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

May 2015

You are browsing the archive for May 2015.

Phone Companies, Channel and Other News

May 29, 2015

Considering my client has been waiting 2 months to port DIDs from an AT&T PRI to Birch POTS lines, no kidding AT&T is not a Phone Company any more! Plus I have other clients that AT&T is calling to tell them to get off the copper. Move to fiber. The company only has one T1 technician for large areas (covering 5-6 central offices).

A Brief About ANPI

May 29, 2015

ANPI is a telecom company privately held by 140 RLECs (rural local exchange carriers also called IOCs, independent operating carriers). I spoke with Mike Cromwell, ANPI Chief Sales Officer, earlier this week to get the background on ANPI and the CEO change.

This was a recent announcement: "The Board of Directors of ANPI Holding, Inc. and the Board of Directors of ANZ Communications, LLC regretfully announce that David Lewis has resigned as President of ANPI Holding, Inc. and CEO of ANZ Communications, LLC." This came a few months after other departures, including CMO David Byrd. Cromwell explained that for Lewis it was time to move on. After all, "Mr. Lewis was the founding CEO of ANPI, and has led the organization through a tremendous evolution over the last 19 years."

Edgewater-Metaswitch UC Study

May 29, 2015

I was on the Edgewater webinar yesterday where John Macario was presenting the Edgewater Hosted PBX/UC study data. Edgewater surveyed 1250 businesses about PBX, HPBX and UC. The data was good.

Metaswitch's Chris Carabello also presented.

Charter Bulking Up

May 27, 2015

Charter bid on TWC before Comcast. Comcast wasn't going to get past regulators. Charter is hoping that they will with 2 bids in this week. One to buy TWC where Charter will pay $55 billion in cash and stock for Time Warner Cable.

Commencement Advice

May 22, 2015

"What does your college education mean?" is a good question from actor Matthew McConaughey to the graduates of University of Houston. [video on Daily Mail]

It is college commencement time in America and celebrities, politicians and CEOs will be bloviating on campuses everywhere. Here are a few noteworthy tidbits.

Europe Invades American Cable

May 21, 2015

The French group Altice SA, controlled by Patrick Drahi, made a bid of $9.1 billion for Suddenlink - and is rumored to be looking at TWC. Yesterday, during a lunch discussion with TMC's CEO, Rich Tehrani, I mentioned how over-leveraged most of the Duopoly is. Verizon, AT&T, C-Link, Frontier, Comcast, WIND - all have an overloaded debt to revenue ratio. Rich explained that the name of the game is share price and cheap money.

Some Observations on UC&C

May 21, 2015

Just back from the Genband Perspectives15 show. Here are some observations I have around unified communications and collaboration (aka UC&C).

We act like everyone is a Knowledge Worker. That is hardly the case.

Marketing is the Difference

May 18, 2015

There has been a wave of stories about the lack of marketing in tech/IT/telecom. I mention it all the time - and twice last week (here and here). But there was at least one other mention (here and here) about how since most (in this case) MSPs don't market themselves, a little marketing can go a long way. I think that is true for any regional telecom or tech business.

Did You Make It?

May 14, 2015

IHS Infonetics' Hosted Unified Communications Scorecard came out. I have to wonder how they score this. I know from my own work that I only discuss and write about companies and products that I know about. (It is why you are probably bored of hearing about EarthLink and HPBX companies.)

Getting Perspective

May 14, 2015

I am heading to the Genband Perspectives15 show next week in Orlando. Going to see about Kandy and Nuvia plus some details on the fring idea. (Not to poke BSFT, but at least this show has some cool stuff to take a look at.)

While all that tech is cool, with 2000+ providers offering VoIP in the US, Marketing should be paramount.

AOL Gets a Surprise from Verizon

May 12, 2015

Did you know that 2.1 million people still use AOL dial-up - and pay about $20 per month for it?

And Verizon just put in a bid to buy AOL for about $4.4B in cash. (No idea where that cash is coming from. VZ has $121 Billion in debt.

Where is the VoIP Market is Going?

May 11, 2015

I have been working on this post for a while. I even asked a couple of people in the industry where they thought the Hosted PBX market was going. A few said that integration was going to be important for customers to realize the full impact of Unified Communications. That is certainly true especially at mid-market and larger.

4 Acquisitions Noted (+2)

May 7, 2015

I missed the announcement that BAE was acquiring SilverSky. SilverSky was a combination of Perimeter Internetworking and Silver Sky that was a major cyber security and network security firm used by a number of large service providers. BAE is a large, global defense contractor.

"Metalogix, the premier provider of management software to move, manage and secure content for Office 365, SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, Exchange, Box, Dropbox, Amazon, Google and other leading enterprise content management (ECM) systems, announced today that it has acquired MetaVis Technologies. MetaVis is widely known for its innovative and unified cloud collaboration service management platform." [I would have just said Microsoft Partner, but I guess that doesn't cover it.

A Spotlight on EarthLink

May 7, 2015

EarthLink has come a long way from the days of Mindspring and dial-up. That revenue did allow it to make big mistakes - Helio, Muni Wi-Fi - and make acquisitions to become the company they are today.

From dial-up to muni wi-fi to Clearwire 4G service, EarthLink has tried to stay close to its roots as a consumer ISP. Luckily, they made other moves to become a business servcie provider too.

Is It Just Me Or Is It Getting Worse?

May 5, 2015

Insider Telecom: Glossary Part 2

May 4, 2015

BTW, I hit a lot of events and listen to quite a few webinars. People confuse me, too, with how they refer to groups. I get how the term Partner can mean a lot of different things to different people, but if you mean Customer, say Customer or Client. A Partner as a customer is just goofy.

Why I Have a Mad on for the Monopoly

May 4, 2015

Recently, I was asked (once again) why I have a mad on for the Verizon. It isn't Verizon. It is the whole collection of Duopoly - VZ, ATT, Fairpoint, Comcast, Cox, Charter, et al. They have let me down by being slaves to the stock price and squeezing every dollar out of consumers and Wall Street (while paying little in taxes.)

Greedy Content Increases Your Cable Bills

May 4, 2015

As much as I have a mad on for the ILECs, in this case, folks need to know that the content companies are the ones increasing your TV bills -- not the cable or telco.

Bundling is a tactic that the content bullies use to force 7 ESPN's on you or the Speed channel or other nonsense. ESPN - owned by Disney/ABC, just one of the 6 - yes 6 - companies that own most of the media content - requires cablecos to carry all 7 ESPN channels AND that two have to be in the general package, so that they can bill for every subscriber that the MSO has.

Frontier demonstrated that FiOS TV was unprofitable, when it took over VZ territories in 2011.

M&A Rumor Mill

May 4, 2015

One big rumor is that Salesforce is being acquired. Google, Microsoft and even Oracle have all been mentioned. Although Oracle has said they will profit more if someone else buys Salesforce.

By the way, just the rumor made a lot of folks at Salesforce extra money as the stock bumped up 10% on the rumor.

Too Much Insider Telecom (a Glossary)

May 4, 2015

I was informed this morning by a friend that perhaps I write too much insider telecom. He is in tech and still gets lost reading my stuff. From this TWC story, I will explain some of the acronyms.

An MSO is a TV distribution system like cable or satellite (DirecTV).

A TWC Story

May 1, 2015

A reader sent me a story about the difficulty of adding the voice mobility package to the company's TWCBC voice service. "Over the past 7 days, I have put in 3-4 hours in working trying to get this simple feature added and have spoken with 3 sales reps, a retention rep, and several others in other departments." Frustration with the process and the company is natural in telecom. This isn't TV any more. But then that is why TWC was for sale.

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