Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

August 2014

You are browsing the archive for August 2014.

Are You a Red or Black Ant?

August 28, 2014

Dave Matthews Band's Ants Marching has been in my head all morning.

"When all the little ants are marching Red and black antennas waving we all do it the same we all do it the same way"

Reminds me of telecom.

Seth Godin wrote this morning, "There is no more everyone.

The Next Step in UCaaS

August 27, 2014

The numbers are in - Infonetics: PBX market down 6%, Unified Communications up 31% from year ago - Hosted PBX or UCaaS is growing. Well, sure, from zero to a couple of hundred million in ten years. Yet we come to a crossroads now. The premise people are shrinking but slowly.

Innovation isn't About Replacement

August 25, 2014

In an article about the over-valuation of Uber, was this tidbit:

"In 1980, McKinsey & Company was commissioned by AT&T (whose Bell Labs had invented cellular telephony) to forecast cell phone penetration in the U.S. by 2000. The consultant's prediction, 900,000 subscribers, was less than 1% of the actual figure, 109 Million.

A Brief Look at Big Data

August 25, 2014

The term Big Data makes me laugh because we live in the information age where we collect a ton of data. People may be pack rats and hoarders IRL (in real life), but digitally we are far worse. We live in a time when photo albums of weddings, children, family are all digital; the entire music collection is a hard drive failure away from missing; and we fill our hard drives to capacity and beyond (1TB external storage!)

The problem with all this data is search.

What If Cable Didn't Sell TV?

August 21, 2014

"Leichtman Research Group (LRG) says the largest U.S. cable TV operators now have more high speed access customers than they do video customers, according to Bruce Leichtman, LRG president and principal analyst." [telecompetitor]

In a conversation today, a cable exec said, "What if cable didn't sell cable TV any more?" Great question!

Cablecos make more profit on broadband and voice than they do on TV.

A Quick Look at Telco Revenues

August 21, 2014

A short take on telco revenues including Earthlink, Windstream, Frontier, Verizon and AT&T. Is it the price revenue squeeze on telecom? Or is it the revenue dip associated with cloud services that have a lower ARPU than TDM ARPU?

"Windstream revenues decreased 2.4% year over year to $1.466 Billion in the second quarter. Data center and managed services revenues, which total approximately $31 million, increased 20 percent from the same period a year ago." [source]

"Service revenues fell 27.7%, while Product revenues reduced 8% year over year.

The Telecom INC5000

August 21, 2014

The 2014 INC5000 list is out - with 134 companies in telecom (including clients).

VoIP

Callis (now owned by C Spire) ($11M), Telesphere ($32M), Simple Signal ($11M), VoIP Innovations ($10M), Star2Star ($33M), iCore Networks ($46M, VoIP white label), Phone.com ($7.6M, #2857)

There are quite a few inter-connects, VARs, telecom agencies and several wireless consultancies.

Some Tampa Bay Telecom Tidbits

August 18, 2014

Highwire Telecom in Florida had a re-org and a few people were let go. Highwire is a TEM and auditing firm here in Tampa, Florida.

Bright House is chasing Enterprise with its fiber and Hosted PBX service (powered by their Telovations acquisition). BHN is also involved in the local start-up scene in Tampa Bay.

3 VoIP Studies to Skim

August 18, 2014

I like the responses when you survey your Everyday Jack and Jill. In this Survey: What Do People Really Know About VoIP? 'It may seem that what the average consumer knows and doesn't know about VoIP isn't very relevant to the technology's business uses." Despite over 10 years of "marketing" VoIP, "nearly 71 percent of the people we surveyed couldn't define what VoIP was without contextual cues." Awesome!

What do consumers worry about? No dial-tone without power; call quality; and specialized equipment.

These 3 Do Everything Together

August 18, 2014

Head Count Down for the Count

August 15, 2014

The other concern at ITEXPO was all of the layoffs in telecom. The number of telecom jobs has dramatically shrunk in the last 4 years - and is still shrinking.

As the industry looks at even more consolidation from these big 3 moves - Comcast-TWC, DirecTV-ATT and L3-twt. How many synergies will be let go with this M&A?

What Did I Miss?

August 15, 2014

A couple of data center acquisitions happened (and some other notes). Shaw Communications, a Canadian cableco, came down to acquire the data center company, ViaWest, for about $1.2 Billion from the private equity owners. [pr]

The other move: Alpheus bought StratITsphere's retail datacenter business.

Becoming a Cloud Services Provider

August 12, 2014

Poised to Outperform

August 11, 2014

In an article from Seeking Alpha (login required), the title just hit me - Here's Why 8x8, Inc. Is Poised To Outperform. Then you read the article which pretty much quotes press releases and you realize that once again the financial writers know nothing about the tech and telecom space.

Is 8x8 poised to outperform the market? Let's look.

Managing Brand Reputation

August 11, 2014

Yesterday, I moderated a panel at ITEXPO on managing brand reputation. Here are some tidbits from the panel.

"Brand is part product, part value proposition and part customer experience" (or how the customer interacts and uses your product)., said Shatel

Reputation Management consists of three layers of software applications: CRM, the Interaction software and the ERP system behind the scenes that connects information to the other two systems.

Between the NSA and the Courts, US Cloud is Dead

August 7, 2014

After all the Snowden revelations about PRISM and other programs that the NSA and other government agencies amass personal information about every person on the planet, the US Cloud Providers took a hit, especially in Europe, where the privacy laws actually have teeth.

We get that behind us (a little) just in time for a federal judge in US District Court to rule that Microsoft must comply with a US warrant for customer data despite that data being stored in a company data center in Ireland! [techrepublic]

Is this a reason for tech companies to move overseas?

Structural Separation via REIT Equals Zero Taxes

August 5, 2014

Windstream got the endorsement of the IRS to transfer their assets - copper and fiber plant - to a REIT and lease those assets back to the telecom corporation. In the process, Windstream will save a ton on taxes. That's awesome.

If it flies, the other ILECs - ATT, C-Link, VZ - will be right behind them.

The Mammoth Model

August 5, 2014

I received the rather sporadic newsletter from Mammoth Networks today. While reading it, I noticed that the evolution of Mammoth is very similar to many other ISPs.

"Like most early adopters of broadband, Mammoth Networks started with DSL as our only product. We focused our efforts from 2005 to 2009 on our DSL and ATM platform, sprinkling T1s into the network at times."

Pesky Copper Problem

August 1, 2014

Featured Events