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

February 2012

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Cbeyond 2.0

February 27, 2012



Cbeyond laid off 200 employees last week. "The company said it is reducing its traditional entry level direct sales force by about half while building a new direct sales group dedicated to managing existing and new technology dependent customers."

In a message to agents today:

"Cbeyond is making some significant changes that are going to directly benefit their Agent Partners.

T-Mobile's Next Move

February 24, 2012

T-Mobile to Pump $4 Billion Into Network, 4G LTE Buildout. This is T-Mobile's next move on the heels of getting fiber and billions in cash from AT&T after the merger was nixed by the government agencies.

I have to laugh at this because Clearwire has clearly (heh) spent more than $4B to only partially build out a nationwide 4G network. How will T-Mobile do it for $4B?

A Brief View of Integra Telecom

February 21, 2012



I interviewed Integra in Austin last year. Like quite a few interviews I do, I just can't find the time to write up the blog. It may seem like I do this blogging thing full time, but my bills still get paid doing consulting to ISP-CLEC-VOIP-MSO companies and being a telecom agent. It makes for a lot of juggling and long hours.

Why SIP Trunking is Not a PRI

February 21, 2012

What About Selling Cloud?

February 21, 2012

At The CPZ, the rest of the panel were cloud guys (VAR's and Hosted UC). This is a snippet of the conversation where the panel is talking about how transactional telecom sales are dead, long live the Cloud!

People deemed LD dead years ago (like when MCI went BK), too, but there are still a large number of agents and resellers making money on LD and pre-paid calling cards.

Until TDM is retired, agents will still be selling POTS, DSL and T1 - and making a living doing so.

Telecom Tidbits on Presidents Day

February 20, 2012

On a LinkedIn group we are discussing SLA (service level agreements) and how they do not represent uptime. If you need uptime, you need redundancy. You need to build a resilient network. Netwolves has a solution called Bonded Broadband.

Has Verizon Stopped Repairing Copper?

February 17, 2012

Over and over, I am hearing that Verizon has given up on copper. From repair issues to DSL to stripping copper out when FiOS is installed, the story seems to point to VZ looking to forget its copper plant.

in a discussion on LinkedIn about SLA's, one agent had this to say, "The absolute WORST cases I have seen have all been in the northeast where Verizon's copper is concerned. Verizon seems to have made the decision to put all efforts and funds behind their fiber build out (a good thing) but have completely sacrificed the quality behind their copper services such as T1.

Channel Manager Best Practices

February 17, 2012

On Tuesday, March 27 at 11:30AM PT, the Technology Channel Association (TCA) will hold the first ever Channel Managers Best Practices Forum at the Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

TCA's mission is channel education. The TCA holds monthly webinars for members and has developed a Certified telecom Professional program. In Vegas, the TCA will be holding our 5th Channel Chief Summit alongside this Channel Managers forum. With this event, channel managers will have the opportunity to network and learn from their peers.

Enchanting Keynote at Parallels Summit 2012

February 16, 2012



Guy Kawasaki was the keynote yesterday morning for the Parallels Summit 2012 in Orlando. (Vodka bar was open at 8:20 AM!)


Guy talked about the key points from his book,Enchantment .

One is You Must be Likable. Richard Branson of Virgin is likable.


Robocalls on Notice

February 16, 2012

YEAH!!! FCC Strengthens Consumer Protections Against Telemarketing Robocalls

'Unwanted telemarketing calls and texts were consistently in the top three consumer complaint categories at the FCC in 2011." I get about 3 per day mainly from Google Local (SEO) shops.

"The new rules reduce regulatory uncertainty with minimal burden on industry and maximize consistency with those of the Federal Trade Commission."

Union Reacts to AT&T Layoffs

February 14, 2012

So Can You Re-Use Those Cisco Phones?

February 13, 2012

From a VAR:

"At the risk of sounding like sour grapes, in my experience no one who has tried to use old Cisco phones and bring them current with their Smartnet coverage so they can use them on a new call manager has saved money. The sad part is they won't know until each phone's current software level is individually checked to find out how much it will be and that won't happen until they are installing the system which is after the point of no return."

"I have heard that Cisco has received a lot of negative press and attention with this strict sequential updating process and has created a one-time "forgiveness" option where [your customer] may be able to update existing phones at substantial discounts. Any "new" purchases of used phones will be subject to the full upgrade process making used phone more expensive than new.

4G, 3G: Who knows?

February 13, 2012

This morning Broadcom announced 5G: "Broadcom Extends 5G WiFi Leadership with New 802.11ac Chips." This is kind of funny because most folks are confused by 3G versus 4G. Many think that iPhones run on 4G, but actually they all run on the 3G networks. No radio in there yet to pick up 4G.

Saturday Night Live has a nice video where they demonstrate the confusion that VZW has exploited about 4G, here on the verge or on NBC.

What Twitter Told Me This Week

February 10, 2012

I get a lot of articles off twitter. Too many to write about all of them so I am just going to drop some on you here.

Please be advised that the FUSF rate for Q1 of 2012 has increased from 15.3% to 17.9%. For further information regarding FUSF Fees and rates please see the FCC website.

RebTel is #2 behind Skype with 15M users doing 2 billion minutes of international calling.



Why Did ShoreTel Buy M5?

February 10, 2012

Recently, M5 Communications was acquired for about $160 million by ShoreTel. The premise PBX vendor had a bad quarter and caved to the pressure of Hosted PBX. Avaya, Interactive Intelligence and MITEL have hosted offerings. At some point, ShoreTel had to jump on that bandwagon - due to the big opportunity (ask any analyst) and the threat that cloud comm places on premise only sellers.

I think some of that money - now $162 M based on the stock - was for Dan and his team to stay on and continue to run the machine.

5 Tips for Speakers

February 8, 2012

I'm not the best speaker. I'm still nervous and anxious before every talk, even when moderating. But I prepare for every talk - whether I am a moderator, panelist, keynote, trainer, or co-host. Here are some things that speakers do wrong:

1.

Social Media Channel Integration

February 7, 2012

An ITEXPO panel on Wed. discussed social media integration in the contact center. Sanjay Popli of LiveOps, Manuel Ramirez of Avaya, and Alex Quilici of YouMail spent 45 minutes talking about social media and call centers.

There are five steps a company needs to take to implement social media strategy in a contact center.

  • Monitor social channels
  • Decide on Relevance
  • Assign employees to tasks
  • Establish Policies
  • Design procedure for interacting with the rest of the Org

The contact center could be monitoring for leads, complaints or opportunities on social media platforms.

Educating the Channel with Certifications

February 7, 2012

One of the panels last week at ITEXPO was titled Educating the Channel with Certifications. When you consider that as a founding board member and current VP of the Technology Channel Association, education is a primary objective, this topic was relevant. The panelists were Louis Haynor, CSO at Alteva, and Jim Riley of Apptix. I didn't know that Apptix was an agent of Alteva and had been through their certification program.

FCC is Busy!

February 7, 2012

.

The FCC is really busy!

The FCC is still working on Inter-Carrier Compensation. It ordered Rural Call Completion.

It approved TWC's $3B bid for Insight. "Time Warner Cable last August agreed to buy Insight for $3 billion in cash.

FCC Rules on Rural

February 7, 2012

Following Congress sending him a letter, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has finally issued a ruling on Rural Call Completion [pdf].

ATIS and NTCA have been hounding the FCC as complaints went from about 100 a month in 2009 to over 1000 a month in late 2010. A group of them sent a letter to the FCC [pdf], which stated:

"the Rural Representatives identified a variety of concerns, including but not limited to: (1) calls that ring for the calling party, but not at all or on a delayed basis for the called customer of the RLEC; (2) calling parties who receive incorrect or misleading message interceptions before the call ever reaches the RLEC or the tandem it subtends; (3) calls that appear to "loop" between routing providers, but never reach the RLEC or the tandem it subtends; and (4) incorrect caller ID that displays to called parties."

Verizon Puts the Move on Video

February 6, 2012

After Verizon's CFO sais that FiOS was a poor economic decision for the company, I would think video would not be on the VZ radar. The FiOS TV service is so expensive to deliver that Frontier raised rates over 70% when it took over former VZ FiOS territory -- and then decided to switch all the TV over to DBS.

Comcast buying NBCU was a little different, but cablecos have owned channels before, especially sports channels (MSG, YES, BayNews9).

Maybe the TV-cord-cutting crowd is scaring the cablecos, despite the rhetoric to The Street.

The ROI of the Show

February 3, 2012

Best Channel Managers

February 3, 2012

Correction: Savvis Comp

February 3, 2012

Day 3 at ITEXPO

February 2, 2012

Making Hosted UC Simple

February 2, 2012

M5 Bought by Shoretel

February 2, 2012

ITEXPO Day 2

February 1, 2012

A Fun Chat with VAR Dynamics

February 1, 2012

It started out coincidentally as VAR Dynamics CEO, Tony Francisco, was on my plane this morning. And he just recently moved from Silicon Valley to Tampa Bay, where I live. He is working with Gazelle Labs and spoke at BarCamp Tampa Bay, which is an un-conference I co-organize for the last 4 years. I had to go to Miami Beach to talk to him though.

Day 1 at ITEXPO

February 1, 2012

I had a couple of good conversations today. One was with Greg Plum who has embarked on a new chapter in his career at StartMeeting.com. Plum is exciting about building the channel for this start-up conferencing company for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that he believes that StartMeeting.com will be a disruptor, a serious game changer in the conference space. They offer conferencing - audio and web - like so many others, right?

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