The Cable Triumverate

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

The Cable Triumverate

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At a master agency, Microcorp One-on-One, the Cable 3 Sisters gave a presentation together. They have been sharing booth space for a couple of years - and presenting together for a while. This was my first view of it.

The push is on to fiber. "Screw MPLS! If you need Class of Service, just get a bigger pipe from us." The Dave Schaeffer (CEO of Cogent) answer to networks. Buy a bigger pipe and you won't need COS. Class of Service is only needed on a congested network.

Cable is all about Ethernet and Fiber now. No mention of SDN or other fancy network buzz words. Maybe in 3-5 years.

On SLA (service level agreement), I agree with the presenter from TWCBS, customers would love an end to end SLA that pays out credits. [Not available.] However, when Spectrum Business states that 1GB pipes can be as low as $1200 per month, the daily credit would be just $40!!! Who is going to fight for $40?

As one agent mentioned, AT&T is just as aggressive price-wise in region. And using ACC Business is easier than any cable process. (Who wants to wait weeks for an inquiry for pricing?!) However, the aggressive pricing - from my standpoint as an Agent - is crazy! How do you make money on $1200 Gigabit loops???

Comcast threw up a slide about 10GB will be passing 25 homes. No idea went they meant by that but all 3 of the collusion mention Fiber to the Home. FTTH is coming. Coax is retiring. We'll see.

Windstream is getting out of the $300 T1 business according to their channel people. They have set the bar to chase multi-location deals and to aim for $1200 in average deal size.

When you have cable biting off your market share, you move up market. However, then you are running into the rest of the LECs - ILEC and CLEC - AT&T, VZ, C-Link, XO, Level3. And soon Comcast Enterprise.

The one thing that many CLECs have not figured out: You need an exclusive offering - much like the Integrated T1 of yesteryear. A bundle that you can call your own, like Cbeyond tried to put together - or the Managed Office bundle that CenturyLink has. Without that, what is your Value Proposition?

I didn't mention EarthLink because in my book they are out of the nationwide CLEC game - and just doing the Retail vertical. And Birch, we'll see.

NOTE:

A cable channel manager asked me to clarify my post. I wrongly contributed the pricing toTWC. Well, the 3 cable sisters act like one entity. You present together. You booth together. Same products. So I paint you with the same brush. And I still don't know how this is NOT collusion.



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