead, Virgin Mobile will take over Helio on its own, with SK Telecom and EarthLink each providing a $25 million strategic investment into Virgin Mobile. Through its holding of limited partnership units and preferred stock, SK Telecom will end up with a 17 percent ownership stake and two seats on the board. [phone+]

Even TechDirt calls MVNO case closed.

Bruce Kushnick has been fighting Verizon in the Northeast for years through is TeleTruth organization. Here is the latest:

Verizon, New Jersey has filed to increase various costs of local phone service. The New Jersey Board of Utilities (BPU) should not accept Verizon's proposal to raise local rates. It violates every 'fair and reasonable' statute and directly harms Verizon residential and small business wireline customers.
We also claim that misleading data has been submitted by Verizon in its requirement to have 100% of the state rewired with 45mbps services (in both directions) by 2010 and that FiOS is harming the PSTN - Public Switched Telephone Network. Thus, customer phone bill increases are very likely funding a cable service.
Verizon's intentions --- Increases of 79% for local residential service, 70% for small businesses, 800% for directory assistance, and 40%-70% per line-item is now being considered "fair and reasonable". This is in contrast to the exorbitant profits from these services. Caller ID and non-published telephone numbers have a 5,695% and 36,900% profit margins, respectively.
In fact, when examining a total local service bill, including all of the required charges, there has been a 304% increase in local service in New Jersey since 1982, (347% for some customers). Verizon lies when it claims that they have not had an increase to its residential basic exchange service since 1985. We have tracked over 5 different increases since 2003, all documented on phone bills.
It is clear that by raising these rates, there is no serious local service competition to stop their implementation. Prices should have seen serious declines as the costs of offering local service has continuously decreased, such as major cuts in staffing or the aging of the networks. Meanwhile, the local service profits have skyrocketed. And now, FiOS may be funded illegally through the profits of local service. FiOS is a cable and 'interstate information service' and the Commission is supposed to be protecting LOCAL SERVICE, not helping to illegally fund a cable project that is essentially stealing customers and resources from the PSTN -- Public Switched Telephone Network.
We also note that in previous testimony and complaints with the BPU, Teletruth showed that Verizon has been submitting falsified documents, that it misled the public and owes over $5-$6 billion for financial incentives it was supposed to use for network upgrades of the PSTN. Read the rest here: www.newnetworks.com/teletruthtestimonyverizon.htm

It's no joke that after mergers, layoffs, pension splicing, and soaring profits, these companies are still asking for rate increases --- and getting them!

The IT Expo in LA is Sept. 16-18. If you are going (and why wouldn't you?) there is an opportunity for you to stay the weekend and see the Wimbledon of Beach Volleyball as the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball tournament at Manhattan Beach starts that Friday.

Rich points out all the reasons to attend this event. If you are going, give me a shout. If you have any restaurant suggestions close to the host hotel or in Manhattan Beach, please let me know. Thanks!

Supreme Court [finally] To Investigate If AT&T Is Violating Antitrust Laws With Wholesale DSL Pricing

TechDirt writes about the Supreme Court deciding to accept the Appeal of PacWest (now called AT&T) in its anti-trust battle with an ISP named LinkLine.

"A series of lawsuits followed, including an appeals court ruling that found that AT&T was abusing monopoly rights to offer prices that were simply out of line with market pricing -- making it effectively impossible for any other provider to compete. AT&T has appealed and now the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. This could be very important, as it could force a company like AT&T, which relies on these government granted rights of way, to offer up access to their network to potential competitors who could offer more reasonably priced services. This also could have a major impact on both the overall competitiveness of broadband in the US as well as network neutrality -- since having more competition would make it harder for AT&T and others to violate net neutrality.

The crux of the matter is that "The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled against AT&T, saying the telecom company was setting its wholesale prices so high that the Internet service provider could not compete with the low prices AT&T charged in the retail market. The appeals court said that federal courts have recognized such price squeeze allegations for six decades. [Yahoo]

We have been here before, circa 2005. FISPA, WBIA, and others rallying to fight forbearance at the FCC on DSL and the Supreme Court ruling of Brand-X vs. Cable over access to cable modems. Spin ahead and the ISP groups lost both battles. Now 2008 the Anti-Trust lawsuit winds its way to the Supremes and Cable is welcoming ISP's on its networks.

Helping David Isenberg spread the word today about the

"Under the surveillance "compromise" that the House of Representatives approved today, telecommunications companies that participated in the government's warrantless surveillance program would get immunity from civil lawsuits as long as they showed that they were told that the program was authorized by [the President] and was determined by his legal team to be lawful."

from Dan Froomkin in his Washington Post blog, White House Watch, Friday, June 20, 2008

What do these folks do? I get PR messages from people. My gripe is that the marketing folks forget to actually say anything that people can understand. Instead they are using the press release for 2 things: SEO if it gets published and proof that they did their job. Read this one and tell me what they do:

NY - June 24, 2008 - Datacenter managers and IT professionals across the U.S. are turning to their resellers and solution providers seeking ways to reduce the ever-increasing carbon footprint of their corporate datacenters. To deliver a strong resource for value added resellers (VARs) focused on datacenter offerings, XXX Systems today announced the launch of its U.S. channel partner program. The new program will be led by Kevin, Senior Director of Business Development, who plans to introduce XXX System to resellers capable of driving adoption of the company's Green IT datacenter enclosures - including its passive cabinets, which can be upgraded to active in the field in less than 30 minutes. The XXX Systems U.S. Channel Program enables VARs, design and engineering firms, and construction management consultants, to offer customers of all sizes the same mature, high-performance datacenter power and cooling technology deployed by some of the world's largest financial, retail and media companies.

"XXX Systems has supported datacenter-intensive industries for over a decade. Among financial services companies, we have an installed base of 30,000 units, making our high-density, active-air enclosures the cabinet of choice. With our new channel program, we expect to continue to provide a high level of customer satisfaction for datacenter customers who believe in, and depend on, our technology," said Jerry, XXX Systems president. "We are pleased to welcome Kevin to our management team as he develops our indirect sales organization."

In an epic decision today, the FCC sided with cable (Bright House) against Verizon in the battle over CPNI and customers

In this Memorandum Opinion and Order, we reject the Enforcement Bureau's April 11, 2008, Recommended Decision in this Accelerated Docket proceeding, and grant in part a formal complaint filed against Defendants (collectively, "Verizon") pursuant to section 208 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended ("Act"). For the reasons explained below, we conclude that Verizon is violating section 222(b) of the Act by using, for customer retention marketing purposes, proprietary information (CPNI) of other carriers that it receives in the local number porting process, and we order Verizon immediately to cease and desist from such unlawful conduct.

In other words, when VZ gets an order to port a number to a CLEC or a cable company, they cannot market to that person while delaying the porting process. CPNI has been a huge issue for this Commission lately. I'm shocked that Martin stuck to his CPNI guns, instead of allowing VZ to torpedo MSO customer acquisition efforts.

CPNI is the info that VZ has about every connection on its network, whether you are a direct customer or indirect customer. CLEC's and independent phone companies have a tendency to delay LNP (porting of phone numbers) for as long as possible (I have seen up to 90 days) to keep revenue on the books. The customer blames the new company not the company holding up the process.

In the latest issue of Capacity magazine, there are a number of articles about the International long distance market. It seems Skype has swiped 14 Billion minutes of international from the carriers. Just so you know how big of a slice that is: TI Sparkle does 17B; TATA does 21B; and IDT and iBasis did 24B each. It didn't take long for Skype to catch the carriers either. [The whole pie is 300B minutes and $74B in revenues.] The profits are slim though, because international rates have been dropping steadily. International LD is a volume business that has been growing for years. That growth slowed down to 10% in 2006. At the same time, mobile originated international growth dropped from 24% in 2005 to 16% in 2006. (I have to wonder if that isn't due to more smartphones, which translates to more VoIP apps, so more International going to Skype or Jajah). It seems like every telco market is flattening out.

Over at isp-bw, we spent an evening discussing XO's future. With Icahn as the owner of 60% of the stock, 90% of the debt, and 6 board seats, he has the company and any minor shareholder over the barrel. R2 is a minority shareholder who warned Icahn via open letter that if XO files Bankruptcy, they would sue him personally for dereliction of fiduciary duty. On paper, XO looks good. Assets, cash, EBITA. But in reality, well, not so good. $387M in dent is due to Icahn soon. The company and assets have been re-organized twice. And they have no focus.

PAETEC's CEO, Arunas Chesonis, thinks making the Billion Dollar Club as a CLEC means something. It hasn't meant much so far. Genuity hit it in $1B in 2000 and its $4B in debt made it collapse. ICI (Intermedia) hit $1B and sold out in 2001 to MCI to satisfy the $3B in short term debt. Genuity owned assets (fiber and AS#1); Intermedia had Digex.

XO has fiber and wireless spectrum. PAETEC has Allworx and the McLeod fiber. Neither one has spent time developing a region to the point that they have a 15% share. The problem is the idea that you want to be national so that you can get the big accounts. What are there, maybe 10,000 companies buying enetrprise level services? And they have choice: Ma Bell, VZ, Qwest, Sprint, Level3, GlobalCrossing and on another level Masergy, InterNAP, Savvis, AboveNet and others. That's enough. The key is to be deep, not wide.

It costs money to go wide. It costs less money to go deep. It is also more profitable.

A further point is that Broadwing was at $879M in revenue with about $125M in losses before L3 bought them in 2003 for $1.4B. Half of Broadwing's revenue came from wholesale on its 19000 miles of fiber. I just don't see how BIG makes you better. Sprint is a prime example. Big means you can't take care of your customer properly (which is what Arunas says is how he built Paetec). So how is Bigger better?

I don't know how many of you use LinkedIn, but they have groups you can join. I have not yet figured out a use for the groups other than you can contact other members of the group easily. There are now 5 telecom groups (that I know of):

1. CrossConnects: Telecom Sales Professionals Group
2. Telecom Agents
3. Telecom Business Daily
4. Telecommunications Professionals Network
5. iTelco

All have the same members MOL. My guess is that so many folks are still trying to figure out how to monetize LI and Facebook. It isn't about getting sales. It is about GIVING. Give referrals. Share knowledge. You have to give before you get. The more you give, the more you get but that doesn't mean you get want you want, but you might get what you need.

Mark Klein was the AT&T tech that outed the "Secret Room" in the AT&T CO in San Francisco. Now there is a secret room in AT&T's Internet POP in St. Louis.

News 4 Investigates: Illegal internet spying [May 5th, 2008]

Watch the TV news segment here. (IE required)

Isenberg points out that Congress is ready to give the Telcos retroactive immunity for wiretapping US citizens without a warrant.

That sound you just heard? That was our Founding Fathers screaming at the way our Constitution has been ignored. Privacy and individual rights are disappearing. That happens when you don't vote (get involved in the political process) and you don't read a newspaper.

As unemployment rises (along with layoffs) and fewer jobs are being created, people need help job hunting. I get hit up for help all the time. Success Secret #4: Build It Before You Need It.

• Create a LinkedIn profile - that is your new Web 2.0 resume.
• Get Recommendations!
• Get alerts from the meta job boards like Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com.
• Get out and network in your sector and surrounding sectors.
• Take heed from his list of Top 50 Web 2.0 Tools for Job Seekers.
• Get your resume reviewed.
• Get practice interviewing

You are marketing and selling the best product you have: Yourself. If you want a job bad enough, mount a marketing campaign to get it. Want help? Drop me a note. Have positions to fill? Are you using LinkedIn?

At a blogger MeetUp last week, the book 4 Hour work Week by Tim Ferriss came up as a must read. I don't know if I would call it that. The concept of paring everything down and outsourcing everything you can is clever, but for most folks it is unrealistic.

For people looking to make a fast dime by leveraging as many other folks as possible, then, yeah, go read the book. Then jump on elance or guru and start hiring folks to do all the things that you don't want to do. Get a maid on CL. Etc.

The key is that you have to make more money than you are spending. Ah ha! To do that you are leverage other people's time and effort to make money for yourself. So if a maid is cleaning your house for 3 hours for $60, you need to find a way to convert some of that 3 hours into more than $60. (Which notably not everyone can do).

I started the book, got annoyed, then listened to Tim's speech at SxSW last year. The more I listen to him, the more I dismiss him as an exaggeration. He has some decent concepts and he is correct:

when people say they'd like to be millionaires, they don't mean that they'd like to have a million dollars. They mean that they'd like to live like a millionaire. It's possible to do that without the money, and in my mind the first step to luxury is paring down. [unclutterer]