July 2008 Archives

To be a speaker at the IT Expo, there is a lot of paperwork. And I have procrastinated so that I now have to scramble to meet tomorrow's deadline. I will share with you some of the questionaire:

What has been your company's biggest achievement in 2008 so far?

Getting my book finished.

What can we expect to see for from your company for the next 12 months?

I will be helping many service providers fine tune their message, train their staff, and help them sell more services.

How do you see the communications market evolving?

I see VOIP being sold as an Overlay rather than as a "Cheaper Alternative to POTS"

What company made the biggest contribution to communications this year?

No idea. It all looks the same to me.

How has Google changed our markets?

Everybody thinks free is possible - moreso than before, which is annoying! They made SAAS more acceptable.

How about Apple?

That damn iPhone.

What mobile phone(s) do you use?

A brick from Sprint (PPC6700)

Who will win in an Apple/RIM war?

Blackberry. Not everyone likes ATT. Not everyone wants an Apple. And between Apple and ATT, something will mess up that turns folks off. RIM already had their mess up during the patent battle. The first one with a hook to Broadsoft's Broadworks will win.

What do you think the communications market might look like in five years?

I can't see that far in advance. The pace that change gets adopted is logarithmic. I think we should all have video phones now! And UC should just be how it is.

Ma and Pa Bell (better known to you as AT&T and Verizon) added about 3 Million cellular users in 2Q08. Where did those subs come from? Certainly some came from other carriers like Sprint-Nextel. Some are family handsets, maybe. And some must be data cards.

These numbers from DSLReports are staggering: "Subscriber growth for the one-year period ending in the first quarter of this year was less than 200,000 for independent VoIP companies; this amount equals less than one fifth of the new subscribers from the previous year. In contrast, cable VoIP subscriptions increased by over five and a half million in the same time period." It makes you wonder what the other 1000 VOIP Providers are doing every week. Vonage may be re-financed but can it compete against cable triple play? Not to consumers, I don't think. And Business VoIP is more profitable but needs more reliability. That's why regional players can do well if they sell it "on-net". In other words, VOIP for voice over IP not over the Internet. Quite a few companies sell that way: Broadview Networks, SmoothStone, PBX-Change, and Intelliverse (with its New Edge MPLS partnership). (Probably Speakeasy too). Most of these guys don't report VOIP subscriber numbers so their lines don't count towards the 200K added BUT do count towards the line loss at the ILECs.

Speaking of landline losses, SeekingAlpha has an article about how this may sink VZ. "After billions of dollars spent over several years building FiOS, a high-speed fiber-optic network, Verizon Communications (VZ) may not end up with much to show for it, writes Sanford Bernstein & Co. telecommunications analyst Craig Moffett in a note to clients Friday." Read the rest HERE

I know that a new "social network" pops up every day. LinkedIn adds a new group every day. Facebook adds groups every day. But has anyone tried this? Zrc2.com - a 'One stop shop' for iT & telecoms professionals.

Profits tumbling. Stock market in disarray. Real estate is ugly. And now Mervyns files for Chapter 11. Also, today, Bennigan's (and its sister Steak N Ale) filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy (which means liquidation); all company-owned restaurants closed. Even Starbucks had to close stores.

"Merrill Lynch says will sell most of its troubled asset-backed securities and terminate hedges linked to bond insurers... [USA Today]. " The White House has increased its estimate for next year's deficit to nearly $490 billion..."

After another glum quarter, Russo out at Alcatel-Lucent. A former ATT marketing exec gets CEO job at Vonage just in time to pay the loan shark that refinanced Vonage's debt.

Speaking of debt re-fi, XO has finally refinanced its debt to the benefit of Carl Icahn, who was issued two kinds of preferred stock -- total value: $780M [TJS]

With all this going on, VZ and ATT add millions of cell users (from where?) and do very well this past quarter. BT bought Ribbitt, the Silicon Valley Phone Company that made a soft iPhone, for $105M (that's USD. It's a lot less in Euros!) The best this week was the FCC telling Qwest to take its 4-MSA Forbearance petition and stuff it.

Most of my phone calls lately is How Do I Generate More Sales? It's getting tougher to sell telecom. For years it was all about "Saving 10%". Now that's not enough. There have been SOOOO many companies that have screwed the consumer - think SunRocket, Norvergence and any bankrupt CLEC - that enterprise customers (whoever that is!) are sticking with the proven names - AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, and Level3. (Disclosure: I rep for all 4).

I am doing a series of conference calls for telecom sales folks called How To SELLECOM (based on my book of the same name.) the next one is August 1 with Host.Net's Lenny Chesal on How to SELLECOM Collocation.

I have also been doing a series of posts on my marketing blog at marketing idea guy dot com about Lead Generation. It isn't as easy as it used to be. Shaving some points off their bill is going to work today. It has to either be a large savings or you have to have a Big Differentiator - one thing that both CLEC's and VoIP Providers lack. Sales is a Process, just like Marketing and both have to be Planned and Executed regularly. (That's part of the problem: not much planning, not much executing, forgetting the basics.) If sales were baseball, you would need a ballpark, gloves, 10 people, bats, a ball, a home plate, and some skill. In sales, everyone with a phone thinks they are good to go. And sales IS like baseball. In baseball, if you do it right 3 out of 10 times, you are a great hitter. In sales, if you close 3 out of 10 leads you are making a decent living.

In baseball, there is practice, practice, practice. Do you do that in Sales?

In baseball, even in Little League, you have a coach. Do you do that in your sales career - get a coach? Again probably not. So no coaching. No training or practice. No equipment. Just out there swinging away. That's why so many companies need help.

Gary Kim writes that AT&T's Profit is up 30% in 2Q08, even with an 8% drop in their core busines: landlines. But when you have iPhone 1 and 2, you can add 1.3M cell customers (probably taken from Sprint). Even when building out network for U-Verse, 3G cellular, and its IP backbone worldwide (and bitching about it), Ma Bell managed to squeeze out a 30% PROFIT.

Meanwhile, Ma Bell has been petitioning for Forbearance at the FCC. The RBOC's have already been granted unregulation on DSL, fiber, and other elements. The result seems to be that profits increase and competitors struggle - so choice to the consumer is nullified. If only we had an FCC that was run by the real Harry Potter instead of a guy who just looks like him. (Harry spent six books and five movies fighting the forces of evil.)

BTW, if AT&T gained, someone lost, because these are all flat markets (or at least markets that are not growing that fast.

Dan Caruso writes about how his company Zayo is working with the University of Colorado and Entrepreneurship. Zayo will take interns and develop the entrepreneur spirit. What a great way to promote your company, get some promising talent, and give back.

My question is Why aren't more companies doing that? Talent Acquisition and Retention are a real challenge today. As healthcare costs and gas prices rise, it will be even harder to retain talent. (For those that will ask: because people will want to commute less and/or tele-work that not all companies or positions are capable of handling and when you cut benefits, you lose good people). So why not develop talent? I have often wondered if I could take JA (Junior Achievement) students at the high school level and train them in sales and telecom.

Wouldn't some of your employees want to mentor a promising student?

Feedback on this would be appreciated.

Dr. David Reed gave testimony to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce last week in a hearing on DPI (deep packet inspection). The House Committee is trying to figure out what to do about DPI, Privacy (HA! What privacy?), NebuAd and Targeted Advertising. Dr. Reed wasn't the only one to testify. To be as "fair and balanced" as Fox "news", Scott Leland got to speak as the mouthpiece of the ILECs. Instead of discussing DPI, he chose to reflect all privacy problems to Google, as any typical telco mouthpiece should. I mean, wiretapping illegally to get favors from the government isn't something a telco mouth talks about. They don't like to discuss what being a Common Carrier means today.

If you want to be a content provider, go be a content provider, but you can't be a Common Carrier too. And the telcos don't want to be. It's time to either separate the network out like they are doing in Europe or its time to return the telcos to pre-1984 regulation.

You can get the testimony and view the webcast here.

I don't know about you but a 4 Hour Work Week seems unlikely, but just a 40 hour one would be grand! Tim Ferriss wrote the book, 4 Hour Work Week, and gave a great 45 minute summary of the book's principles at SXSW 2007 (here). David Seah has an exhaustive review of the principles of the book here. I'm just focused on his outsourcing. I already use two virtual assistants but not very effectively, so I am reviewing how to leverage them better for my business. And LinkedIn has had some interesting Questions about VA's, so it has been bumbling around my mind a lot lately. (Is that the Universe telling me something?) Anyway, this week two folks asked me for info about Virtual Assistants, so I figured I would just blog the info.

I found Ricki from Just2technical.com on AssistU.com a few years ago. Ricki is more specialized today with helping folks with blogs, websites and other tech stuff that escapes the average business owner.

Ricki pointed out Valerie to me as someone to edit my book, write some content and handle some admin tasks. (I travel often and I am involved with too many associations and events, so I need help there).

On LinkedIn, I met Susan Poirier at Ace Concierge, LLC (and here).

Then there are the many sites that you can use to find help:

• Elance
• American Express Platinum Concierge
• Ask Sunday
• ODesk
• Get Friday (Your Man in India)
• Do My Stuff
• Amazonï's Mechanical Turk
• Craigslist
• Workaholics for Hire
• Brickwork India
• iFreelance
• Scriptlance
• Guru
• Agents of Value

I have tried Amaz's Turk but didn't like it. I have used eLance with good results for graphic design. I have used CL to find video folks quickly as well as housekeepers and admin folks when I had an office. I hope this helps.

Duct Tape Marketing has a post about the business use for Twitter. I can see why Twitter would work for a conference like it did for SXSW: great way to update attendees; remind people about keynotes and sessions starting; let people comment about what was cool and where they are going (dinner anyone?); etc. (Read article about it here). And that is a good use for Twitter, but what other business uses are there? In my stream of people I follow on Twitter, there aren't any conversations and a lot of it is self-promotion stuff (look at me, read my stuff, hey, hey!). I guess the best use it to just see what people think. To do that you can use the search function. You can follow me on Twitter.

TechRepublic has a great review of Microsoft OCS. "The verdict: For most organizations, Microsoft's current unified communications product will supplement-not supplant-traditional telephony systems."

OCS has 3 main weaknesses. One is 911.

OCS does not support enhanced 911 location information and not many (if any) third parties provide E911 services for OCS. E911 is critical in a college environment.

OCS does not provide for hunting or conference calling.

Maybe it will be fixed in SP3 or with the next version of OCS.

DSLReports.com has an editorial titled, U.S. Broadband Cannot Be Fixed Until You Tackle Corruption. It seems that the new group, Internet for Everyone, has upset Karl. Karl is right in a way. There have been numerous groups over the years, including COMPTEL and its prior siblings, that have tried to get grass-roots support for a change at the FCC and in DC. Karl thinks that I4E should take "a strong stance on the real reasons broadband competition in this country is stagnant:

1. government corruption
2. an un-skeptical media
3. the incumbent stranglehold on policymakers
4. the massive web of disinformation created by lobbyists, and
5. the complete bi-partisan failure in government leadership.

I agree these are the underlying issues, these are also the underlying reasons that we are in the economic and global mess that we are in. Special interests (usually multi-nationals led by their lobbyists and their millions) have destroyed any chance that this country has. MNC don't want an unlimited information pipe (the Internet). It undermines their profits and causes them to spend more in campaigns, advertising, and lobbyists. We need to TACKLE THE CORRUPTION! "Every effort should be made to purge the incumbent lobbyist stranglehold on this nation's policy makers. Until you do this, you will fix nothing."

Over the past 9 years that I have been in telecom, Verizon has probably been in court at least once a month either suing the FCC over some rule or part of the Telecom Act or being sued for anti-trust. VZ has also sued for patent infringement. It has been sued often for billing disputes, since the ILECs make billing a profit center. And numerous states have taken VZ to task for awful customer service.

In addition, VZ spends millions on political campaigns and lobbyists. (We won't even discuss the billions in marketing and advertising!)

Couldn't they have put this effort into actually having a good company? Giving top quality customer service would have prevented some headaches and fines AND would have been positive marketing! Here they are locked in a losing battle with cable over residential triple-play. It's like the airline debate. To many consumers, they both suck so go with price.

I think about all the millions in legal fees, fines, etc. and I can't help but wonder what would have happened if VZ had spent that money either on building the network it promised Penn. (DS3 to every home was promised in 1998) or if it had done some R&D.

This post was brought on by the VZ versus Cable Appeal. VZ has been violating CPNI rules by marketing to customers that have put in a port order for thier phone lines. This has been illegal since TA96 first came into effect, because ILEC's have the unfair advantage of having to port the phone number for a move. So they can delay it (like many CLEC's do) or they can market to the customer - but it is forbidden by CPNI rules. Instead of just accepting the FC ruling, VZ has to go to court. What a load of crap. Why the judge doesn't throw this out as frivolous and disbar the attorney who filed it is beyond me.

Just so yo uknow, SBC, BellSouth, and Qwest are in similar boats. Multi-millions wasted. And they have tied up our court system for years with these cases.

In a recent column in PC Mag, An Ode to Shrink Wrapped Software, John Dvorak talks about the ten weaknesses of online apps. It really comes down to this: "Using the Internet to return to the old model of mainframe computing is a misuse of resources and a dead end."

Everything else he says just comes back to either the model sucks or the security / reliability stinks. His argument is really about Control. He makes it sound like when you buy the latest version of Microsoft anything, you own it or have any control over it. It has as many security flaws as using an open, unsecured PC at an Internet cafe and leaving it for a potty break.

I have worked on marketing for ISP's, CLEC's, ITSP's and MSP's as well as non-tech firms like lawyers and real estate firms. My suggestion has always been to forget the Old Media Tradition of radio and TV advertising. Now there is a presentation on SlideShare about how at least Half the Advertising money is wasted. See here:

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