Recently in expo Category

Later this week I will be in Atlanta for a FISPA meeting. One of the sessions I am presenting is Social Media in a Nutshell. This follows my Marketing in a Nutshell session.

The slides are here for your pleasure.

A piece of news hit me that just adds to the bad taste that COMPTEL leaves in my mouth. Here's an organization that is mainly composed of CLEC's. Since MCI and AT&T were acquired by RBOC's all teeth have left the building. I can't think of a single COMPTEL FCC or court victory. The big one was supposed to be Brand-X, but that turned out to be a huge loss.

This morning a CLEC client pointed out all the benefits that he gets from NRTC Coop and I am astounded.

So the news item was about VON. "will host a CTO Summit at which leading competitive service providers will develop a road map for creating a nationwide IP-based peering fabric that will bypass the legacy PSTN and support advanced services such as HD voice.....Committed to attending so far are Alteva, Telesphere, Simple Signal, Callis Communications, ISN Telcom, Broadcore, Global IP Solutions and Consolidated Technologies" as well as Broadsoft and Polycom, vendors for most of those attending.

This isn't really ground breaking because there are IP Peers like Arbinet and Stealth's VPF. But it's the first time that the ITSP's decided to start their own. And I have to wonder why COMPTEL wasn't behind this a couple of years ago. COMPTEL needs to start thinking of ways to add value to its membership, instead of just ways to make it really expensive to network with each other.

At IT EXPO WEST I will be moderating a panel on Leveraging Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to Maximize Network Efficiency. Our panelists will be Zeugma Systems, Voxeo and Voxel dot Net.

While we hear discussions all the time about CDN, not many folks know what they are, how they are designed, or what it means to the customer experience.

The session description explains that "the network throughput has become the bottleneck in delivering high quality video. A variety of solutions to these challenges are being developed today, however, there's room for significant debate on which solutions are best."

We will be talking about CDN as a Network Optimizer and What the Business Models are for CDN beyond how it changes the Customer experience.

Join us Wednesday, 09/02/09 at 11:30-12:15pm for this discussion.

I will be moderating a developer panel at IT EXPO WEST on Developing Profitable Web 2.0 Solutions. The panleists are from Ifbyphone, Voxeo and Intelepeer.

This is a Dev panel so we will be talking about The Styles or Ways to go about Developing Apps, including How To Create an App using the API. We will basically keep to the core of the description: "Attendees will learn how Web 2.0 allows organizations to gracefully migrate expensive legacy telephony to a lower cost software model without disrupting existing operations."

Join us on Thursday, 09/03/09at 9:30 AM

The CLEC show, COMPTEL, is in Dallas this week. Stupidly, COMPTEL had their show overlap the Channel Partners Expo. Hello! Same exhibitors and people can't be in 2 places at once.  But it's this exact kind of planning that has led to the troubles that the CLEC's are experiencing.

Has COMPTEL ever won a major battle at the FCC? Nope.

Yet COMPTEL is a lobbying organization. And its insulated. Where's the outreach?

Anyway... COMPTEL never pushed their members to cooperate in the marketplace even after the TRRO ruling went against them. By now, CLEC's should primarily buying transport and transit from other CLEC's. There should be a COMPTEL database of lit buildings, of fiber routes, and of central office collocation, so that members can easily propose solutions and wholesale to other CLEC's.

At the fall 2009 show, Verizon, Level3 and XO didn't exhibit. (I didn't attend but this is what I was told). That means that two of your vendors don't care that much about you - Level3 who many buy transit from and VZ who with AT&T and Qwest make up the bulk of the cost of services to COMPTEL.

As Tara Seals writes here, lines are moving to VoIP and cellular. While CLEC's are moving to SIP trunking, the majority have no cellular component. Why hasn't that been a priority for COMPTEL? Did they think that cellular was a fad that would fade?

There isn't much reason for the CLEC's to start screaming SIP because in the majority of cases, SIP Trunking is just a PRI replacement - and while the marketing is about cost savings, there is any cost savings to the CLEC. Net sum is that SIP Trunking means less revenue and lower margin.

The MVNO model has proven itself to a road to failure. Maybe Verizon's Wholesale Partner plan for Mobility will work. (But I wouldn't bet on it).

Landline replacement to cellular has been increasing with the market dip. That will likely continue, especially with T-Mobile's new $50 plan as well as the Sprint Everything Plan at $99. Garrett Smith thinks this will kill VoIP. WIthout fiber and without cellular, CLEC's are stuck as a NxT1 pipe pusher.

Where's the innovation?  CableLabs and AT&T Labs pumped out some good stuff like DOCSIS, cablecard and DSL. Where's the COMPTEL Lab or at least the COMPTEL Think Tank?

Is Integrated T1 it? Now to be replaced with SIP Trunk? Wow! Unified communications didn't come out of the CLEC world either. Re-invent or die.

 When you attend the Channel Partners Expo in Vegas, you have to bring your A game. (Rich Tehrani who is doing Channel Partners and CompTel is in a whole other league!)  There are meetings from morning till evening. Parties and dinners. Gambling and shows. It puts your legs to the test, especially when Starbucks at the Rio is so full its SRO (standing room only). (The leg to the left was primed for Vegas).

Lots of standing yesterday for the Agent Peer Networking session. Phone+'s editor, Khali Henderson, got us started off with a form of speed dating for 30 minutes or so before moving the approximately 150 agents to discussion tables. Interestingly, our table on Hiring attracted six people. Agents are curious about hiring sales folks. None more so than Jeff Mencek from ConnecTel in Pittsburgh who even has the budget for two salaried sales people.

The one thing I hope agents took from that event: Find one person in your situation that you can call monthly and talk about your Wins, your Woes and your Actions. That way you have a sounding board and aren't so insulated in your world. You get to see what another agent's world looks like monthly. It will help you out immensely.

I had a great conversation with Mark Jacobsen who is just starting out as an agent offering CRM, FreedomIQ Hosted PBX, and Google Apps with Integration and support. I know that next year he will be in Vegas talking about how he is killing it. Managed Services is the way to go. Folks want ease of use; less hassle; don't want to figure out the tech stuff; and want to focus on their prime business and family. Take that hassle away and you can make money.

I did forget to mention to agents that the last day for a free year of membership in TCA (the non-profit agent association called Technology Channel Association) is today. TCA now offers health insurance to its members. What are you waiting for?  (It's almost time to give those legs a rest for a 5 hour flight).

I moderated a SIP trunking panel at Microcorp's event in Atlanta in Sept. of 2008. The result was that the carriers were pushing SIP Trunking as a cost savings replacement for PRI. There was no differentiation among the 4 carriers - whose names I will not print. So then I am at the IT Expo in Miami for the Reseller panel on SIP Trunking titled "The Service Provider Perspective" hoping for something different. It was different. I was bored to tears by the middle of the 3rd presenter.It was one commercial after another about the company and how they could save money.  It was a shame too, because it was a packed room with people eager for some meat. (Lots of notepads and pens poised).

I know I run negative, but wouldn't they have been better served to engage the audience? How about starting with a question: "Has anyone heard of BandTel? Can you tell me what you have heard?  Really. Well, that is somewhat roight but here's the rest of that story. ....  " Then one minute later: "Do you know where our sweet spot is to our resellers?"

There were four carriers up there. Not one talked about productivity, benefits, sweet spot, differentiation, or interoperability.

Productivity: If you are a Broadsoft based ITSP, your SIP trunk allows you to provide Broadsoft Anywhere and API-based software to your customer as a SIP overlay on the trunk. That is a huge deal.  It adds much value to a what a PRI can do for the customer PLUS it extends the life of the PBX while adding missing features as an overlay.

Benefits: the advantage of SIP and SIP endpoints like a softphone. A SIP trunk can extend the PBX to remote sites.

Differentiation: I'm not sure anyone in telecom with a VP of Marketing title understands that term or knows who Jack Trout is. (Trout and Al Reis wrote the book on Positioning in 1981).

Interoperability: PRI is a time tested standard and SIPconnect (SIP Trunk) is just a SIP Forum recommendation for a specification that contains numerous RFC's. This allows for various interpretations of the configuration. The IP-PBX interface must be checked for interoperability with the carrier's switch. Not every IP-PBX card can work with every SIP trunk unfortunately. There is also the necessity for high-quality Internet access for the SIP trunk to work reliably.

One other issue I have is that it is sold on price. The costs are much lower than PRI. There is still a port needed. there is still an access line needed unless it is all over going to be carried over the Internet, in which case, the quality will likely be sketchy. Even the long distance rates are cheaper, even though the costs to th ecarrier aren't much different from TDM LD rates.  Go figure.

The revenue side is mentioned because PRI is TDM and can fetch higher revenue than anything with IP in its name. IP means cheap, which means less revenue. Less top revenue for the service providers books, less ARPU, and less commissions for agent or sales guy selling SIP Trunking. All with the extra headaches of inter-op.

It's a busy Expo. Full house this morning for the Service Provider Round Table with Broadvox, 8x8, InPhonex, MagicJack, Telefonica, and TW Telecom. It seemed like they would all like their ILEC associated costs to drop so they can drop their prices even lower. (I won't even rant about theMagic Jack deal).

8x8 made a statement about not wanting to collect communication taxes on its service. He sells POTS replacement. Cities and counties need the tax revenue from communications services. It's in the tens of millions of dollars. To want to shirk that responsibility just grates me.  If the ILEcs didn't collect taxes, their bill would be lower too.

I was lucky enough to be chosen to give the keynote for TMC's Telecom Agent Day at the Internet Telephony East Expo in Miami Beach on Feb. 3.

The Road Ahead:  So you want to know what tomorrow has in store? Come to this session to hear all about the opportunities that are waiting just ahead. The speaker will address the trends and the recent activity in the market and come away with a plan for addressing the challenges ahead.

So I would like to know what YOU think is coming down the pike. I spoke with Dan Goodwin at ATC this morning who expressed that agents need to be experts and on top of their game to be able to handle the constant change in this industry. Recently, a real estate agent told me that she welcomed this market, because all the amateurs left. I'm hoping for the same in telecom.

I'll be in Ft. Lauderdale on Oct. 21 Oct. 23 to keynote a partner luncheon for ADTRAN and XO. The content is based on where the indirect channel is heading in the next couple of years and what the value proposition is for both kinds of resellers - telecom agents and hardware VAR's. How many times will I say Converged? XO is giving every attendee a copy of my book, SELLECOM.