Recently in telecommunications Category

SUTUS sells an Office-in-the-box solution for small business. For 25 and under employees, the Sutus Business Central 200 is a file server, email server, router, wireless access point, and phone system. The BC200 has gotten an upgrade. 

• New User Interface: enhanced Flex technology supports seamless installation, management and use of the Business Central 200, onsite and/or remotely.
• Enhanced Desktop Install Tools: enables the set-up of desktops, VPN clients and mail clients in a matter of minutes.
• Enhanced Network Interoperability: the appliance now can seamlessly co-exist within a customer's legacy local area networks; including active directory, hosted exchange, and existing internet routers.
• VoIP Interoperability: ITSP partners added to the VoIP interop menu now include Bandwidth.com, Airespring, Excel and XO Communications.

It's the telephony upgrade that caught my eye: Call park / retrieve and directed pick-up. Older key systems use call park and most Hosted PBX systems cannot emulate that feature. (Aastra has a PBX that can). Other features include:

• Overhead and handset paging
• Open / closed call flows
• Enhanced directory
• Ability to manage Polycom handsets through user interface

SUTUS is distributed by ScanSource and NETX.

There's a lot of buzz about TEM in the Industry now. Telecom Expense Management. It's about controlling the costs of telecom. It's a big expense especially for multi-location and Enterprise companies. 

TAM is telecom asset management which means it tracks cell phones and laptop data cards. Some TAM also tracks laptops, including Lojack style software to delete info from smartphones and laptops.

TEM is is used to track the following:

1. Contract expiration - so you can notify the carrier before the auto-renewal kicks in
2. Contract terms - how much, how long, etc.
3. Billing reconciliation - 10% of all bills are wrong I am told.
4. Hidden charges -  I'm doing a panel on this - many hidden charges.
5. Circuit location - circuits don't routinely get disconnected as they should. If you close an office or downsize, you want to do the same with the circuits
6. Spending - are conferencing, long distance or cellular minutes increasing?

Today, businesses need to contain costs. TEM is the way to do that. For agents, it's another way to be valuable and to make some dough.

Alex Doyle at Broadsoft pointed out a blog post from his company: Why is UC like a Gym Membership.  The analogy is really about PBX systems - hosted versus on-premise. A gym is the hosted scenario and a Bowflex would be the on-premise version. It's the best analogy I have seen used to date. I hope you are going to ITEXPO and Broadsoft Connections, because smart folks will be at both places simplifying things for you.

In speaking with Microcorp today about their agent event in October in Atlanta, we were discussing a panel on Trends for 2010.  It's not so much about the vendors, it's about the services that the vendors are offering that will become the next revenue stream for the channel.

This ties in with a TCA listserv discussion about Alternative Streams of Revenue for the Channel Agents. TCA will be hosting an agent call about Electricity with a couple of agents who have been selling electricity to businesses in unregulated states for a while. (Paetec offers this to agents as well).  Other topics include Web Strategy (like Lead Generation through Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media Marketing); SAAS; 4G; the Cloud; and Managed Services.

It won't be enough to just sell TDM in the future, you will need partners to offer Telecom Expense Management (TEM) and Auditing as well as all the new services coming down the pipe (electricity, SAAS, cloud, 4G, VOIP, SIP Trunking, etc.). 

Maybe we are heading into Master Agency 2.0 - the dawn of an era when the master agent will have to be more than a collection of carrier contracts. What do you see that you might need from your Master Agency in the future? Let me know. Thanks.

I look at the new IP Phones and wonder: Are they morphing into a cell phone?

I like cordless handsets, mainly because I walk when I am talking. It helps me think and it sounds better for the caller. And I use a corded headset.

So when I look at the newest DECT phones like Aastra 600D series, Cisco WIP310, and others, they are so small, lightweight and are starting to resemble a cell phone. Right? A perfect example is the UniData Wi-Fi phones. These look just like a cell handset and come with video capabilities and cameras. No other handset has that yet.

Broadsoft extended Web 2.0 services to the mobile device. So has Mitel. Blackberry wants to mobilize your PBX - to make your cell phone an extension on the office PBX system. So does Mitel. So does Broadsoft. Oh, and so do the cell carriers because they want you to spend those minutes.

It looks like only difference between your IP phone and your cell phone will be signaling technology (Wi-Fi, CDMA, GSM, DECT). When we get a phone with half those chips in there, will the desktop phone become obsolete? Are we really that mobile? I sit at my desk at least 40 hours per week when I am in town. I can't see getting rid of my cell phone even with those home phone systems that jack into your cell phone. For me the call quality on the cell is inferior to either my VoIP line (most times) and my POTS line.

I think that battery life will always save the desktop phone. I wish it could do more: like updates and texts or IM or something. After all the desktop IP phone by Polycom or Aastra (the ones I am familiar with) are mini-computers. Broadsoft and Aastra have XML marketplaces for apps for them, but I have not heard (or seen) anyone taking advantage yet. (Anyone?)

As more minutes move away from the PSTN to VoIP Networks and Cellular systems, what happens to the PSTN? Where's the Tipping Point when the telcos can't or won't maintain it anymore?

FierceVoIP has a headline: Carrier IP Telephony Market off 14% in 2009.

Analyst firm Dell'Oro Group sees the carrier IP Telephony market breaking out of its current slump in 2010, according to a recent report. While the group said the carrier IP telephony market in 2009 will be down around 14 percent from 2008, Dell'Oro expects the market to rebound to $4 billion by 2013.

This week starts with AT&T being sued and boycotted.

First up is STS Telecom's FCC complaint alleging fraud, discrimination, and unfair competitive practices by AT&T. Apparently, the FTC nor DOJ won't accept any anti-trust complaints against the LEC Giants. We don't want to rewind to 1984 do we?

STS Telecom alleges in the complaint that AT&T failed to comply with Congress's much embattled Telecommunications Act of 1996 in refusing to provide STS fair and reasonable access to various telecommunication services. As a result, AT&T severely restricted STS' access to Florida's profitable residential and small business markets. [press release]

Shouldn't all of COMPTEL be filing these types of lawsuits against the RBOC's?

How about the FCC just enforcing any of the many merger conditions so that consumers (and agents) can have a healthy, competitive telecom environment? Why do you think we need $7.2B in BB Stimulus? Because the LEC's want money to actually deploy broadband across America. (Meanwhile they are throttling economic growth in America). 

In act 2, TechCrunch is reporting that ATT blocked access to 4chan, an imageboard for anime. Apparently, this so angered folks that  "there's pledge up at ThePoint to boycott AT&T and cancel the Internet service with them." Umm, what are you going to do move all those iPhone users to T-Mobile and jail-break them? 

I find it funny that TechCrunch is using the deathstar logo for Ma Bell. When I use it, I get the call from Ma Bell to remove it.

NOFA Reactions

July 16, 2009
Speakers: Peter Radizeski, Marketing and Sales Consultant at RAD-INFO, Inc. and  Juan Vela, Occam Networks

Juan and Peter discuss their reactions to the BIP/BTOP NOFA in the second in our series of Broadband Stimulus related podcasts.  (The NOFA is the notice of funds availability for the Broadband Stimulus package. BTOP and BIP are separate programs that both the RUS and the NTIA are in charge of. Each agency will be administering grants and loans for delivery of broadband to unserved and underserved areas).

Click here to listen.

 Grande Communications, a Texas-based communications company providing residential and business customers with high-speed Internet, local and long-distance telephone and digital cable services, is being acquired according to a rumor. I don't have any details other than that.

Stacey at GigaOm writes about the data problem for cellular companies. On the one hand, data revenue of $40 to $60 more per month from an account seems pretty good; on the other hand, 70% of the traffic on a tower is from data cards (about 3-4% of subscribers). This seems like they should have known this.

Voice calls take up less than 10K per stream. 3G data takes up to 3MB. AT&T sees how much bandwidth an iPhone pulls off its network (read: a lot!). So are they just getting us addicted to a flat rate service and smartphone access only to charge us per byte later? It would seem so.

Once again they designed a voice network instead of a data network. (Remember the busy signals on dial-up?) And misjudged how people would use it.

With the workforce becoming more mobile and virtual each quarter, cellular data will increase. As households drop landlines, cellular usage will climb. I hope they have a plan for this.

Like terrestrial broadband not having a good enough business model for the network operators, it looks like cellular broadband will have to be re-tooled -- now that folks are addicted to 24/7 unlimited access.