When I heard Mark Sanborn call business a thinking man's spot, it made me smile and then think. Oddly, most of these news items have all fallen in my lap today. It made me re-think how the value added distributors...
A couple of small ISP/CLEC companies received letters from Verizon Wholesale stating that VZ Wholesale is outsourcing their puny accounts to an agency, Alliance Wholesale Agents, LLC.This would be huge win for any agency, since VZ waffles over the channel...
Belkin is buying Linksys from Cisco, who is exiting the consumer business. What are they doing with the Scientific Atlantic set-top boxes?Logitech is dumping some of its product lines as it re-vamps. Andy says that Yahoo Voice is shutting down....
Microcorp announced a deal with TDMobility (here and here). I have written about TDMobility before (most recently here and before), where I proposed that it would be a small leap for TDMobility to become a masteragency. Instead, TDMobility teamed...
Big announcement out of Atlanta this morning at the Microcorp One-on-One: Microcorp, amasteragency, has partnered with TDMobility. The agreement between TDMobility and Microcorp will provide the 60,000 TD Resellers with the ability to offer a comprehensive portfolio of voice,...
Broadview Networks filed bankruptcy, albeit a pre-packaged debt reduction plan.CenturyLink and Mediacom join the broadband cap club. Mediacom has a low end cap of 150 GB. Ouch! For cable companies, metering and caps are about preserving the TV money, but...
There is a lot of chatter in the Channel about Transactional agents being replaced by VAR's and Consultative Agents. I see Master Agents having to do a similar dance real soon.Tech Data is one of the largest VAD (value added...
There is a lot of talk in the Channel about Agent exclusivity to Master Agencies. Most of the talk is from Masters.Telecom is an industry of short memory. We forget everything.We forget that MCI left many agents high and dry...
The telecom ecosystem consists of a number of pieces: RBOC, ILEC, RLEC, CLEC, ISP, MSO, IXC, ITSP, MSP, data centers, Master Agents, Agents, VAR's. It is shifting.As carriers migrate from a commodity access business, so too must the master agents,...
Master Agent MicroCorp announced yesterday another acquisition (following the purchase of 5 Star Communications in June).Combined the Company will be the largest Telecom Agency on the East Coast.MicroCorp will also expand its portfolio by signing a strategic partnership agreement with...
Frontier Communications has inked a deal to be a channel sales agent for AT&T for voice and data cellular plans, as reported by the Fool. “This was a natural extension of a product that we are not currently offering that...
Tech Data announced a joint venture with Brightstar called ActivateIT, branded as TDMobility. In this case, TD will become a master agent for its VARs to offer not just cellular service from the likes of Sprint, ATT and T-Mobile, but M2M,...
This was a topic in Chicago last week: Is the Transactional Agent Model dying? It isn’t dying because the telecom business is such a commodity. Dumb pipes will always be a commodity. That’s why managed servcies was invented. (Unfortunately, that...
From the carrier side, Channel executives are looking to the VAR space for growth? Why is that? Has the Agent contribution to channel revenue hit a plateau?At dinner last night, I was talking about the magic number of a tribe....
A buddy of mine and I have been having a conversation for about a month about Master Agencies. We are trying to decide if there is a standard definition for the term. Generally, a master agent has direct contracts with...
Last week, InterNAP sent a letter to its Agents announcing that InterNAP's Indirect Channel program would be changing. The new model reflects a more Master Agent centric program which will add an additional layer of support for Agents. In the next few weeks, all InterNAP Agents will...
Several Carriers have notified agents that in 2011, they will be "managing to their contracts". "Some Carriers are having monthly reviews with their Contract Divisions to see which Agents are not meeting their obligations. While most Carriers were open to...
PlanetOne won the right to be the telecom agency partner for AMEX mid-size businesses web portal. PlanetOne will provide free, no obligation telecom evaluation to any of AMEX's mid-sized companies."The telecom consulting and referral services ("Services") are offered through PlanetOne Communications,...
Broadsoft investors are cashing out to the tune of 4.8 million shares to be priced at $22 according to TradingMarkets.com. Today, BSFT is trading at $26.In other news, Tampa-based Microsoft partner, Tribridge bought Mercatus Group, a health care provider practice...
The FCC has written a protectic order for Inter-Carrier Compensation finally! "Developing a Unified Inter-Carrier Compensation Regime, establishing just and reasonable rates, Connect America, high-cost universal Service Support and the National broadband Plan for Our Future. Adopted a Protective Order...
Just as Switch-and-Data became Equinix, the channel program was shuttered. Well, COLOTRAQ is here to pick up the slack. COLOTRAQ has launched its masteragency for colocation and managed hosting. Officials with Colotraq said that the new masteragency empowers agents...
We have a lot of good writers at TMC. A lot of content gets produced here. So much info in fact that it's impossible to read it all. Thankfully TMC is SEO-ed to the max, which our advertisers, channel partners...
I use a lot of terms in my writing. I figured I would explain a few of them today, since someone asked nicely.Agent is a member of the Indirect Channel. Also called a channel partner. An agent is an independent...
Atlanta based Telecom MasterAgency announced at their Annual One-on-One event that they would be providing Commission Insurance. The details are coming (Brad Miehl said in November), but it looks like Evergreen may get a new look. Is this more...
ADTRAN announced that it has teamed with telecom master agent, Telecom Brokerage, Inc. (TBI), to help channel partners drive revenue growth and become more competitive in the Small and Medium Enterprise market. (If you aren't a Cisco VAR, you need...