On Rad's Radar? - wireless Archives

One Deal And One Bullhorn

2013-05-09T19:36:31Z

UNSI has been in the news lately. It was originally American Broadband, reselling DSL nationally. Then it changed its name to United Network Services, Inc. and became a facilities-based carrier, with 18 Points of Presence (PoPs) and interconnections (and NNIs) to over 150 carriers in the US (including cable, DSL, wireless, CLEC and ILEC). "UNSi's partners are able to leverage the relationships with these carriers, paired with the cost savings and convenience of working with a single partner, under one invoice."

In 2012, UNSi acquired IPNetzone, a nationwide MPLS network provider, adding an advanced backbone network to capabilities. They partnered up with their Derby Capital teammate RapidScale. Yesterday, they decided to acquire Airband in an all stock merger. The combined entity will be named UNSI and generate about $60M in revenue. This will add fixed wireless and Hosted PBX to the service offerings. The biggest competitors UNSI faces are EarthLink, MegaPath, Masergy and AireSpring which all play the same game - MPLS and HPBX.

The bullhorn is the re-emerging noise around tw telecom being acquired. A few months ago CenturyLink's stock took a hit when their bankers floated the balloon that C-Link would buy twt. C-Link is sitting on a boatload of debt - $20.6 Billion. To buy twt would only add to the debt. It would hamper C-Link from its integration of Savvis-Qwest-Embarq and its plans to "leverage those synergies".

Now the bankers are floating the Level3 will buy twt balloon AGAIN - for like the 3rd time. How??? I get why - take a fiber player off the table and add revenue. But how?

Level3 is NOT the sum of its parts - parts which include, most recently, Global Crossing. Level3 is horrible at integration. Maybe all telcos are because the Ma Bell umbrella is still a bunch of silos, but come on, integration is not what they do well. And synergies have never been realized from this - or quite frankly most any telecom merger.

I have an idea for Level3: fire the top guys that have been there since they bought WilTel -- all of them. Hire from OUTSIDE the telecom world for a new CEO and a new President. Level3 has all the assets in place to be doing far better than they are. In baseball terms, they are the Yankees with Bucky Dent or Ralph Houk managing. (Sprint, too , btw).

You know how you get out of debt? You sell stuff!!! Then you deploy stuff. Then you keep it running. POOF!! That thing you see is called revenue which will eventually get you to profit if you stop selling on price alone.

Apparently L3 quietly bought a San Fran based fiber provider.

The New FCC Chairman Might be Biased

2013-05-02T15:40:52Z

In 2009, when Robert McDowell was nominated to be an FCC Chairman, the competitive telecom world cheered, because McDowell used to work at COMPTEL. They thought that Bush had given them a little help in the FCC. Oh, how very wrong they were. All the help in the FCC came from Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein.

Today, the Duopoly is cheering because President Obama nominated a lobbyist as the new chair of the FCC. I get the revolving door effect in DC, where people go from the regulatory agency to the private sector that they just regulated. To the average taxpayer - well, they don't notice do they? But to the taxpayer who is paying attention, we just want to kick their butts.

Today, the entire telecom industry is basically unregulated. Very few states still have a regulated LEC. With the clipping of copper, carrier of last resort options decline as does the ability for CLEC's to provide service. Oh, how we will wake up in a few years with huge bills, lousy service, no competition and no regulation. You will just have to like it a drink a cup of STFU.

This cracks me up: "Mobile operators including largest U.S. wireless carrier Verizon Wireless and No. 2 AT&T Inc. "should benefit from a focus on their economic health" by a Wheeler-run FCC, Paul Gallant, Washington-based managing director at Guggenheim Securities, said in a note today." Their economic health???? It isn't the FCC's job to worry about that. The FCC has one mandate: Protect the consumer.

Tom Wheeler ran both CTIA and NCTA, so the cable and wireless companies were popping corks last night. I hope they get the same surprise that the COMPTEL members got from McDowell. I doubt it though. This administration - both at 1600 Pennsylvania and at 445 12th Street SW - have been huge disappointments. N o one gets that our nation's very economy ebbs and flows with our telecom infrastructure. Idiots.

Florida Broadband Litigation Woes

2013-04-24T04:52:14Z

"Florida Rural Broadband Alliance, LLC (FRBA) is a regional collaboration of local governments, community activists and economic development agencies from rural and economically disadvantaged communities located throughout 15 counties within Florida's Northwest Rural Area of Critical Economic Concern (NWRACEC) and the South Central Rural Area of Critical Economic Concern (SCRACEC)," reads the website for FRBA.

It continues, "The FRBA project will build a new Middle Mile broadband infrastructure, which will link together providers of vital public sector commercial services with private sector non-profit entities for the first time in these two struggling regions of Florida. At this time, only 39 percent of the FRBA region has broadband service. ...At the end of the 3-year build out period, FRBA's project will deliver up to 1,000 times the existing capacity within the coverage area. Doing so will create jobs."

FRBA received a $24 million dollar BTOP broadband stimulus grant in 2010. [Details about the grant are in this case study and on the NTIA site.]Unfortuantely, three years later there isn't anything but lawsuits, federal investigations and accusations.

The investigation into FRBA started in September of 2011. The Columbia County Observer has been steadily reporting on the problem. The real problem: that these rural counties didn't get broadband due to problems large enough to bring the NTIA in and halt payments. This action only precipitated some of the engineering firms to not get paid. One of those firms, Rapid Systems, has been in a court battle with FRBA.

I don't have all these details yet but FRBA, the North Florida Broadband Authority (NFBA) and the GSG, a management firm employed by both authorities were mixed up in the whole grant mess. The Ripoff Report has some serious allegations and isn't far off from the what I have heard. Somewhere along the way $30M was spent by the NFBA - but no paying customers are on that middle mile network that is not completed. Full disclosure: I have consulted with Rapid Systems, the GSG and the NFBA in the past.

It seems like a soap opera with a wrongful termination lawsuit aginst NFBA and now Rapid Systems' litigation against FRBA for $25M!

It will be something I keep my eye on. When the BTOP and BIP programs were launched, many figured the money would not be as productive as the government hoped. These aren't shovel ready projects. They took time to hand out, spin up, and get moving -- but by then how much of the money actually built anything? There is waste and fraud in every billion dollar program. At least this one was investigated early and clamped down on.

What Did I Miss?

2013-03-26T12:55:58Z

After making the news for supposedly canceling tele-working (which they only did for 200 distracted employees), Yahoo is not acquiring. First, Y! bought Jybe, a social recommendation site. Now, "Yahoo announced it is snagging the mobile news reader Summly, created by 15-year-old Nick D'Aloisio," according to the USA Today. Now 17, Nick gets $30 million from Yahoo.

Oracle bought Tekelec, which was known for its Class 4/5 TDM switch in the day, but is now referred to as a signaling company. (Huh?) On the heels of its purchase of Acme Packet, I have to wonder what Oracle sees in the telecom industry that I am missing. Consolidation and bankruptcies are coming. There is too much debt, too much disappearing revenue, and too many companies that do the same thing. There are a thousand VoIP providers out there who could buy a telecom package from oracle IF they had more than 300 customers and any profitable revenue. Unfortunately, most of the VoIP companies can only take orders and not sell. It has become a whore's game of how low can you go - in LD, international, termination, toll-free, and POTS line replacement. It will be interesting to see if these purchases end up being Oracle's Palm.

Global Capacity came out of bankruptcy with a new owner, Pivotal Investment; a new PR firm, iMiller; and new marketing spin in the One Marketplace. Netwolves, UNSI and EarthLink have joined the platform either to sell circuits or to extend their reach for MPLS.

The FCC released its wireless study that Congress requires but doesn't read. ARPU has been steady from 2009-2011 but voice revenue is dropping as data revenue increases. Is the wireless industry competitive? The report doesn't say. What do you think?

Broadsoft released UC-One, its IMS FMC offering. Basically, after signing up 400+ customers, it now has to sell deeper into each account, because there are no more new accounts. So all you BSFT customers, start selling IMS and FMC vis UC-One. Leslie says so.

Broadsoft also blogged that UC demand was outpacing supply, which makes me laugh. On the street, where sales are actually made, customers are seeing 2-4 quotes for phone service. No one is asking for UC, but that doesn't mean unified comms isn't being quoted and sold. Why would the analyst say that? One, he might not be watching enough service providers to see sales growing. Many of the VoIP companies are private and don't do PR or report numbers to anyone, so how would any analyst know the size fo the market, revenues, sales, seats sold, etc.? Two, UC is being quoted but not being purchased - due to poor sales skills or customer sticker shock or the fact that Premise PBX are still selling. Finally, it could be that UC only works with integration. So if the customer isn't using the 3 or 4 applications that integrate with the UC platform, it won't be a good fit (or will require big dollar integration). There are number of reasons why UC sales look dim. A lot of it is education to the customer and to the sales teams, but also a lot of businesses just want fast Internet, a smartphone and cheap dial-tone.

Sprint will start carrying Mitel's hosted PBX solutions as part of its broader Cloud Wholesale Services portfolio.

Parallels, Cisco, Google and Panda

2013-01-22T04:07:30Z

If every day feels like you are on a hamster wheel, maybe you are examining the wrong metric.

An interesting announcement today two weeks before thier customer summit, Cisco bought a stake in Parallels and gets a Board seat.

Parallels is the middleware for many cloud providers, customers that Cisco would like to sell a lot of stuff through. This might be a response to the cooling relationship between Cisco and VMware, according to reports.

Alltel is completely gone now. AT&T grabbed the leftover assets (customers 500K+ and spectrum) of Alltel for $780 million per VZW's divestiture of Alltel after their 2009 sale.

Google updated Panda again. SearchEngineLand has this to say: "Google has announced a new Panda refresh, making this version number 24. This refresh has a noticeable impact 1.2% of English based queries according to Google. The previous confirmed update was #23 and it impacted 1.3% of English queries on December 21, 2012. Prior to that was a refresh on November 21st that impacted 0.8% of queries. It seems like Google is now rolling out these updates every 4 weeks or so."

Panda is Google's algorithm for search results to " helping people find high-quality sites in Google's search results."

AT&T's Big Investment

2012-11-14T15:03:17Z

AT&T announced that it would spend $14 Billion dollars on wireless and wireline networks over the next three years. What a bunch of hoopla over not much. AT&T already spends between $7B and $9B annually on its wireless network. The rest will be used to hit 1 million businesses with fiber. This will happen because both RBOCs want to shut down their copper network. They don't want to run two networks -- and they don't want to sell plant to competitors at wholesale. Those competitors are CLEC's, a bunch of whom rolled out EoC (Ethernet-over-Copper) in many central offices. MegaPath, Integra, XO and TelePacific are betting on the copper plant to provide as much as 100 MB to a business over copper. ADTRAN is the supplier, who is also hoping that the copper plant stays. Can you imagine the unemployment if the copper is clipped?

There is talk about AT&T using this big announcement to force state utility commissions to allow for the clipping of copper. If you want LTE and fiber in your community, then AT&T gets what it wants. Never has there been a better time for CLEC's to SELL DEEP and invest in their own fiber.

Three Big Jumps This Weekend

2012-10-15T18:06:09Z

The biggest jump over the weekend was Red Bull Stratos: "Felix Baumgartner captured the attention of the web on Sunday when he jumped from a capsule 128,000 feet above Earth and landed safely on the ground in New Mexico." [via Huffpro] Not only did Baumgartner break the speed of sound, but YouTube broke the streaming barrier previously set at the Olympics. 8M people watched globally as Baumgarter jumped from the stratosphere.

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."

Buying or Being Bought: Sprint

2012-10-02T04:23:13Z

In March, Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research announced that Sprint would end up in bankruptcy. MSN reports, "After assigning a 50% likelihood in March that Sprint would end up in bankruptcy as it raced to build a national wireless network to handle smartphones like the iPhone 5 and compete with stronger carriers -- and citing bond trading prices -- telecom sector bear Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research now says that readily available financing makes that prospect remote. However, amid a 100%-plus stock rise for Sprint in 2012, Moffett says that even if bankruptcy is not a near-term risk for Sprint shareholders, significant risks remain."

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.

Channel Moves

2012-09-05T17:49:39Z

Zayo decided to keep the AboveNet channel intact with Angelo Germani in charge. Zayo announced that zColo's products and services will join Ethernet, Wavelength and IP products for sale via channel partners.

Windstream is partnering with Lifesize (a division of Logitech) for HD Videoconferencing equipment. Paetec has long offered equipment for lease to SMB to go with services.

Windstream has hired Anne Brogan, formerly at NITEL, as National Channel Manager, just about 6 weeks after the channel head, Dan Sterling, was let go and Jeff Howe assumed his duties. Good Luck, Anne!

CloudTC, the Android based IP desk phone that debuted at StartupCamp a couple of years ago, has rolled out to the Channel.

West IP (formerly Smoothstone) has a really cool new website. Luv the madness screamer! With the website revamp comes MediaCloud, a Microsoft Lync offering.

8x8 is going global - to Canada and the UK, according to UC Strategies. A lot of that info was covered in these two blog posts - CMO interview and Agent interviews.

The timing on this announcement couldn't be better: RadioShack launches MVNO service! They are so good at customer service that they have become a service provider. Lucky for them, telecom - much like airlines - has a very low bar for customer care. Oh, they answer the phone and quote you policy but that's about it. RS will fit right in.

Once upon a time, OC-192 networks were the way to measure a network's manhood. Now it is 100G. XO rolled out 100G nationwide.

IRONY of the Day: The guy I wrote about that thought Agents work part-time, just got a new gig as a channel manager. I guess that part-time agency plan went down the tubes. I just hope he works full-time as a channel manager - just not as MY channel manager.

If you will be at the CPExpo next week in Orlando, let's meet up. The TCA is holding its 4th year Anniversary on 9/11 at 7:30 in Orlando. Register here. See you there!

Another Unpopular Decision is the Tale of the FCC

2012-08-16T18:34:00Z

don't think the FCC has ever had a popular decision. As far as I have seen, every decision they make ends up in court. TELRIC, Brand-X (DSL and Cable access for ISP's), CBS Nipplegate, Tennis Channel versus Comcast, AT&T-T-Mobile decision, cell phone radiation (which is back in the news), USF Reform and the list just goes on.

Today, the DOJ and the FCC announced that they will approve the VZW-SpectrumCo deal. I am still trying to wrap my head around this one. How do you say No to the number 2 and the number 4 cellcos merging but okay the Duopoly working together?? There was competition before. Now there will be none!

""The Antitrust Division's enforcement action ensures that robust competition between Verizon and the cable companies continues now and in the future as technological change alters the telecommunications landscape," Wayland added."

The FCC's only job is to protect the consumer and make sure that they have access to phone lines. Once again failure at the F-Agency. It's myopic view of LTE as some kind of sacred cow is laughable. They won't innovate or manage their spectrum better if you keep taking away competition!

Rural DSL will now be replaced with LTE, which is not only more expensive but is metered!

The best part for VZW is that they can't write all this off. Scrap the copper and follow the ATT lead:

"While AT&T was slapping usage caps and overlimit fees on its customers ostensibly to help pay for network upgrades, AT&T wrote off the value of those upgrades on its federal taxes, winning turbo-charged tax deductions for every new cell tower, 4G upgrade, and just about everything else AT&T used to enhance its network," reported Stop the Cap about ATT paying zero taxes and getting a $420M rebate.

Snarky News Bits

2012-08-06T17:38:31Z

Just so many things to comment on in telecom, but just do not have the time to hit each one. So here are some snarky news bits.

The VZW-SpectrumCo deal in for "tough remedy", Reuters is reporting. Yeah, conditions that will never be enforced. Public Knowledge is pounding on the FCC about Comcast caps, declaring that the caps violate the merger agreement with NBCU. Will any action occur? Probably not. The issue with the spectrum deal is the joint venture. "Anti-trust regulators have sought strict limits on controversial side deals." We'll see how that goes. I hear that VZW stores are already marketing cable deals.

VZW is also in the news because the FCC forced them to allow tethering apps on Android phones. VZW says that they never blocked apps or functions on any smartphones. CNET has a long FAQ about what the tethering settlement means to the end user.

Fake AT&T Bills Direct Users to Blackhole, Zeus.

How "Toggle" Worked Its Way Through AT&T's Innovation Pipeline And Into Cell Phones.

AT&T plunked down $650M for Nextwave Wireless - well, really for the spectrum, hoping that the FCC will allow its use for LTE despite its proximity to satellite spectrum. Didn't Lightsquared just go down this path?

Nashville is lucky enough to be the trail market for Comcast's metering plan. "Comcast Starts Billing Bandwidth Hogs, But Exempts Its Own VOD Apps". In other words, Netflix goes towards usage but not anything from Comcast servers. The pipe for on-demand is probably a separate channel. The meter is on the Internet pipe. Also, VOD is part of the TV service and is On-Net. Netflix is off-net. Why meter? Increase ARPU and save your TV franchise.

The Fight Over Spectrum Dominance

2012-07-16T20:32:54Z

It looks like the FCC is going to approve the Verizon acquisition of the SpectrumCo - cable companies alliance - spectrum. Competitors are hoping for conditions on the deal, including conditions on the marketing deal that the joint-venture is designed for.

Sprint's concern to the FCC is about equal access to cablecos for tower backhaul. I wasn't aware that the cablecos had a huge stake in the tower backhaul business. They might, but I hear claims that every carrier has its fingers in that pie.

The ITTA President Genevieve Morelli wrote on July 10: "Under the Commercial Agreements, the parties have created strong incentives to ensure that competitors such as the Midsize Carriers no longer receive backhaul business. For example ... they will effectively shut out all competition for backhaul contracts with Verizon Wireless."

"Thirty-two House Democrats today penned a letter to the FCC and the Justice Department urging the agencies to review Verizon's pending purchase of spectrum from several cable firms with extreme caution," from PCMag. And delay the decision if possible. The FCC decined to delay. However, "The full FCC will appear before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's technology subcommittee tomorrow for an oversight hearing that will likely touch on the spectrum issue." So that will show them.

After saying NO to ATT-T-Mobile, it seems hypocritical to say YES to this deal, which puts VZW in bed with the Top ISP's and MSO's, who right now are the ONLY competition that the RBOC has.

Here's hoping the DOJ and the FCC put some restraints on them -- but more important actually ENFORCE the terms of the deal, which they have failed to do --- EVER!!!

Hey, Julius, maybe you can give them a pile of Connect America cash too, just to sweeten the deal.

Similar article on TMC.

The Sales SWAT Team

2012-07-03T11:21:17Z

Zayo Group announced the formation of a dedicated team focused on Small Cell and Fiber to the Tower (FTT) initiative (in this press release). That's a good idea. In fact, when RAD-INFO INC is consulting on mergers between TDM companies and cloud companies, this is one approach that we have used.

There are different types of salespeople. Whale Hunters, farmers, transactional, good ones, bad ones, mediocre ones. Some companies grade the sales people as A, B, C. Taking a small group of A players to create a Sales SWAT team to take a product to market is a good idea. B and C teams can refer business to the "Closers" in the SWAT team. The compensation plan will have to be adjusted accordingly to provide for this type of sales structure.

Why a SWAT team? Let's look at the FTT market. The tower companies are merging together. SBA just dropped $1.45 billion to grab 3252 towers from TowerCo. SBA's revenue from 15,000 towers comes from mainly 3 companies: Sprint at 27%, while T-Mobile and VZW make up about 30-35% of the revenue. There are not a lot of cellcos in the US.

AT&T, VZW, Sprint, T-Mobile, Clearwire, Cricket/Leap, US Cellular, C Spire (formerly Cellular South), MetroPCS and nTelos make up the majority of the revenue. A bunch of rural cellcos make up the minority. That's why a SWAT team is a good idea. You know who the players are. You know that the sales interval is nearing its end. By that, I mean, that being the second fiber provider to a tower is way less profitable - and as contracts expire, it becomes a bidding war, which is even less profitable. So you want to be the first and hopefully sole fiber provider to a tower. The window is closing on this opportunity as cable companies, ILEC's, and regional fiber companies are all chasing this business. A SWAT team allows you to put the best people on it, give them a goal, a focus, and let them get to it.

Selling this focused to a small pool of prospects is more like selling for Boeing or Honeywell or a defense contractor. Boeing has a limited number of customers - airlines and friendly air forces. Boeing only has a few chances every 4 or 5 years to sell its planes. The Boeing's sales team spends a lot of time doing research on a prospect and even more preparing the sales presentation. READ: PREPARATION! What does a Police SWAT team do? Practice, Prepare, and Practice.

What does a typical telecom salesperson do? Run around chasing low hanging fruit. No practice. No prep. I see it time and again. On a tele-seminar last week, a sales guy was looking for a silver bullet. Is there a new way to prospect? Not really. Sure you can use LinkedIn to search for prospects, it is an easy way to kill an hour or so per day. However, the sales guy isn't doing research now, so would he want to do it in LinkedIn? Not likely.

I think more companies will establish Sales SWAT teams, especially for specialized services or product launches to get traction in the marketplace.

When I look at the Channel, I see carriers trying to find that perfect partner. Without knowing the skill set (like CCIE, MCA or CCISP) or specialty of a telecom agency, how would the carrier being able to help them specialize or provide them the service offerings (and accompanying marketing assistance) that would make for a successful partnership? For example, as a telecom agent, I mainly sell to service providers and mainly sell Internet bandwidth and transport. No matter how many times I tell that to carriers, they still try to get me to sell whatever the organization is pushing that quarter. What a waste of time.

Want a Channel SWAT Team? Look at the Agency's client base, history of sales, examine what offerings can be added to get stickier to that base, and make it about the Agency and its customers, not the carrier comp plan or what the C-Suite promised Wall Street.

When Cbeyond decided to go all-in on Cloud, it took a while to realize that they had to change more than the brochure. They had to change the sales force and th executive team. Cloud is not TDM. Cloud is not an Integrated Access Solution. If you want change - like to stop being a T1 slinger - you need to change culture, personnel, compensation plans, and your way of thinking. The whole company can't change overnight, but changes can be made incrementally with something like a Sales SWAT Team.

What's Up With Private Line?

2012-07-03T00:14:58Z

"Private lines are leased point-to-point circuits, which are used for a variety of applications including connecting enterprise locations and backhauling cell towers to mobile switching centers," according to Insight Research.

"The $39 billion US private line services market is expected to show modest 2.3 percent annual growth over the next five years, as demand for higher bandwidth private lines offsets the shift of lower bandwidth private lines to packet-based services, says a market analysis study from Insight Research."

I have no idea how that will happen, unless they also include Ethernet, which the ILEC's do NOT.

AT&T and Windstream won a special access docket at the FCC, but without a vote. The FCC chair says that Special Access Reform is due to be reviewed. AT&T is not done. They have Petitions to Discontinue Private Line Dedicated Entrance Facilities in 27 Markets in at the FCC. According to Comptel, "These are facilities offered at bandwidths of OC-3, -12, -48, and -192, which AT&T contends are being replaced in the market by Ethernet services. According to the Public Notice, AT&T says that alternative services are available from AT&T and other carriers. Existing customers will continue to be served through April 2017." Everything is moving Ethernet.

In the broadband world, CenturyLink is looking to bury the Wireless ISP with federal funds because fixed wireless broadband is expensive, metered and unreliable. Hmmm. I just don't think taxpayers' money should be used to compete against small businesses that serve areas that ILEC's chose NOT to spend money - their own money any how.

You want to raise Special Access - okay. CLEC's have to pay what the landlords will charge. When ILEC's don't want to spend their own money to expand broadband, they shouldn't get federal freebies to do so.

Enough on the rant. How wil Private Line grow if the most of the business is going to MPLS and multi-point services?

The Answer to Flat Revenue

2012-06-12T19:27:50Z

The markets are flat. Broadband, voice, TV and cellular. There are more cellphones activated than there are people in the US. The average home has 4 Internet enabled devices.

So what do you do if you are a Cellco and more than 60% of your revenue is wireless?

What do you do if your best selling smartphone can only attach to your 3G network? And you have this new LTE network that you want to monetize quickly (to pay back the costs on)?

"At Verizon Wireless, the iPhone effect was clear in Thursday's first-quarter report: the average monthly bill for subscribers on contract-based plans was $55.43, up 3.6 percent from a year ago. A few years ago, monthly fees were stagnant at Verizon," reported the USA Today in April 2012.

The problem with the iPhone is that Apple makes more money on it than the carriers. The subsidy is hurting Sprint, VZW and AT&T. It's one reason VZW pushes other smartphones. Suddenly, Leap/Cricket and others will be selling non-subsidized iPhones, which analysis says is cheaper over 2 years for the consumer. [Look here and NYT too.] Plus no extra fees and taxes on a pre-paid plan versus the monthly billing from the cellco. That may impact the Big 3. (Sprint has placed its bets on prepaid with Virgin Mobile selling the iPhone 4 and 4S by July.) The real winner: Apple.

I look at these rates and wonder why I am paying over $100 per month for an Android, when prepaid would be about half that!

VZW recently added a $30 upgrade fee. Fees add up to real revenue.

So VZW decided to kill the grandfathered Unlimited Data plans.

Now VZW is launching Shared Data Plans. You get unlimited voice and messaging, but the data bytes are bought in blocks.

One reason is that with 4 devices in a household, the family is paying big money. This is supposed to alleviate some of that MRR (monthly recurring revenue), while also allowing a household to purchase more devices. Without the attached device specific data plan, a household will buy more devices from VZW. (I assume non-subsidized devices.)

Gary Kim notes that VZW expects a slight "dilution" in revenue at the beginning. In the long run, they will make more money. Why? More devices, more consumption. It's why Amazon can sell the Fire so cheap - lots of revenue per device tied to its network. IN the long run, this will be just another way for VZW to increasse revenue.

I guess VZW isn't worried about its spectrum running out either.