Even Fairport, acquired by RLEC Consolidated, is upgrading its network for higher speeds. Some of this is due to the fact that cable is winning the broadband war. Some of it is powered by USF Reform whereby broadband is the metric for dollars. Add in the Connect America Funds (CAF) and other federal and state incentives for broadband and middle mile fiber deployment. AT&T, Verizon, Windstream and CenturyLink have all talked about upgrading the broadband infrastructure. (BTW, this flies in the face of the new FCC Chairman's claims that investment went down after Title II.) It comes down to revenue - and DSL was not cutting it.
Fiber deployment is tough (just ask Google). Many providers use a mix of technologies. TPX (formerly known as TelePacific), Windstream, XO and Google Fiber use fixed wireless for broadband. Thousands of WISPs in America have been utilizing wireless to deliver broadband for years. The bigger guys are now jumping on the bandwagon. To be fair, the technology is not only better, but cheaper.
This from DSL Prime: (from Sail Internet in Fremont California) "George Ginis used Mimosa's super Wi-Fi to connect a customer a customer with 435.74 down, 331.83 up, and 4 ms ping. 5 GHz Mimosa is designed like a mmWave network but a heck of a lot cheaper than 28 GHz. Interesting alternative."
DSL Prime has an ad from Sckipio about Virtual fiber. "Extend your fiber with 100-300 meters of single-port G.fast. It can save expensive trenching for cell towers, small cells, basement fiber, commercial customers and others. A very thin management layer allows operators to keep their existing GPON management layer. Sckipio makes it effortless to add G.fast to any GPON network." G.fast uses copper like VDSL2. We'll see if it gets adopted in the US like it is in Europe.
Also on the copper side is trials by ASSIA for Terabit DSL. See here. Companies are at work to extend the life of wireline broadband to satisfy the consumer appetite for downloading videos. On the business side, the same technologies will be used to feed the business appetite for cloud apps - fixed wireless, 4G/LTE-A/5G, DSL/T1, cable modem and fiber. SD-WAN will be layered on top for metrics, failover/resilience and more. Interesting times.
]]>Sendhub,a business SMS provider that raised $10M, was acquired by Cameo Global, a global managed IT shop that does some contact center work.
Salesforce's leadership position in CRM now gets e-commerce with Demandware $2.8B acquisition
Broadsoft acquired Intellinote. [see here]
QTS buys DuPont Fabros Tech's New Jersey data center. This transaction comes after QTS transformed the Sun Times building in Chicago into a Tier 3 data center with 317K SF of capacity and 24MW of power.
Nest has unlimited budget, large workforce, and nothing. Oops!
The strike is over for Verizon and the lesson for the C-Suite: we can't get rid of wireline and unions fast enough.
ADTRAN launched hardware-as-a-service, a subscription service for MSPs to offer hardware to clients without leasing -- or another way to say that the leasing is built into a subscription service.
The Allied Fiber assets in the Southeast are up for auction under bankruptcy court approval. [source]
Rest assured, another prediction says the same thing that the other predictions said: VoIP Market Set for Steady Growth.
Want an example of Innovation? Zappos re-designs the shoe box!
CNBC list of Top 50 Disruptors
Mid-year channel trends HERE (site is hard to read with banners, pops, etc., but aren't they all getting that way?!)
Dean Bubley asks, "So uncomfortable Q for 5G designers & stds bodies: can critical-comms 5G really yield enough rev/profit to justify much expenditure/effort?" Follow up with this piece on 5G Vision. In short, is there enough revenue to build out yet another network (voice, 2G, 2.5G, 3G, 4G)?
Now softswitch vendors are service providers, competing with their customers and making it easier for new entrants into the already bloody ocean of Hosted VoIP. Broadsoft BroadCloud; GenBand Nuvia; Alianza Cloud Voice Platform; and Metaswitch MetaSphere Cloud Services [see here and here]
RETAIL: Sears, J C Penney - 30 Companies That Might Disappear In 2017 Based On Altman Z ]]>
How about sloppy execution of strategy? The acquisition of Midwest assets didn't result in customer retention in the region. Going WIMax first and LTE later was an expensive rebuild which left customers with 4G phones that didn't work.
Sprint had a great wireline network. Remember the pindrop ads for long distance? Sprintlink was a great Internet pipe. What happened to that? How do you let a huge asset like that decline?
Why do you need scale when your base product is so sloppy? Buying T-Mo isn't going to solve the poor 4G network (and slow 3G network) problem. Alas, it will likely add to it, since Sprint, Clearwire, T-Mo and MetroPCS (which T-Mo bought) are all on different spectrum and the 3G networks are CDMA and GSM. Oh, yeah, that will work out.
Scale has not resulted in a significant win in the US telecom market to date.
Remember Intermedia (ICI), the first billion dollar CLEC? Crushed by the weight of its own short term debt. Bought by MCI, which itself wasn't big enough to survive. Paetec, Level3, EarthLink and Windstream are examples of integrations gone wrong and synergies never quite met.
No, scale isn't the issue. Make a strategic partnership with T-Mo if you want, but the issue is that you don't have a plan - other than a price war with your two much bigger rivals.
Want to win? Strike unique deals for gadgets or content or apps; get M2M to work big time; double down on the IoT; and think of ways to be unique to your loyal customers.
How about tracking for parents? Built-in Lojack for devices? An easy MDM option on every device?
You don't need Scale; you need Innovation. As Tom Peters says, RE-THINK. Excellence is in your next five minutes, Sprint.
Side note: Does Sprint even have a Culture built to win?
]]>Because the most important thing today is access to the network. (Granted, the network in most cases is The Internet.) The network matters more today than ever before.
No one really cares about the network - until it doesn't work. What they really care about is the packets on that network. Customers care about what the network lets them do.
We wouldn't have cloud services today if we didn't have ubiquitous access to the network through wireline broadband, fixed wireless, 4G, 3G, 2.5G, LTE, WiMax coupled with laptops, tablets and smartphones. In some cases, people are buying the smartphones for what they can do with this connected device.
The value of the network is in the connection.
Next time you are talking about the network, ask what they are doing with it.
]]>Another big jump was Japanese mobile operator, Softbank, plunking down $20.1 Billion for a 70% stake in Sprint. Sprint needed the cash to reverse its course in 4G build-out issues with WiMax and Clearwire. PCMag has a good analysis of the deal. I think that if Hesse gets to stick around as CEO this money won't mean jack! "Believe it or not, Sprint is still trying to deal with the aftermath of its 2006 merger with Nextel, network-wise."
Increasingly, it is a global telecom world. "Britain's Vodafone owns part of Verizon. T-Mobile is owned by a German company. AT&T owns part of Mexico's America Movil, which in turn owns parts of lots of other carriers." VZ just announced plans to spend in Asia. Level3 has been expanding internationally (which still hasn't helped their bottom line).
The third big jump was VZ into SMB Hosted PBX. I say this because it looks like VZ is doing things differently than others. For example, they aren't talking about cost savings. That right their is a huge jump for VoIP players. (Are the rest of you watching?) "Verizon Introduces ‘Virtual Communications Express’ to Accelerate Productivity for SMB - Now Companies Can More Simply and Cost-Effectively Employ Advanced Collaboration Tools to Speed Decision-Making and Enhance Customer Service." The other piece that marks a departure is that VZ's VCE works with Google Apps!!! VZ does notice that 5 million small businesses use Google Apps - and it doesn't hurt that many of those businesses use Android phones on the VZW network.
"Companies using Google Apps for Business can download a Virtual Communications Express application from the Google Apps Marketplace, which will allow users to make calls -- with one click -- from Gmail, GChat and Google Calendar. Individuals can also see if other Google Apps users are available to join a call instantly."
"A Verizon-certified phone and an Internet connection, from any broadband provider, are all that any company needs to experience Virtual Communications Express’ benefits of enhanced productivity through real-time collaboration with co-workers, customers and business partners. In addition, administrators can authorize and instantly manage the various features available to individuals through a dedicated online tool."
Another winner here is Broadsoft. VZ is using Cisco in Enterprise UC, but BSFT for SMB. That's a huge sigh of relief from Maryland.
Another jump was in patent trolling lawsuits. "Based on our sample, lawsuits filed by patent monetizers have increased from 22% of the cases filed five years ago to almost 40% of the cases filed in the most recent year. In addition, of the five parties in the sample who filed the greatest number of lawsuits during the period studied, four were monetizers and only one was an operating company."
Finally, we have had metering of mobile and cable broadband, but now comes the Piracy Police. From Torrent Freak:
"A set of leaked internal AT&T training documents obtained by TorrentFreak reveal that the Internet provider will start sending out anti-piracy warning notices to its subscribers on November 28. Customers whose accounts are repeatedly flagged for alleged copyright infringements will have their access to frequently visited websites blocked, until they complete an online copyright course."]]>
Bloomberg writes, "Sprint's stock surged 136 percent for the second-biggest gain in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index as the wireless provider boosted sales with Apple Inc.'s iPhone and began rolling out a faster network. Cash and equivalents stand at almost $6.8 billion after reaching the highest this year since the end of 2005." The debt stands at $21B as of June of this year. This includes debt raised for its network build, to fund Clearwire (its 4G partner for life), and for re-financing debt due in 2013 and 2014.
Sprint is sitting on over $6B in cash, according to Bloomberg. Coupled with easy available financing, Sprint is ready to start acquiring, as indicated by CEO Dan Hesse. Rumor has T-Mobile or MetroPCS. While Leap has a deal with Clearwire, MetroPCS does not (yet). Neither does T-Mobile, who made a spectrum swap with VZW. All this says that T-M or MetroPCS would be good buys for Sprint.
Here's the flip side: Sprint stop is still under $5 and it is sitting on cash - lots of cash. That makes them a takeover target. Nothing says that MetroPCS or T-Mobile can't buy them!
Obviously any move would create a mess. Clearwire and Sprint are entangled. Sprint is still unraveling iDen. We know that Sprint sucks at integration from acquisition! Sprint-Nextel was second only to TW-AOL in bad deals.
Bloomberg gives many reasons for Sprint-MetroPCS, including MetroPCS CEO Roger Linquist admitting that acquisition was possible. However, all that debt Sprint has may prove more of an obstacle than the FCC. Consolidation will be necessary for Leap/Cricket, US Cellular, C Spire, T-Mobile, MetroPCS and Sprint - to compete with the RBOC/cellcos and their stranglehold on the market - subscribers, spectrum and handsets.
One other glitch today: ATT talked the FCC into giving them 20 MHz of 4G spectrum nationwide! "Genachowski on Wednesday began circulating a proposed order among commissioners that, if approved, would give AT&T a free-and-clear 20 MHz of spectrum in the 2.3 GHz Wireless Communications Services (WCS) band for a new LTE network. " ATT is buying up as much 700 MHz, AWS and WCS spectrum it can including NextWave Wireless. This will make it impossible for most of the other carriers to compete long term. VZW and ATT will have the most spectrum. Clearwire with Sprint also has a hefty amount of spectrum. One more reason consolidation is all but required.
]]>Just looking at the news makes me think that the cellular industry is having a week of mayhem. Besides the mess I wrote about earlier this week, "US wholesale player LightSquared has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid efforts to resolve regulatory issues that have prevented it from launching its satellite service," according to Telecoms. "The carrier has been planning to build a ground-based LTE network, supported by satellites, but the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) blocked the project, stating that the proposed mobile broadband network will impact GPS services and that there is no practical way to mitigate the potential interference." That about spells it all out. Last I read Philip Falcone wants the FCC to give Lightsquared better spectrum.
WISPA stormed DC this week to plead at the FCC and Congress for more unlicensed spectrum. Everyone wants more spectrum, but only WISPA will settle for unlicensed spectrum. WISP's make a lot out of a little. Cellcos make a mess out of an abundance, which just goes to show that when you are too big to fail, you will fumble a lot.
Speaking of fumbling, AT&T is in talks with Leap Wireless. Yeah. AT&T needs to acquire more spectrum. How about you and all the rest of you just deploy the spectrum you already have? How about you have to give it back if it isn't lit in a year?
I like this comparison by the NYT: Sprint as a downer and AT&T Mobility as techno-Pollyanna. Sprint might be right about mobile payments, since I don't trust the cellcos enough to be my wallet. I have a wallet. A leather one. I trust AMEX. I understand the rules of using VISA. I have Paypal. What more do I need? Do I really need to spend my money faster?
The Big 4 Cellco execs riffed at CTIA. Yawn.
AT&T ripped into FCC Chair again and threatened price increases: "In the case of wireless, without additional capacity, which would have been created by our transaction, prices rise," said AT&T Senior Vice President Jim Cicconi." So you mismanage your network, can't buy your competition, whine about the FCC and then raise rates. Awesome! We have names for people like you.
You know I have a problem with Sprint and its CEO, but this headline takes the cake: A Better Network is Coming! Really? Could be get a worse network?
,p>T-Mobile thinks that VZ's deal with SpectrumCo (the cable alliance) is bad for everyone. "T-Mobile USA would like to have a chance to bid on the spectrum Verizon Wireless is looking to buy." Well, make a bid then. Sheesh.The Union is against the VZW-Cable deal, "could mean the end of a competitive telecommunications landscape, saddling consumers with higher prices and diminished choice." Well, that and the Union doesn't get a piece of the deal. I do agree that this will end all competition, since the competition is a Duopoly. Now they would be working together.
]]>Sprint's network makes me think that THEY are an MVNO. The thing is constantly roaming. I am in NYC and the Samsung EVO Touch is constantly beeping at me that I am roaming. In NYC. In Tampa. In Miami. I am not talking rural America.
__PLACEHOLDER__Sprint can not win customers with this type of service.
I had to give up my Blackberry Curve because it was just too slow and old. Sprint doesn't carry any Blackberry phones that have a good rating. I ended up getting a good deal from Sprint Retention for the Samsung Evo Touch. It's a tablet, not a phone. The keyboard is a pain to use and slows down my texting and email - which are the main uses I have for a smartphone. I can't really blame Sprint for the fact that Samsung making a tablet that they call a phone. I can blame Sprint for an almost useless network and a horrible selection of phones though. The two factors that determine its long term viability.
When Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett said that he was afraid Sprint would BK, I thought he was wrong. After a month of no bars in almost any building and the beeping of roaming, I have to agree.
CEO Dan Hesse had to return a $3M bonus. I say give him the money back as severance and look for a new CEO. Heck, look for a new C-Suite. That company has had a lot of time to fix its ills but it keeps getting distracted by stuff like Lightsquared.
Sprint had the perfect partners in the cable cartel with Pivot and other JV's. It blew that. Now VZW is courting them.
Clearwire is a cluster. Just buy it and build your 4G network already!
Wireline - you have the famous pin drop network that you fail to utilize. What's up with that?
Sprint was the MVNO for Qwest and lost that to a sales agent deal to VZW. How is that possible?
Sprint has the FMC Integration with MITEL and Broadsoft, but it takes almost a year to get to contract. And likely those partners will be as disappointed as Qwest and Cablecos.
These are real problems that management at Sprint are ill equipped to deal with apparently.
How come they were last to get the iPhone and have no exclusive handset deals for a cool phone?
Why did they make a $20B commitment to Apple for the iPhone? At $500 per phone, that's more than 1.5 million phones per quarter. Two million phones per quarter is $1B. That means it will take more than 20 quarters - 5 years - for this deal to pay off. It won't work. Just another bad deal for Sprint and Hesse.
]]>According to this article, "Pinger and an explosion of smartphone messaging services -- like iMessage, BlackBerry Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber Media, Facebook Messenger and KakaoTalk -- have managed in just a few years to slash away at the important revenue that cell phone companies get from text messaging. Analysts say there's no end in sight to the financial blood letting."
This explains all the metering and bandwidth caps. Revenue is flat for cellular so they need to make it up in data revenue. When you are spending $7-9 Billion per year on the network, plus paying for roaming and having to buy spectrum, you want ARPU and revenue to go up.
There is also all this envy to Apple, Google and other cloud companies that are making money from apps, shopping and usage that the cellcos are not getting a piece of.
I think it is also why a good many cell phones do not have wi-fi. That tends to work two ways though: wi-fi is capacity offload while the customer is still paying you a monthly rate. Wi-fi upload may be how they save some money on capacity upgrades. Wi-fi capability in teh handset would also be a way to appease the folks who get throttled or capped. However, that doesn't help the carrier revenues. They just don't want to be a dump pipe, but every move they make seems dumb.
]]>Yahoo was being Yahoo this morning as it announced - in the same breath - that it has launched a "Mobile First" mindset, then shut down 10 mobile apps. Granted, some of them were not doing well (like Yahoo itself), but it's schizophrenic to do it on the same day.
Patent house Klausner Technologies sues MetroPCS for Visual Voicemail Infringement. That's always fun - and profitable for the patent house. Hopefully, in this case, it doesn't mess up the consumers' experiences.
AT&T is now supporting DISH Network at the FCC on its deployment and usage of spectrum in the 2 GHz range that it acquired from bankruptcy court via TerreStar Networks and DBSD North America. In the Fierce article, it is suggested that the support is because AT&T has eyes for DISH spectrum. And as you have read, the rumor mill has AT&T bidding on DISH - for less than what T-Mobile would have cost. It will depend on the FCC rules on the spectrum.
Both Verizon and AT&T had bad quarters. AT&T attributed its $6.7B bad quarter to its $3B T-Mobile acquisition break-up fee. Some of it may be due to having too much focus on the merger you thought for certain was going to pass. VZ blamed pension liabilities on its loss. Windstream changed its pension accounting method.
Not for nothing, but the pension liabilities that VZ and CenturyLink (via Embarq) owe SHOULD have been funded all along -- not in lump sum, quarter killing fashion. I wonder if this is a boat anchor that will sink them?
While AT&T whines at the FCC about a "clear spectrum policy", can I remind that of a few things? One, you have spectrum. Deploy what you have! And try not to mismanage it this time, so your top execs don't have to explain it to Congress again! Two, what spectrum do you want auctioned off? There simply, at this time, isn't any. You and your ilk have bought it all up, horded it, did not deploy it, and screwed the pooch that is mobile data networks in America. Your pals at CTIA didn't plan well for the future either. Did you think that the spectrum was unlimited?
In more AT&T whining, there is this article about the roaming rules and how Sprint is free-loading. My understanding about spectrum was that deployment was required - with an expiration date. What happened to that? Where is the enforcement?
In cool news: Sprint has a $100 7-inch ZTE Android tablet coming out!
]]>I am moderating 4 sessions this time. Here they are:
2/1/2012 @ 11:00-11:45am - TRACK: Customer Engagement -- "Social Media Channel Integration"
2/1/2012 @ 2:30-3:15pm - TRACK: Next Gen Service Provider -- "Educating the Channel with Industry Standard Certifications"
2/3/2012 @ 9:00-9:45am - TRACK: Customer Engagement -- "Does Your Business Have a Social Media Strategy?"
At 4GWE on Friday the 3rd at Noon, I will be moderating "Wireless Access Open For Business" where we will be discussing fixed wireless as a last mile access choice. Then we will have an open discussion, kind of an Un-Conference.
You can register for ITEXPO or MSP World or Cloud Comm Summit for $99 until 12/31/11. You can register for 4GWE here. CVX for Agents and VAR's is no charge.
Asterisk workshop on the 31st is free (with any registration).
Julius Knapp, Chief of the Office of Engineering and Tech at the FCC, will be one of the keynotes.
Another keynote is Terry Matthews, chairman of Wesley Clover, MITEL, Newbridge and Counterpath.
Let me know if you are attending so we can meet up for coffee or for the Gathering Dinner.