Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter

On Rad's Radar?

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

technology

Privacy versus Security

January 25, 2012

"Concerned about privacy? Maybe you should be concerned about the economy instead. That was the subtext of a keynote speech by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, at a technology conference in the heart of Europe." [Benton]

Not to get political, but privacy is a ship that has sailed. Google, Facebook and other sites track online activities. Credit card companies and Paypal can track both offline and online activities.

Posted in economy, outage, politics, privacy, security, technology
einstein-thinking1.jpg

The Whole Content System

January 9, 2012

Yes the whole content system is a mess. Newspapers, magazines, book publishing, music, movies and now TV - all are old school content business models that are in a state of upheaval. Unfortunately, the people in charge of these content systems are fighting the change that is happening - happening in large part because of the Internet - instead of trying to start making changes NOW.

The Arab Spring of 2011 was a similar model: change was coming in the form of popular protests, furthered by social networks and the Internet, fought bitterly and fatally by the regimes in place, but to what end? Many dead and injured BUT CHANGE HAPPENED ANYWAY!

Many thought that after Napster, the music industry would stop being stupid and embrace the new music distribution models evolving. The Industry didn't, but the artists who did - like OAR, Dave Matthews Band and Pearl Jam (to name a few of my favorites) - have been hugely successful and profitable.

Why can't the rest of the Industry see that?

Radio is one way to listen to music, but let's face it, listening to the same 100 songs plus the syndicated DJ's is annoying.

Posted in Internet, Marketing, books, economy, technology, video

Cell Phones Offer No Privacy

November 30, 2011

Beyond the fact that radio frequencies can be listened to with Radio Shack parts - I'm not even talking NSA spycraft here - two reports out this week show that malware is present and accounted for on cell phones. Awesome, right? I mean, how long did that even take?

One article details how the IEEE has found that as many as 2000 free smartphone apps carry malware. Who says free is good?

Smartphones are a gateway to corporate information, email, data on applications, passwords and more.This is one more issue that corporate IT has to deal with.

Last week, an Android developer named Trevor Eckhart revealed that Carrier IQ had installed a rootkit on smartphones that logs user keystrokes. "The new video Eckhart released, however, shows that the software also reports the content of text messages and even logs encrypted web searches," reports TJS.

Posted in apps, cellular, privacy, technology, wireless

How Do You Make it Rain in the Cloud?

October 10, 2011

Here at Microcorp's One-on-One event, I moderated a panel this morning about various cloud services with Level3 (CDN), Cbeyond (Virtual Servers), Intercall (Microsoft 365/Linc), EarthLink (Security), and PAETEC (Visual Messaging). It's an eclectic mix, but that should tell you that there are many ways to leverage this thing called CLOUD to make money.

The Cloud is really a value for IT services. It's about leveraging the technology and the technical skill set of another company in order to let the business focus on their own finctionality, instead of the tech that might help the business operate.

The move to the Cloud by carriers is due to the lack of margin growth in the primary business of access. It's moving up the OSI stack from Layer 1 (wireless, copper, fiber) to Layer 3 (Internet) to Layer 7 (Apps).
Posted in Internet, agents, apps, broadband, channel, cloud computing, economy, email, saas, security, technology, telco, wi-fi, wimax, wireless
glass-phone.jpg

Metaswitch is Blowing Up

October 6, 2011

I know that the M Forum was last week, but the news is tumbling out of Metaswitch faster than I can read it. It started at CPExpo when EarthLink Business confirmed that it was going Meta despite buying STS which was a Sylantro shop. Deltacom and ONE Comm had a lot of Metaswitches lying around (mostly unused.

Optimum Lightpath (Cablevision) rolled out Next-Gen Hosted PBX for the mid-market and enterprise. It will be utilizing Metaswitch's MetaSphere multimedia application server for HD Voice, mobility, UM, visual voicemail, collaboration and conferencing.

One of the cool announcements was that Metaswitch inter-operates with the CloudTC Glass 1000, the industry's smartest IP phone.

Posted in hosted uc, metaswitch, technology, unified communications, voip

The Latest in VoIP Updates

September 19, 2011

There is just so many press releases. I'd say news but much of it is not new (that is to say innovative) or really news worthy other than as tidbits of info to keep up on the sector.

Metaswitch got into the SBC market, because their clients didn't want to buy the market leader, Acme Packet. Level3 jumped into the SBC market with a new service: Managed SBC.

Skype bought Groupme for a rumored $80M. Groupme was a contestant at the second Startup Camp, that also had the makers of the Android desktop phone, Glass.

Posted in apps, broadsoft, cloud computing, conferencing, hosted uc, im/chat, mergers, startup, technology, telecommunications, unified communications, voip

Ethernet is Spreading

July 18, 2011

So many notices this week about Ethernet. It's the preferred protocol for most businesses. (No one wants to buy a DS3 card and configure it, I guess). Ethernet is becoming more and more available as the delivery protocol for Internet bandwidth, MPLS, IP/VPN, and Private Line.

The M&A targets are all fiber guys like FiberLight, AboveNet, Zayo, Sidera, Fibertower, Fibertech and XO. All are Ethernet players.

AT&T announced that come August 1st it is almost doubling the Metro Ethernet rates in the 9-state BLS region.

Posted in Internet, agents, bandwidth, channel, data center, ethernet, fiber, mpls, saas, technology, telecommunications, video, xo

Craig's Lifetime of Customer Service

June 15, 2011

Craig Newmark of craigslist spoke at the CoolTech event in Tampa last Friday. It was a good speech from a nerd with a dry sense of geeky humor. (Not everyone got it.) He was doing his best to "simulate social behavior", he said. He had 3 themes that he repeated throughout the talk (that's kind of my style of speaking, too): Customer Service, Doing what's Right, and the Common Good.

Posted in Internet, Web 2.0, off topic, politics, privacy, social network, technology, twitter
growth-starts-here.jpg

Growth Starts Here

June 8, 2011

This is from GE's 2010 Annual Report. I liked the graphic and the slogan: Growth Starts Here! When I think about GE that brings good things to life, I think that they must have very good people and a culture to applaud innovation AND failure (because you can't innovation without risk and failure). This is what it must have been like in the hey day at XEROX PARC, AT&T Labs and 3M. 

Today, most job growth comes from small business and startups. Don't believe me? Look it up or consider that for revenue growth, big companies have to achieve synergies which is political talk for firing redundant employees.

Posted in startup, technology

Service Provider Claims

June 4, 2011

What's funny is when one service provider tells me how inept the other service provider in his region is. "We take customers from them all the time." I hear the same exact thing from the other service provider.

Two other funny things I hear. One is how every service provider has the most talented tech person in the whole world. The other is that most of the problems with the service is really with the customer.

Here's the problem with this type of thinking: It's too cocky.

Posted in ISP, Marketing, sales and selling, technology, voip
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next

agents apps att broadband broadsoft cableco cellular channel partners clec cloud communications cloud computing commissions data center duopoly economy FCC fcc financials google hosted pbx internet itexpo marketing merger mergers politics rant sales selling sprint TCA telecom is broken UC unified messaging VAR voip vz vzw wireless wireline

Featured Events