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| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

June 2008

You are browsing the archive for June 2008.

Ma Bell Doesn't Care

June 30, 2008

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.

More Communications Apps

June 27, 2008

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.

Helio sold to Virgin

June 27, 2008

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.

VZ-NJ vs. TeleTruth

June 27, 2008

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.

Double Dip in LA

June 25, 2008

DSL Anti-Trust

June 23, 2008

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.

FISA Compromise Bill

June 23, 2008

What Do They Do?

June 23, 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.

Wow! FCC Sides Against Verizon

June 23, 2008

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.

International Minutes

June 22, 2008

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 Billion $ Big Deal

June 20, 2008

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.

LinkedIn Groups

June 20, 2008

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.

Secret Rooms

June 20, 2008

Job Hunting

June 16, 2008

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.

4 Hour Work Week

June 16, 2008

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.

ISP throttling and DPI

June 16, 2008

We in the US have ISP's that are throttling users, metering users, and adding DPI (deep packet inspection) to the network. Most of it is causing a stir.

It has often been said that this is an FTC issue about False Advertising than it is an FCC issue.

768k - now that's fast!

June 16, 2008

The FCC has updated its definition of broadband from the clunky 200K to the new, faster 768k. Telecomweb reports:

"The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), following years of criticism and threats of Congressional action, yesterday finally issued an order scrapping its previous definition of "broadband" as any service delivering of at least 200 Kb/s. .... The order, to be implemented by new rules to be issued within 120 days, sets 768 Kb/s as the minimum speed for what the FCC is now calling "basic" broadband, which extends up to 1.5 Mb/s.

Why Hasn't SAAS Taken Off

June 13, 2008

Why North American Enterprises Aren't Interested in SaaS (according to Networld World mag)

According to a Forrester Research survey, these are the top 8 reasons why companies say "No Thanks" to SaaS.

Percent Reason

  • 66% Integration issues
  • 61% Total cost of ownership concerns
  • 55% Lack of customization
  • 50% Security concerns
  • 42% "We can't find the specific application we need"
  • 39% Complicated pricing models
  • 39% Application performance
  • 34% "We're locked in with our current vendor"

The security concerns and pricing models are the only thing in the hands of the people selling SAAS. Over at InfoWeek, there's an article about what people who use SAAS like.

SAAS and Security

June 9, 2008

Here's the downside to SAAS: security breach and down time.

This week Amazon was down twice, which is hard to believe because I can not remember them being unavailable. Yahoo! Mail has had outages. Twitter is constantly down.

When to SAAS

June 9, 2008

On LinkedIn Answers, there is a question about when you would use SAAS in place of in-house apps. Bob Raffo points out some reality:

Failure: CEO sees SaaS as a low cost replacement for in-house systems and as a path to reduce IT headcount. CIO is seen as a marginalized procurment manager.

That's mentality is a definite problem. But then often IT and automation are all about reducing head-count.

Social Media for Branding

June 5, 2008

Last night was the AMA Tampa Bay Presents: Interactive Media Special Interest Group. It was the third meeting about Interactive Media. Blogging, Twitter, Social Networks, Podcasting and Video as a means to get your message or branding accomplished. SEO

TWC Metering Bandwidth

June 5, 2008

This week the US is abuzz with news that Time Warner Cable will be performing a trial in Texas on metering bandwidth. TWC set caps and overage is $1/GB. Now, as someone who once had a metered EVDO card, it is amazing how fast 40MB in a day in just email (and attachments) adds up.

Considering that YouTube, MySpace and Facebook are the top 3,4,&5 visited sites in the US, hitting your cap will be quick and easy.

Verizon Rumors

June 5, 2008

Rumors yesterday and today about Verizon wanting to buy Alltel. Supposedly, Verizon Wireless partner, Vodafone, is spreading these rumors. I don't see a merger of that size getting by anti-trust. But I have been wrong in the past.

PR Folks... Listen Up!

June 3, 2008

I don't know who added my email address to some list and distributed it to every PR firm in America, but please stop sending me your press releases. Lois from HWH PR; Tim from Inkhouse PR; Brittany at SSPR; Shannon from Springboard PR just to name a few.

I write 4 blogs. I get more than enough email as it is without getting "story ideas" from a PR person.

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