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

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Quick LTE Thought

February 3, 2011

What's With Clearwire?

November 7, 2010


What's up with Clearwire? It started out as a McGraw deal with big investors: Top 5 cable companies, Sprint, Intel and Google. (Did you know that Telesphere's CEO Clark Peterson was President of Clearwire and one of Clearwire's founders?)

Clearwire has about 100 MHz of spectrum pretty much nationwide. That's a huge asset.


Want to Buy Some Florida Fiber?

November 4, 2010

Over on Telecom Ramblings, Rob Powell talks about how metro fiber assets are for sale. In Florida, we have some smaller fiber players.

One such player started asTruWave Networks. TruWave was financed by $25M in investor cash and run by former Level3 VP Frank Mambuca.

Wild Wireless Winners

May 18, 2010

I didn't know that Carlos Slim owned Tracfone. I also didn't know that it was on VZW's network. 

WalMart is a large retail channel for Tracfone, joining forces in 4Q09 to offer a $30 per month no-contract plan that consists of 1000 minutes, 1000 texts and 30MB of data. This plan (and a $45 plan) were introduced under the brand Straight Talk, offered through América Móvil subsidiary Tracfone Wireless.

Independent ISP Wins County Broadband Grant

March 31, 2010

"Rapid Systems, a wireless internet service provider, was selected by the Hardee Broadband Project to deploy Motorola's fixed wireless broadband solutions across Hardee County, Fla. Based on Motorola's PTP 800 licensed microwave Ethernet bridges and PMP 320 licensed network access solutions, the wireless broadband infrastructure will deliver affordable, high-speed Internet connectivity to businesses and residents of the county."

Today, CenturyLink provides DSL in some urbanized areas of the county, but a majority of Hardee County is without a broadband option. Rapid Systems will utilize WiMax from Motorola to supply businesses and residents with a 10MB broadband option.

"The Hardee Broadband Project has emerged as a result of the Federal stimulus focus on bringing broadband services to rural communities.

Cellular Blues

December 12, 2009

It's a blue holiday for the cellular networks. Apparently, AT&T would like you to use your iPhone way less than you are. It's abusing their already tired network. The funniest response to this was by Fake Steve, who also happens to point out that the only innovation is in financial engineering.

VZW has doubled early termination fees for smartphones. The FCC is looking in to that.

Sprint is raising fees (that look like taxes but aren't) because they need some profit.



Trends for 2010

August 24, 2009

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?





Nothing but Headlines: DPI, Caps, Clearwire

April 24, 2009

I'm seeing a lot of news in our space but not enough time to cover it all or analyze it, so here's just the headlines:

DPI (deep packet inspection) by cable being investigated by Congress. It scares the crap out of Boucher (ARS). Cox, Comcast, NebuAd  = new privacy law being debated (NYTimes).

Broadband download caps: in the news all week because apparently TWC said that without caps, they won't upgrade any more. Well, I have news for them: if they don't upgrade they will lose customers.



Caught My Eye at VoiceCon

April 8, 2009

At VoiceCon, Grandstream had some new SIP-based gadgets including the video telephony units that VidTel is using and video surveillance gear. As TMC's Erik Linask reports here, "The first products in the new line include one- and four-port video servers/encoders -- its GXV3501 and GXV3504 -- and an IP video camera -- the GXV3601.... All three products leverage Grandstream's experience with H.264 real-time video compression, providing clear video while optimizing bandwidth usage, and SIP-based VoIP technology for providing two-way audio and video streaming to mobile phones and desktop video phones."

But the other hardware surprise for me was Aastra's Clearspan. It's basically an Aastra branded version of Broadsoft on a blade server for enterprise.

Are You Still an ILEC Agent?

April 7, 2009

This from Telephony online and the Convergence Consulting Group:
The latest in an annual study of the bundled services market shows US telecom service providers are losing wireline voice customers at a faster pace and being transformed in the process into companies that will look very different from their traditional telecom roots. The Battle for the American Couch Potato: Bundling, TV, Internet, Telephone, Wireless, released this week by the Convergence Consulting Group, shows maintaining a broadband connection is increasingly important to telecom providers, as wireline voice services become much less important.
If you look at the numbers in that PDF report and you still think that the QBPP is a viable option or that the last 400K businesses in the BellSouth region will somehow see the light and convert, I have some land for you in South Florida.

I have written about this in years past: the telcos have finally hit the wall. Everything is flat or down now: TV, wireline, cellular, and broadband.


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