On Rad's Radar? - wireline Archives

Sunset

2013-03-06T16:26:57Z

We are watching the sunset of many things in telecom. The PSTN, growth, innovation, copper plant.

While there is much change going on in the industry, a lot hasn't changed.

VZ just pumped almost $350M into its Florida wireline infrastructure. So that isn't over just yet.

AT&T's sneaky plan to deregulate copper in Kentucky was undone by the state legislature. You have to be vigilant. I just got an email from the FTTH is supporting the death of copper. I unsubscribed. As ratepayers and taxpayers, we have paid the telcos for a DS3 to every home twice over. Instead we have expensive broadband - brought to you by cable! With caps, meters, etc. The telcos want you to buy even more expensive LTE, which is not only metered, it isn't even available everywhere! Plus it is shared! - just like they used to use against the cablecos, when they WERE competing for the broadband market.

The FTTH Council decides to make some noise for political gain - and I am done with them.

Now that the Channel Partners Expo will be the Cloud Partners show, it seems that there is a sunset on agents too. It is all cloud, all the time. That may be what you want to sell, but that isn't what people are buying or asking for!!!

Almost lost in all the news was TelePacific rolled out their Broadsoft-based Hosted PBX Suite and Star2Star just joined Intelisys.

Replacing Copper With Gold

2013-02-13T08:34:43Z

CenturyLink is in a race against time, according to both analyst Jeff Kagan and the Star Tribune. It isn't just the number 3 ILEC in the country experiencing a declining revenue stream from legacy copper. Fairpoint, Frontier, Windstream and many IOC's are all suffering revenue losses from landline replacement. Customers are switching to cellular or some form of VoIP - like cable voice or a Vonage like service.

This leaves the LECs with a big dilemma: How do you organically replace declining copper revenues? And how do you do that quickly to offset the landline decline that has been occurring for the last 3 years?

For some IOC's, it is a matter of adding new services over the copper, like these services, building some wireless services for wi-fi roaming, or adding cloud services, like hosted email, data backup and the like.

In some markets, carriers are using broadband (xDSL) and TV to counter landline losses - hoping that they can replace old revenue with new revenue. Wireline revenue is also highly profitable.

Windstream, TDS and CenturyLink have CLEC operations that bring in revenue out-of-region with business services - telecom, cloud, Hosted PBX and data center.

Will these carriers be able to sustain their business (including servicing a heavy debt load) with this replacement revenue? That is the question.

CenturyLink cut its dividend in order to start buying back stock and paying down debt. The stock took a 22% hit! Analysts talk about how the dividend for C-Link and Wind are the only reason people hold the stock. And we saw what happened when the dividend was cut. These companies are now dancing in the same that Level3 has been for some time.

Cloudy Math

2012-12-11T03:10:14Z

There is a lot of talk about the big money that Agents and VAR's can make if they just switch over to sell Managed Services and Cloud Services. Here are some facts about cloud.

M5 had the highest ARPU (average invoice per customer) when ShoreTel bought them - at $2000. Most other cloud communications providers hint at lower ARPU - maybe around $1000 per customer. However, 8x8 and Cbeyond are public and their cloud ARPU sits at between $200 and $250.

When you examine the "cloud services" of many carriers, it is just Hosted Exchange, Sharepoint and maybe some backup. That's $9 + $10 + $20 = $39 per user per month. Add in a Hosted PBX seat at $30 and you are now at $69 per month. For 20 employees, that's not a bad billing invoice for Agents, but it is also an unlikely sale. What small business will pay $1380 per month for phone and email? A PRI at $550 plus maybe $100 for the PBX lease and $50 per YEAR for Google has you covered. Add in some Dropbox and Bingo!

This isn't to discourage you. It's to put a pin in the hype balloon, which is starting to annoy me.

You will have to sell upmarket. There are 83K businesses in the US with 100-499 employees, according to the 2009 US Census (the last year data is available). With 1000 cloud service providers in the US that will be a fun Red Ocean to swim in.

There are only 17,500 business with more than 500 employees. That 's the spot you would like to sell in but you would need to be connected or a white elephant hunter.

That leaves Agents chasing 20-99 employees - since that is a majority of the businesses in the US. Let's call the average 40. If you sell that business the full boat: Internet, Hosted voice, email and backup - the ARPU is worth it. The sales cycle will be longer. The deployment will require more input and project management than Agents are used to. (In fact, it is more than most carriers have ever had to do!!!) Post-sales support will also be required. So overall, it is a lot more work for a stickier client with more ARPU than you are used to. Are you up for that challenge?

Let's go back to the 8x8 example at $256 of ARPU. That's about a 9 employee shop. So you sell them 8x8 voice, cable modem AND another broadband service (like DSL or 4G or fixed wireless). You offer them Google Apps for SMB via NeoNova for some small change. Add in some Mozy Pro back-up (or Carbonite or other backup service that pays you). Next you try to get the cell phones - there has to be a couple that are corporate owned -- for a few more dollars. Don't forget the 4G data plan.

So you wrapped up the Internet Access, mobility, voice, some DR (disaster recovery), backup, email and office suite. After that, what software do they use? How about Conferencing? Do you see? You have to grab the whole wallet (or you can't make much money).

It has to become a lot like McD's. What do they do? A call center hits you first in the drive-thru with, "Would you like to try our ______ special today?" No. "okay. Order when you are ready." But don't forget "Do you want fries with that? or can we Super Size that for you?" It sounds cheesy but you are going to have to do it.

CenturyLink, XO, MegaPath and quite a few other carriers offer transit, Hosted voice and cloud services. It will all be on one bill, with one carrier to blame, with one throat to choke. It makes it easier to sell --- check boxes on an order form or site survey.

You better hurry because the MSP's like MindShift and others are already out there doing this.

When you consider that Parallels AS platform allows hosting companies - like Intermedia.Net - to sell, bill and deploy these services (Hosted PBX, email, storage, office) with a click on an online order page, spend this month - the last month of 2012 - deciding what your plan is going to be for 2013. While I hate the hype, many of your competitors are already targeting your customers. Selling them a T1 will be easy after they sell them VDI or backup or Hosted PBX. Then what do you do?

Again, you have to do it but I wanted you to have a realistic view of what it was going to be like. You have vacuum up the services - all of them - heck, sell them office supplies if someone will pay you for it! Managed Print anyone ;)

RBOCs Declare War on CLECs

2012-12-06T17:58:29Z

This is a letter from telecom lawyer Kris Twomey to the members of FISPA, an association for ISP's and CLEC's. I know that Politics and Regulatory talk puts you to sleep or bores you or you don't have time for it - but these proposed changes to the Telecom Act WILL affect you!

"One of the questions I am often asked by ISPs considering starting CLEC operations is whether access to unbundled network elements ("UNEs" or "the copper in the ground") will continue in the future. My response has always been something like, "Of course, the Telecom Act guarantees it. Congress would have to revise the Act for any changes to impact UNE availability." Those of you that know me know that I don't get involved in hyperbole, and I'm basically too optimistic to accept any sky is falling-type theories. Now though, there's something brewing in D.C. that genuinely worries me. Turns out AT&T has a plan to wipe out the Telecom Act of 1996, or at least, the parts regulating interconnection.

"I think the next great telecom policy battle is at hand-- nothing less than an attempt by AT&T and others to dismantle the Telecom Act, destroy CLECs, and essentially codify the ILEC/Cableco wireline duopoly. Smaller CLECs need to get organized and respond.

"Debate has begun on all fronts about the future of telecom regulation and I believe we are at the precipice of major change. Over the last couple years, AT&T and Verizon have been quietly lobbying for the FCC to consider rules to transition to an all-IP network, or in ILEC-speak "facilitate a sunset of the POTS network." Verizon is even using a natural disaster to justify removing copper (and therefore interconnection rights) from its network: Other ILECs have been murmuring that the Telecom Act is now 15 years old and needs to be updated.

"On November 8th, AT&T filed the first real proposal with the FCC to "modernize telecom regulation for an IP world." The petition is here [pdf].

"The AT&T petition is a direct shot across the bow of the FCC and CLECs, essentially daring the FCC to act. The petition is breathtaking in its audacity. Here are its main points and suggestions":

Eliminate the availability of copper loops (all UNEs, really) in certain central offices as an experiment and see what happens;
Limit the time that CLECs can object to ILEC notices of network changes;
Reduce state utility commission regulatory authority;
Allow ILECs to remove all copper facilities when the feeder (such as a remote terminal) is upgraded to fiber;
Eliminate legacy ILEC regulations such as carrier of last resort obligations, long distance parity, etc.

"Various stakeholders have responded. The National Regulatory Research Institute, a group representing state public utility commissions, issued a paper on the TDM to IP network transition (here).

"The trade associations have begun to weigh in on AT&T's proposal. CompTel and individual CLECs have lobbied for pro-competitive policies and filed proposals concerning the IP network transition, preserving access to copper loops in fiber-fed ILEC networks, and requiring direct IP to IP network interconnection.

"The cable trade association, NCTA, filed a response to the AT&T petition arguing that the FCC should take its time developing a record. After all, they've actually got a pretty good deal under the current rules. The NTCA, which represents smaller ILECs, filed its own petition on November 19th seeking regulatory relief.

"I am concerned that there is no organized coalition of smaller facilities-based CLECs to defend its interests and propose alternative ideas. I fear COMPTEL will push the interests of its large CLEC members over those of smaller CLECs. I do not think that necessarily the interests of Level 3, Windstream, etc., that do not purchase many copper loops, will adequately align with those of truly local competitors in suburban or rural markets reliant on central office connectivity at regulated rates. I'm especially worried because, well, those "local competitors" describes virtually my entire client base and the businesses of many people that I consider friends." [RAD's note: Mine too, btw]

"As a preliminary matter on strategy, I believe that it is fruitless to solely fight against a policy without offering clear alternative proposals. I also think that by refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of some opponents' suggestions detracts from the power of our unique ideas. I have several alternative, pro-competitive policy suggestions that would truly represent a modernization of the current system; seek to even the current playing field; and give the ILECs relief from some of the legacy regulatory requirements that are arguably outdated. For now though, it is better that these ideas remain off-list until consensus positions can be developed by a group.

"I have spoken to several of my facilities-based CLEC clients that are interested in forming an organized opposition to these attempts to gut the Telecom Act both at the FCC and to lobby Congress for a true modernization of the Act. I will be hosting a conference call for interested companies on Wednesday, December 12th at 2pm EST. The call is restricted to optimists--those that do not subscribe to the defeatist notion that the ILECs must always get their way. I have some very specific ideas and policy proposals, but am not pre-disposed to any particular strategy. I think it's time for like-minded companies to join forces to protect their interests and I'd be honored to represent them. Please contact me off-list at kris at lokt.net for call-in details."

[RAD Commentary] The RBOCs lost a court battle each recently.

VZW lost in Appeals court its fight to forbear cellular data roaming. It challenged the FCC's authority on this matter and lost.

Meanwhile, ATT lost a data throttling case in small claims court.

Copper clipping will affect Agents because EoC is a big deal - but requires copper plant!!!

XO, TelePacific, MegaPath and other CLECs would lose territories that they could offer EoC and flavors of DSL. ADTRAN, Zhone and Overture Networks make the geat gear that goes in the CO for CLEC's to provide EoC. These companies would be affected as well. Can you see the ripple effect?

How about affordable mid-band Internet Access for the SMB space? That is what EoC is - and it will go away.

The $14 Billion Dollar Announcement

2012-12-03T18:09:34Z

While I don't agree with everything that Bruce writes here about AT&T's $14 Billion network spend in the next 3 years, there were a few take aways.

The big one is that the ILEC's have been getting rate hikes for years to pay for fiber that most customers are not receiving. FiOS is where it is - and that's the end of that project. U-Verse is fiber to the node and that isn't deployed everywhere either.

Mike Powell, former FCC Chair and now CEO of NCTA, has often gotten in woefully wrong in presenting the state of telecom. You can talk about top speeds all day long, but that isn't what the Majority of US addresses have access to nor is it the top speed broadband even remotely affordable for consumers - and even some small businesses (at $300 per month). The average US broadband speed is 6.6 Mbps. And if you don't bundle that broadband, it costs a lot.

Despite the promises and the rate hikes, telcos have invested $249 per person on average for broadband per year. Consumers spend on average $529 on broadband annually. At a retail job at $10 per hour that is one week's pay. Unsustainable!

62% of Americans buy broadband. That is all. Period. The market is flat.

Verizon and AT&T have a plan to disconnect the copper plant. VZ has already done so in the shade of Storm Sandy at the battery Park CO. All the CLEC customers out of the CO are out of luck, time and competition.

Telcos are basically unregulated at the state level - and the FCC is useless when it comes to enforcement and competition.

The point that everyone misses is this: our economy in America is service based. It is broadband fueled too - ask Apple or Amazon or Google.

Without cheap, fast Internet everywhere, what happens to that economy?

Clipping copper is detrimental to not only the CLEC's but to the majority of small businesses in the US. Ethernet-over-copper is quick to deploy and gives a great MB for the buck. EoC is the last stand against the cableco becoming the ILEC and the ILEC becoming irrelevant. (I laugh when the stock pickers only point to the dividend as if that was somehow any indication if a telco will tank or not.)

Promises from the RBOCs - Verizon and AT&T - for rate hikes or mergers have largely gone unenforced. The $14B announcement was just PR - spin. Nothing either company does is good for the economy, it is just good for them - for now.

How will Cloud services take off if the broadband is too expensive, unreliable or unavailable?

How will the Internet-centric economy stay competitive in that same environment? How does any of that withstand broadband caps and metering? How do corporations have more tele-workers in that same scenario?

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.

CenturyLink Merger Mania Does Add Up

2012-08-15T20:57:58Z

"CenturyLink Inc.'s (CTL) second-quarter earnings fell 36% amid early-debt extinguishment and weaker margins, though the telecom company's revenue was boosted by an acquisition," writes the WSJ. "Revenue increased 4.7% to $4.61 billion, mostly as its Savvis acquisition added $278 million, as well as growth in demand for digital services."

What amazes me is that these giants keep getting bigger and the only metric growing is debt.

It is going to take some big CAPEX to beef up cloud, data center, EoC, broadband and TV services for CLT. How do they focus on that when CAPEX will affect their financials, that is tied to their debt?

Cloud isn't selling as well as the hype that goes with it. Yet. CLT is banking on a big bright future. Truth is CLT, while still headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, is far removed from its rural ILEC days. It's future lies in federal cloud and WAN contracts; Fortune 5000 MPLS based on its fiber network; global sales for cloud, data center and networking; and data center services. None of these services were on their balance sheet 3 years ago.

Interesting corrollary is that 3 years ago, CLT didn't have a channel either. Now it's channel will be looked upon to drive a lot of cloud and data center sales.

I wonder if the CAF, ARRA and USF funds show up as revenue?

So Much Stuff I Can't Get To

2012-06-04T15:53:01Z

So many things to write about but just not enough time.

Leap Wireless gets the iPhone 4S under its Cricket brand to sell without subsidy for $500! Let's see how that works. It does come with No Contract though.

A CompTIA study finds surprisedly that "interest in unified communications (UC) remains high, with four out of five companies seeing value in the technology. Large- and medium-size companies and those with a higher proportion of telecommuting workers are most bullish. What's more, budgets for communications and collaboration solutions are on the rise, at 85 percent of surveyed companies." I love studies that state the obvious - or sound like they were piad for by companies that needed to hear confirmation of their projections (and budget allocations).

We have seen in telecom that the master agents and carriers are replacing the search for agents with the slogan "We want VAR's". (This could be partially due to both groups - mastersand telcos - already having the lion's share of telecom agents already.) Now, "IT channel partner programs changing as business models shift," according to a TJS headline.

"With the industry changing and business transformation becoming a must, the channel is increasingly looking for help with how to sell and how to structure their business in new models," said Carolyn April, director, technology analysis, CompTIA. "Many vendors are looking at ways to identify practical partner segmentation and engagement strategies to pull off the balancing act of aligning new go-to-market strategies while maintaining short-term revenue productivity," she explained." Well if they want Go-To-Market Strategy and Sales Training, tehy should give my office a ring at 813-963-5884 or see me at ITEXPO. [use code "BLOG13" for a 20% discount]

Who knew that Best Buy's Geek Squad had a partner program? Not me. Geek Squad just signed 4 partners: Network Solutions Provider, Carrier Access, Inc., Access Media 3, and MACH 4. Now these agents can sell IT services in 50 states.

Social IQ has no price for Oracle. Oracle bought two companies in the last couplemof weeks to add to its SAAS offerings and social media intelligient quotient. "Oracle will acquire Vitrue, a leading cloud-based social marketing and engagement platform that enables marketers to centrally create, publish, moderate, manage, measure and report on their social marketing campaigns and activities on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+," per this press release. And "Oracle announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Collective Intellect. Collective Intellect's leading cloud-based social intelligence solutions enable organizations to monitor, understand and respond to consumers' conversations on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter," per this press release. As Facebook stock price falls, Oracle is buying up marketing automation companies for social media. I guess someone had to.

In Wireline ILEC News:

According to Reuters, "AT&T Inc Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said on Friday that a sale of rural phone lines may be too difficult to pull off because of regulatory hurdles." People have been betting that AT&T would spin off wireless like Verizon did. I figure that back office is such a mess that there isn't any clean way to separate the wheat from teh schaff. Ma Bell still operates the divisions - legacy AT&T, AT&T LD, BellSouth, BellSouth LD, SBC, Ameritech, etc. - under their original systems like in silos. And after that statement Stephenson then went on to complain about not enough spectrum, just like his successor, Ralph de la Vega, told him to.

In related news, AT&T is forcing customers to use U-Verse. No more DSL if U-Verse is available. (I think VZ is doing the same in FiOS areas. What am I talking about? Of course, they are. These guys never do anything original. They probably talk about it over Johnny Walker Blue and cubans at USTA meetings, when the hookers the lobbyists leave the room.) DSLR has the story about the expense incurred in the upgrades - new modems (that are not free) and price increases. Another win for cable -- which I HAVE to believe is the whole point: Let cable win and ask for forbearance. Get out from under state controls and sharing the networks. It has to be the end game, since Wireless and U-Verse/FiOS are less unionized; Next Gen; and less regulated.

No Traction in Hosted PBX Market

2012-05-25T12:18:09Z

According to Insight Research, independent hosted PBX providers should be able to take some small business market share from the Duopoly over the next five years.

The small business market size is more than 40 millions lines, says Robert Rosenberg, INSIGHT Research president. That will mean even more hosted PBX seats since lines and seats are not 1 for 1. "Our study suggests that thus far, small businesses haven't quite latched on to this new technology so the revenue today is only in the range of one-half billion dollars, but by 2015 hosted services will be nearly a $1.2 billion market and the adoption rate of the hosted services by small businesses will accelerate," Rosenberg concluded.

If the US Hosted PBX space is just $500M, I think that they have calculated wrong or at least not taken into account the hundreds of smaller providers with less than 5000 seats. Phone.com, Pingtel, Flat Planet Phone Co., FreedomVoice, PBX-Change and many, many more providers that you find at ITEXPO and elsewhere.

All the research I have seen states that Comcast is hands down the winner in the US Hosted PBX space with about 300K seats.

8x8 is now reaching $100M in revenue with ARPU of $244 on its 27,000 business customers.

Smoothstone is now West IP Communications after a $120M bid. Smoothstone is probably at $40M in revenue.

M5 Networks, recently acquired by ShoreTel, is doing $48M in revenue.

Telesphere, a member of the Broadsoft-based Cloud Communications Alliance, is doing about $30M.

Admittedly, most Hosted VoIP companies are doing less than $4M in sales, but if you add up hundreds of them at $4M or even $1M, you get to $500M fast. I already listed over $300M in revenue, so that $500M might be low. Still even if it was $1B in pales in comparison to US wireless revenue of $335B in 2012 or fixed network voice revenue that is about $132B or even the $38B in broadband access revenue. [carrier revolution from TIA study]

Cincinnati Bell to Spin Off Data Centers

2012-05-04T17:02:23Z

Last week when asked, I said that I did not see Cincinnati Bell spinning off its data centers. One reason was that the ILEC would be left with a declining wireline business and debt, which was the reason that CinBell had pursued a data center acquisition -- to offset the line losses.

This week, CinBell announced that it will examine spinning off Cyrus One as a REIT (real estate investment trust). The IPO will bring in much needed cash to pay down debt - $2.5B.With the data center business up 21% to $53M, CinBell is expanding the data center space.

Cincinnati Bell 1Q 2012 revenue is $363 million. Wireless revenue for the quarter is $64 million; Total wireless subscribers decreased to 446,000. Postpaid ARPU in 1Q2012 increased to $50.82 with Postpaid churn for the quarter at 2.2 percent. [source]

Wireline revenue for the quarter was $182 million - down less than 1%. CinBell is offsetting wireline (copper) revenue with FTTH.

"Total local access lines declined 7.8% year over year to 621,300 at the end of 2011, and comprised 552,400 in-territory lines and 68,900 out-of-territory lines," Zacks states.

"The company passed 13,000 additional homes and businesses during the quarter with its Fioptics product suite, bringing the total number of units passed to 147,000. Wireline added 3,000 new Fioptics entertainment subscribers and 4,000 new Fioptics high-speed internet subscribers during the first quarter, bringing the totals to 43,000 entertainment and high-speed internet subscribers at the end of the quarter," reported Seeking Alpha.

I wonder if cell churn is due to coverage or handset choices.

I don't know what the IT Services and Hardware segment is but it increased 4% to $73M.

What's With Wireline?

2012-04-27T18:32:20Z

Wireless replacement - now over 30% of households - is leading to the demise of landlines, but it is also hastening the regulation of ILEC's. Quite a few states have deregulated ILEC's and landline service.

This same decline is also affecting DSL. Naked DSL was supposed to help shore up broadband revenues by releasing the customers from having to purchase a POTS line, too. VZ is reversing course on that, just a year after offering Naked DSL for $25. Some of that offer had to do with the FCC asking the ILECs for a cheap broadband offer to bridge the Digital Divide. Now VZ is saying no DSL where FiOS is available. They need to make folks take FiOS service (to make the metrics look good for Wall Street).

The teclos have basically lost the broadband battle. They stopped rolling out FTTx - at least FiOS and U-Verse. 75% of broadband additions in 2011 went to cablecos.

What I can't explain is the 8.9% decline in wholesale landline revenue for VZ. Maybe CLEC's have been impacted by VZ's anti-competitive nature. Does that mean that resale CLEC's are seeing a decline too? Probably. Cablecos will own customers under $500, so that means a lot of T1 customers have become cable customers.

Two Other Things to Ponder

Cloud and Managed Services as the Next Big Thing and TV Cord Cutting

TV Cord Cutting is rising. Early adopters really like the TV anywhere anytime. They also dislike the huge cable TV bill, which is expected to rise to $200 by 2020. Cord cutting will speed up the price increase in TV because less subscribers means higher price. Content creators like Disney/ESPN pay more and more for sports and that is passed down. In this cycle, the higher the price, the more cord cutting - and around we go.

LEC's losing wireline revenue are looking to Cloud and Managed Services to make up for it. There are a few problems with that. One is that the sales process is so different for CMS. Two, the ILECs have tried e-Commerce and similar services before. (Didn't take.) Three, if the provider cannot deliver telecom services without problems, what makes them think that customers will trust them with more complicated and mission-critical services?

There was a period of time when CTO's would not consider Sprint or Qwest for MPLS because Sprint has an uncertain future and Qwest was for sale. The point is that if the CTO's don't trust your company, they won't buy from you.

It's a quandary.

As CLEC's once competed heavily on teh commodity Dynamic T1, they will now compete on MPLS services, which will (again) drive down revenue and margin. I don't see how this works out for most CLEC's - billion dollar companies or not. Paetec and Intermedia (ICI) were billion dollar CLEC's that had to be sold. It's about having a brand, differentiators, unique services, WOM and executing on a strategy flawlessly to counter the wireline revenue decline.

US Government Suing AT&T for Fraud

2012-04-26T14:49:58Z

Is Fraud rampant at Ma Bell?

ARS wrote an article titled, AT&T collected millions from taxpayers in fraudulent charges, US says. "AT&T improperly received millions of dollars from a government reimbursement fund by ignoring fraudulent use of the IP Relay call system provided free of charge to hearing- and speech-impaired US residents, the US government alleged this week."

Another item ripped from the headlines:

DOJ Sues AT&T For Not Keeping Scammers Off Deaf Phone Service

CRN reports, "The Justice Department this week filed a lawsuit against AT&T on the grounds that the carrier did not do enough to keep international swindlers from abusing a government-mandated service that allows deaf people to make free calls to hearing people via text message over the Web, Reuters reported this week.... The FCC reimburses carriers for the service, to the tune of $1.30 per minute. However, the Justice Department claims that the vast majority of callers using the service were fraudsters in other countries, and that AT&T did not take measures to stop this from happening."

"This claim was initially made in a whistle-blower lawsuit against AT&T brought by a former call center employee, according to Reuters".

Too big to fail also means too big to know what is going on.

This is but a symptom of how poorly managed these big companies are. It's all about the stock price. When you have $64 Billion in debt, you need to watch the stock price or your debt starts costing more. One percent is $640 million extra. But you can be a slave to it or everything else falls apart.

AT&T is facing competition from VZW and the cablecos. If the SpectrumCo deal gets approval from the FCC, VZW will be co-marketing (read colluding with) three MSO's to take revenue from AT&T. All the mass markets are flat: voice, TV, cellular and broadband. It's a game of take-away now. That's expensive. So customer acquisition costs increase. Subsidies on cell phones go up. Everything goes up except ARPU! Do you see the problem?

If any other cellco - T-Mobile, Sprint, MetroPCS or even Tracfone - could get its act together, it would add pressure. The MSo's have their act together and are winning the battle for the SMB space under $500. The CLEC's used to own this business, which meant wholesale revenue for the ILEC's (Qwest, VZ, ATT), but even that revenue will start to decline as less T1's are sold by the CLEC's.

Wireline revenues, especially DSL, are in decline. Where does the new revenue come from?

Windstream and CenturyLink made big moves to counter their wireline shortfalls. What have the RBOC's done? Mainly gone cellular including spectrum acquisitions. Comcast bought content (NBCU). It's a race.

Short note for CLEC's: if wireline is declining and the sub-$500 customer is going to cable, what are you going to do?

One last note: VZ already had a union strike and had to settle. ATT is in the midst of negotiating a CWA union contract. How does that help or hinder future growth? For VZ, VZW and FiOS are non-union shops.

Get Off the Agents' Back

2012-04-12T21:48:50Z

These were my thoughts on the 2011 CPZ that I was a panelist on. These are my thoughts as a reaction to the latest CPZ.

Surprisingly, not everyone read my post about how the whole telecom eco-system is shifting. Agents, Masters, Carriers and Cloud Providers are all going to experience a Shift.

Did you ever see Shift Happens?

Considering all these factors - Quota, Debt, declining revenue, pricing pressure, and flat markets - the future does not look bright.

Most of the people who were talking on the CPZ 2012 video about transactional agents are not actually agents and to my knowledge never have been.

Does a subset of Agents shop masters? Probably. On the other hand, I know masters who shop to sub-agents with "I'll give you another point or two to go with me." Part of this is due to the weight of quota on the Master Agency business. Master Agents are under a tremendous pressure to hit quota to keep the support level and sustain the commission revenue at its current level. So don't get mad at the Sub-Agent when Masters are doing it too.

Value and Telecom

The whole Industry talks about VALUE, but can they describe it? No. Our Industry has been a series of me-too, arbitrage bandits selling the same thing: UNE-P, Integrated T1, SIP Trunking, and today it is MPLS. It's all just similar looking and sounding services. How does an Agent or a Prospect tell the difference?

Branding is non-existent in our space, except for the Duopoly of ILEC and MSO. You create value with branding. Other value comes from benefits and differentiation. We are lacking the Differentiation.

Without value, it becomes a commodity. Commodities are price shopped. Tell me the difference between any two Internet T1's or any two SIP Trunks.

Carriers are Unhappy with Agents

Just because Agents don't act like you want them to doesn't mean they are all in the wrong. You built this current eco-system. Now you want the ship to turn on your say so. Easier said than done, pal.

Truthfully, have you done all you can to give Agents the tools they need to sell your product? Not to be repetitive, but have you established your value statement? Do you know who the target market is? Do you know what triggers the sale? Who is the actual buyer? Answer those questions first.

The Industry wants the Channel to go upstream, except they don't. By that I mean, the carriers want revenue. Period. It's all about quota. While they might want an Agent to sell MPLS, they aren't turning away T1 business either. However, they want the Agent to turn away from that business to go upstream. Yeah.

Keep in mind that it might be that the marketplace doesn't want to go upstream either.

Right now, Cable is doing an excellent job of disrupting the market and stealing business with cheap loops.

At a CLEC training, it was stated that cable would own the sub-$500 business. It sounded like they were conceding it. The cablecos will become the de facto ILEC's. I have no idea what the ILECs are going to do. Only the 2 RBOC's have a cellular business. And CLEC's will probably run into too many problems to continue to sell network access.

In that same training, the CLEC stated they wanted Multi-site, multi-access business. Unfortunately, everyone wants that business. Masergy, Smoothstone, EarthLinke, Megapath, Netwolves, Wind, CenturyLink - just to name a few. To hear carriers talk, I guess, MPLS is the new Integrated T1 (in every way). They say there is more margin in it. No there is not. There is more revenue per customer, but they will have to give away margin to (A) hit every site and (B) win the business in a hyper-competitive marketplace.

No one buys the way most service providers sell either. That's why the carriers are always searching for Consultative Sales Professionals. The whole industry sells what they want - and it is followed up by a series of me-too. Just because one CLEC is selling Managed Security does not mean that the marketplace wants it or will buy it or that it will want it delivered that exact way. It also doesn't mean that the next eight CLEC's or service providers need to market that same offering. Do we know what the marketplace is expecting?

How Things Can Shift

One thing that could cause a big shift is if Tech Data becomes a Master Agent. With TDMobility, they already have the platform and are selling cellular in a Master Agent model. Plus by offering mobile device management, TEM and all that hardware, they have caught up to the big Masters. CDW could become a Master Agent if they wanted to - and they might have to in order to sell more hardware.

Dell could become a Cloud Provider. As it stands now, they are an MSP Enabler. And Dell is selling CDN now! It will be interesting to see what Ingram and SYNNEX - both betting on cloud services for their future - do to not have to compete with Dell head-to-head, while also competing with Tech Data.

I don't think that most telcos will make the shift to managed services and cloud successfully. It's labor intensive. It doesn't scale like telecom. They think they can automate everything, but that only works for cookie cutter stuff. Plus they can barely deliver telco services without a headache. I think MSP's will win this war. Any company that can integrate apps (like CRM and invoicing with Exchange and Sharepoint) will be successful. If they partner with VAR's who can handle the on-going maintenance and support that all this technology will require, they win big.

Can the Channel change to become Trusted Advisors? Probably not all of them. Selling Cloud is different than selling telecom. Period.

The Channel basically sells replacement services. Here are some examples: VoIP for POTS: SIP Trunk for PRI; Ethernet for T1. Each transaction is replacing like for like. Even MPLS is just a replacement for Frame Relay, ATM and IP-VPN.

That is why selling Hosted PBX and other cloud services are so challenging: It is not a simple replacement. It's not like for like.

The sales process for selling replacement services is pretty easy. When the sale becomes about business process change or fork-lift upgrades (like Hosted UC or Virtual Desktop), the sales skills are different. The sales cycle is different - and longer. Provisioning takes longer. Ultimately, commission payments are much later.

This is really important to remember.

Selling Cloud and Managed Services will not just be more of a challenge, but it may be less satisfying. Why? Transactional sales types are motivated and driven by quick hits and a lot of ink in a month. Extended sales cycles are less motivating to this type of sales person.

Moreover, as commissions decline with the price decreases, agents have to sell more and more to maintain their revenue goals. Shifting to new products, new sales skills, and a different sales approach will be a huge leap, especially without training, a financial cushion, a deep desire for change, and vendor support.

Agents are not FARMERS! They are Hunters! They do not do Account Management, cross-sell or upsell to the base. Smart agencies will higher a couple of farmers to work the customer base and perform account management.

All of this makes me wonder who will be the Agent of tomorrow, who will be grooming accounts and performing consultative selling of complex solutions to their customers?

USTelecom Wants Forbearance for all ILECs

2012-04-09T18:36:04Z

We once fancifully debated if the ILEC's would LET the cablecos get ahead just so they could get out from under regulations. This was 2006. Apparently, that was the plan.

USTelecom is an organization made up of ILEC's. The org has filed for forbearance at the FCC on behalf of its members. Not certain THAT is legal.

The petition [pdf] comes from the ILEC executives "essentially telling the FCC that it's time to wake up and smell the coffee--"many rules were adopted in a different era, long before the advent of broadband networks or the creation of the public Internet."," as JSI describes it. JSI continues with, "it might be time for a new regulatory regime as even the 96 Act is becoming less and less relevant with each new cord cutter and cross-platform conglomerate. The petition is also in line with the White House and Congress' push to get the FCC to clean house, and "the Commission's commitment to eliminate unnecessary regulatory requirements.""

The petition states, "Forbearance is warranted because the rules have been rendered obsolete by technological and market changes. From a technological standpoint, the Commission's legacy telecommunications regulations are ill-suited to facilitating, and in fact hamper, broadband deployment." I'm not sure that's true. It hasn't hampered DSL; the LEC's have by not deploying, switching to fiber and, quite frankly, arrogantly thinking that they were still a Monopoly. In every respect, the trouble with ILEC's is NOT the federal (or dwindling state) regulations. The trouble with the ILEC's is a Monopoly Mindset.

They don't choose the best technology nor do the deploy technology well. Mismanaged spectrum just being a symptom.

FiOS failed because the numbers forecast was wrong. Basing it on 50% penetration was a mistake. Not considering that it would take 2 techs all day (or longer) to install triple-play FiOS. Thinking that the CPE - all 4 pieces of equipment - would be cheap to install.

Let's also look at three bigger problems for ILEC's Pensions, Unions, and USF. By shifting to a cellular and entertainment companies, the RBOCs - AT&T and Verizon - are moving toward a non-union shop. AT&T is dealing with CWA union contracts right now - and VZ had to deal with them last year (along with a strike). They want to eliminate the union. Cellular, entertainment, cloud and outsourced services mean less Union liability - and less pension liability. The ILEC's - Embarq, VZ, ATT, Qwest - are sitting on a chunk of pension payments. It's just another example of bad planning by the executives running these corporations. I know in my life time I will see one of these companies file BK papers. With all the debt they have - $109B just for the Big 2 - mixed with declining revenues, pension payments, probably healthcare costs, union troubles and hyper-competition, the C-Suites at the ILEC's - all of them - are as ill-suited to run them as Hesse is to turn Sprint around.

A Forbearance petition is nice, but it won't solve any of their problems.

With USF Reform, the RLEC's - and even some ILEC's (FFW+C) - will be in even more trouble. Not just competition and dwindling access lines, but decreasing government subsidies for those access lines PLUS a requirement to build out broadband, which means CAPEX! It is not a pretty horizon.

As I read this paragraph all I can think is: Monopoly MIndset is the problem, not FCC regulations. And claiming that it is regs that have created the current quagmire is sticking your head in the sand.

"Indeed, the most recent survey by the Center for Disease Control (which has been relied upon previously by the Commission) has found that more than 32 percent of households have completely "cut the cord" and have abandoned their wireline phone altogether. .... At the same time, incumbent carriers compete against a host of providers, including cable companies that offer service to at least 93 percent of American households, already serve approximately 20 percent of the residential voice market, and are the primary provider of residential broadband. Under these competitive circumstances, the current outdated regulatory regime imposes unnecessary costs on a limited subset of competitors to the detriment of these competitors and consumers alike." Plus it's a Duopoly. There isn't much competition in the Broadband space. It's DSL, cable or 3G.

Comments or Oppositions Due: April 9, 2012 TODAY>

And of course COMPTEL has filed opposition.

Category 10 (Service Discontinuance Approval Requirements); Category 9 (Rules Governing Notices of Network Changes); and Category 2: (Open Network Architecture and Comparably Efficient Interconnection Requirements, All-Carrier Computer Inquiry Rules and the Structural Separation Rule) would really make CLEC life miserable.

Think about this when thinking about regulations being the issue: "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)." Is it regulations doing this or our mobile culture? De-regulating ILECs will mostly hurt SMB who are the profit center of ITSP and CLEC businesses.

One last point: voice is being replaced by Skype, G+, Facebook, IM, chat, SMS, and other types of communications. These innovations were NOT brought to you by the telcos NOR will any innovation because they have a Monopoly Mindset. And that mindset screams: "We want to make more money off our old plumbing without having to morph, change or innovate!"

There's no fixing that.

Are Telcos Outside Their Delivery Zone?

2012-03-12T13:52:44Z

The ILEC's were really good at delivering a monopoly TDM-based dial-tone product. And later got very good at T1 and T3. Was that the extent of the research that the old AT&T Labs could provide? DSL, while slower than cable modem service, does provide for good, cheap broadband, despite its limitations in distance and speed.

Now the ILEC's are going Cloud with Terremark, Savvis, and roll your own. This is shocking to me, since I was there in 2001 when BellSouth (and other ILEC's) first attempted data center and e-Commerce. At the time, BellSouth had partners like EMC to deliver the managed servcies and IBM for the data center. But this isn't something they knew how to sell or how to market. Certainly, the market has changed to make it easier to sell, but are the ILEC's the right partner for Cloud?

I look at how they are struggling with declining wireline revenue (and mounting debt). They have been grasping at TV for consumer triple-play; tech support for broadband customers; and managed services. A managed router from AT&T is configured and managed in Singapore! The slight time difference affects support. Plus it is by email mainly.

Is that what Enterprise customers want?

Then I look at the Telecom Subpanel talks on Cybersecurity, in which reps from AT&T, Comcast, Century Link and MetroPCS were featured speakers in front of The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology hearing Wednesday morning on the cybersecurity threat to the nation's communications networks. The hearings are about regulation of security of the communications infrastructure - who will have oversight, what will be required, and the like, to be added to a bill. Like that will help. Sheesh!

And, of course, the carriers do NOT want to be regulated. In fact, CenturyLink is petitioning the FCC to forbear from "dominant carrier regulation and the Computer Inquiry tariffing requirement with respect to its packet-switched and optical transmission services" for those services subject to the regulations. "CenturyLink states that, because of recent mergers, its enterprise broadband services are subject to different regulations depending on which CenturyLink affiliate - Qwest, Embarq, or CenturyTel - previously provided (or didn't provide) those services." Whatever. They do what they want anyway. There isn't any FCC enforcement (of merger conditions or forbearance conditions).

That sentiment brings me back to cybersecurity and regulations. It would be kind of joke really. The FCC took over 10 years to come to grips with VoIP, how would it ever regulate something as fluid as security? And what would enforcement look like? Would it be something like CPNI?

There are over 1000 VoIP providers in the US plus the numerous LEC's, cablecos and cellcos. Does anyone really think that enforcement is a priority at the FCC?

So back to telco cloud services.

On the one hand, I like that Savvis is still Savvis and Terremark is still Terremark (without any telco infection, no offense). In fact, "Savvis is poised to lead in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service in addition to Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service and Web Hosting," according to Seeking Alpha. Given that every data center company from TELX to QTS have launched Cloud services, not to mention every CLEC, TWC (via Navisite) and most VAR's, would you rather sell IT services from an IT company or IT services from a telco?

The whole "I don't want to be regulated, I don't want to be a common carrier" is fine if you understand that to stop being a monopoly, you have to stop acting like one! You HAVE to provide customer service. You can't finger point when handling Managed Services or Cloud Services. You have to ANSWERS to solve problems for your customers.

I think that Cloud is going to be a bust for telcos, in general. They have been the pipe, the plumbers, for so long -- and even if you want to reach up to Layer 7 (to grab the money) doesn't mean you have the ability or will be able to deliver on it. Going into cellular was just another Layer 1 project.

Let me point out a few things. Many fiber companies (or divisions) can't find or price out their fiber. A cellco has mismanaged its network to the point of disrupting users and its 4G future. An ILEC has done such a poor job planning Metro Ethernet that it has run out of VLAN's in two major metros!

Cloud may turn out like FTTH and Telco TV: an investment that didn't work out. Or it may work out despite what I think will be glaring holes.