voip

Transactional Agents Called Names

May 4, 2012

Over at CP, the transactional agents are being called Prostitutes and Zombies in opinion pieces. I find that sad considering that the Zombie comment comes from a guy who whined because he couldn't make huge commissions off call centers any more.

The one thing that most of these opinions neglect is that the World of Telecom is all about Transactions. It is a business based solely on Arbitrage.

Posted in CLEC, agents, cloud computing, commissions, telco, voip

What Competition?

May 1, 2012

In this article about independent ISP's fading away, CenturyLink talks about competition of ILEC DSL - from cellular 3G/4G, muni Wi-Fi, and cable. There's also fixed wireless in some ares from independent ISP's, but that is mainly in areas without competition.

But competition is a myth today. VZ is co-marketing with cable now.

Posted in CLEC, broadband, cableco, duopoly, telco, voip

WOW! to acquire Knology

April 27, 2012

More cable consolidation. Southeastern Knology is being acquired by WOW!, WideOpenWest LLC for about $1.5B with debt.

"The acquisition increases WideOpenWest's customer base and will help give the operator more leverage in programming contract discussions with content providers." This statement makes sense - scale and scale.

"WOW is paying about $1,875 per customer relationship," according to Bloomberg.

"The combined entity will have over 800,000 customers, and its products and services will be available to more than 2.8 million households in 13 states," according to the press release.

Knology offers Hosted PBX and Knology Matrix, our fully-managed direct-to-the-desktop solution (which looks just like Hosted PBX.)

Posted in PBX, cableco, mergers, voip

What is the Value Prop of VoIP?

April 16, 2012

"It is happening and no one seems interested in stopping it - that hosted voice services are rapidly becoming a commodity service," Dave Michels

"According to the Telecommunications Industry Association, wireless has become the preferred voice-services option. Wireless revenue in 2012 is forecast at $335 billion, while all other forms of fixed network voice revenue will only total $176 billion ($132 billion for wireline, $38 billion for broadband access and $6 billion in cable/television revenue)," blogs David Byrd of Broadvox.

Those are interesting numbers.

Posted in hosted uc, sales and selling, sip trunking, unified communications, voip

Some VoIP Moves

March 12, 2012

Craig Walker, Grand Central's co-founder, is jumping back into the VoIP space, according to his tweet (and the TechCrunch article that had to follow said tweet).

"LogMeIn's free screen sharing and online meeting service, join.me, just added free internet VoIP conferencing to make quick, ad-hoc collaboration even easier from virtually anywhere in the world. The new, free VoIP service provides join.me's millions of users with high-quality Internet calling from their PCs, Macs, iPads, and iPhones. As result, join.me's millions of users can verbally and visually collaborate with up to 250 friends, colleagues, or customers at a moment's notice." [marketwatch] AH!

Posted in conferencing, voip

iPad, MDM and Other News

March 9, 2012

Bandwidth.com bought DASH Carrier Services and renamed it inetwork. Apparently, inetwork is doing gangbusters in the wholesale VoIP space, the largest arbitrage space left, I would imagine. It's the new LD. inetwork offers origination, termination, e-911, SMS and toll-free.

Posted in agents, apps, cellular, mergers, mobile, security, voip

I Can Do It Myself

March 6, 2012

I hear this all the time: "I can do it myself!" Backup solution? No, I'll build one myself. Outsource your email? No, I can run my own email server. White-label VoIP?

Posted in Marketing, PBX, apps, backup, cloud computing, hosted uc, unified communications, voip

Wi-Fi Only Phone Service?

March 1, 2012

Would that work? Wi-Fi only phone service? Bandwidth.com has launched Republic Wireless (about 19 months ago I guess). It is an MVNO of Sprint but the cell network is the back-up service. Primarily, the VoIP runs over any available Wi-Fi network to keep costs and quality down. ARS has a review here. ARS isn't happy that only one phone is available.

Not for nothing, if the cell phone you currently use has Wi-Fi capability, there are number of apps that allow you to make VoIP calls from yoru cell phone utilizing an available cell network (2.5G/3G/4G) or a Wi-Fi network. This isn't anything new. It's just another way to package an MVNO and arbitrage the service.

Posted in cellular, voip, wi-fi

What About Selling Cloud?

February 21, 2012

At The CPZ, the rest of the panel were cloud guys (VAR's and Hosted UC). This is a snippet of the conversation where the panel is talking about how transactional telecom sales are dead, long live the Cloud!

People deemed LD dead years ago (like when MCI went BK), too, but there are still a large number of agents and resellers making money on LD and pre-paid calling cards.

Until TDM is retired, agents will still be selling POTS, DSL and T1 - and making a living doing so.

Posted in CLEC, Marketing, VAR, agents, bandwidth, broadband, cableco, channel, cloud computing, hosted uc, msp, sales and selling, telco, voip, wireline

Telecom Tidbits on Presidents Day

February 20, 2012

On a LinkedIn group we are discussing SLA (service level agreements) and how they do not represent uptime. If you need uptime, you need redundancy. You need to build a resilient network. Netwolves has a solution called Bonded Broadband.

Posted in FCC, broadband, cloud computing, conferencing, disaster recovery, hosted uc, voip, xo

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