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

Internet

Channel Partners Need a Net-Head

March 1, 2010

Arrived in Vegas for the Channel Partners Expo (in conjunction with VoIP Nation).  Seems everyone I speak with is looking for sales. We have at least as many channel agents as we have always had, so why the growing need for sales?

I think one reason is that most of the channel partners are TDM. Plug and play.

What Do You Need to Know?

February 16, 2010

On a discussion today about certification training for agents under the TCA  umbrella, we talked about what kind of training will it be.

Years ago, there was a CSP certification for agents that was created by Virgo (Phone+), Dale Stein of TAG, and Scott Levy. It didn't get much traction. Some think because of the money, but I think it's because agents don't want training.

How many agents think about the Industry, the Indirect Channel?

How Do They Avoid Being Just the Dumb Pipe

February 11, 2010

On LinkedIn there was a question in the Telecom Executives Business Network group: "How can a Telco Service Provider value chain defend itself from the attack by the emerging "Cloud" services? My understanding is that the emerging "cloud" services remove value-add and differentiation from the Telco service providers which are cornered to act just as the bit-stream providers (especially for the retail market)."

My answer to that was as follows:

Most telco carriers worry about becoming a Dumb Pipe. Isenberg told them this would happen.

Is it the Regulatory Environment?

February 9, 2010

In a twitter exchange with Erik Cecil, former regulatory counsel at Level3, we were dialoging about the Fairpoint bankruptcy. (FairPoint aims to cut debt by two-thirds).

My reply stated, "Just 2 years after the deal w/VZ to create an unstable Fairpoint despite opposition, Fairpoint screws everyone." By everyone, I mean the customers, the economy, the state, the PUC who approved the deal despite being against it (And Erik, you think there is regulation?), the workers, the Union, shareholders and the debt holders. I actually don't care about the last two, because both should have known it was going to go POOF!

Which Docket, Dave?

February 4, 2010

Dave Rusin is the CEO of American Fiber Systems. He is a self-proclaimed fiber bigot. He has a two part blog post about the Special Access fight at the FCC. 

Dave may have his dockets confused. He calls it the Special Access docket at the FCC, but he is really ranting about the UNE docket. What's the difference?

The Special Access docket was started by Sprint and T-Mobile.



New Edge Drops Wholesale

January 18, 2010

New Edge Networks, an EarthLink company, cut their wholesale division this month. While volumes were good, especially with wholesale clients like Verizon, the margins were too thin for the NEN corporate strategy. That strategy would be to milk as much money as possible while this company remains afloat.

The new strategy is to double down on retail. Hire more channel managers and more direct sales people, so they can compete with each other on DSL sales.

Broadband is Flattening

January 12, 2010

Pike & Fischer survey shows that broadband is flattening. (I wrote a little about this yesterday). This means a couple of things:

One, customer acquisition costs of broadband is going to increase AND margins will shrink, because it also means short term pricing will drop. (Price war coming ...

Is Cable-like TV Almost Extinct?

December 11, 2009

According to Qwest (via GigaOM), Pay-TV won't be around in 5 years. With the tech  crowd, Hulu, YouTube, iTunes, NetFlix and other streaming media services are replacing TV. (NYTimes has an article about someone doing that here.) One of my ISP clients has a fat pipe to his house, an HDTV antenna for local channels, and then just uses AppleTV and online content for entertainment.

Why are we reading about this? (Why am I writing about this?) Because the music business was too slow, stupid and greedy to catch on to the Napster craze.

Will You Be Extinct?

December 9, 2009

Yesterday I had lunch with XO's Tom Gorey and Peter Davis. We spoke about the fast changes taking place in the channel space. Tom used to work for Ingram Micro, so he understands the VAR space as well. 

The big issue for both VAR's and Agents is that the price pressure on hardware and telecom services is shrinking margins and commissions fast. We all remember when Internet T1's were $1500.

A Few Words with ACC

December 3, 2009

While at the Microcorp One-on-One event I had a chance to sit down with the president of ACC Business, JD Baker.  We talked about the changes in the portfolio in 2009 (now that all the Baby Bells have transformed back into Ma Bell).

Baker thinks that the second half of 2009 will be stronger, since the first half of 2009 was kind of soft.

The next strong service will be Ethernet. EaMIS utilizes Ethernet transport to establish connectivity for a customer for managed internet service. This was rolled out in 2009 - at very competitive pricing - at a time when businesses were looking for Ethernet in place of TDM. (Businesses growing out of Broadband are used to a Cat5 hand-off and inexpensive switches).



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