Taking the Virtual Office Further

OneBox, a subsidiary of j2 Global Communications Inc., has added a "Live Receptionist" option to its "OneBox" virtual PBX service. The "Live Receptionist" service gives OneBox's small-business customers the option to add a more personal touch to the OneBox automated service by having business phones answered by a live telephone operator during business hours. Outside business hours, the OneBox system automatically directs calls to the desired employees or locations. With the service initially priced at $199 per month, it's considerably cheaper than a staff employee.

Let's hope she speaks more English than the staff at J2 Global, owners of efax.

The OneBox virtual phone system without the Live Receptionist option includes:

Calls answered with a professionally recording custom greeting, and then directed to any employee in any location worldwide; and Voice mail, fax and conferencing capabilities. Customers do not need to buy any new hardware or software. [telecomweb]

PCI Compliance Webinar June 11

You are invited to join Verio and McAfee, the world's largest dedicated security company, for the "What is PCI Compliance?” Webinar on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 2:00pm EST.

If you accept credit cards in your business or online, you will need to become PCI Compliant. Learn how to become PCI Compliant before credit privileges are taken away from your business!

This very important session will cover:

• What is PCI Compliance?
• Steps needed to become compliant.
• The Risks of not being PCI Compliant.

Register today.

DNS Webinar, June 11 @ 1 PM

IPv6

I hear mixed things about IP space. On the one hand the IPv6 proponents say that we will be out of IP address space soon. In fact, this blurb says:

"With nearly 85% of all available Internet addresses already in use, experts believe that, if current trends continue, Internet addresses will run out by 2011."

Others think that IPv4 is just allocated wrong. Why do some companies have a Class A or 2 when they could never use them.

Meanwhile, the DOD has already gone to IPv6. I guess, the Defense Dept. is trying to find out if "the Internet [will] be able to scale to connect billions of people and devices." The OECD has a report that focuses on possible scenarios and on why we need to move to IPv6 (here).

Although many carriers have announced IPv6 networks, my experience in Tampa is that very few actually provide it.

Fiber Networks

I am always on the look out for fiber network maps. From small networks like Veroxity or Syringa Networks to large metro detail like AboveNet or Level3 provide. The reason for the Map Quest :) is that companies come to me looking for fiber access. (If you ARE looking for fiber, drop me a note). There are a lot of fiber assets in the ground that are untouched. Caruso at Zayo has been blogging about the companies that spent Billions to put fiber into the ground, like ASCI, MFS, GTS, Brooks, Teleport, XO and Level3. Unfortunately, it tallies to a couple trillion spent -- and sold for pennies on the dollar. And those were 1990 dollars not the peso-like dollars of 2008.

ELN Closes NOLA Network

Apparently, "The Big Easy gets a big loss with EarthLink's pullout: InformationWeek reports that EarthLink attempted to sell the network, get the city to buy it, and then to simply give the network (and its obligations) away, but had no takers on any front," according to Telecom&All. I wonder why Joe Laura or any of the other Big Easy wi-fi companies didn't make a pitch for it...

The Sectret NSA Room

If you are interested in the details about the secret NSA room at the San Fran SBC CO. Here's a link.

Even Embarq Quits MVNO Scheme

Disney and ESPN couldn't float it. Helio has sucked hundreds of millions of dollars to get about 300k subs. And now Helio is trying to merge with Virgin Mobile.

Qwest moved off the Sprint network. Not only that but Qwest moved from the MVNO model to the agent model with VZW. (In other words, Qwest gets a commision to sell VZW branded at Qwest Wireless (QWW).

Now the former Sprint United company (you know them as Embarq) is ending its MVNO deal next year.

"Embarq actively marketed cell phone services for over 18 months through a partnership with its former parent company, Sprint Nextel Corp. At the end of December 2007, however, the company discontinued its wireless efforts after capturing only 112,000 customers, well below its initial expectations."
"It was becoming apparent that we couldn't obtain enough wireless customers to make a big difference," Embarq CFO Betts explained, noting that Embarq will continue to develop and promote fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) services, such as unified voicemail, and text-to-voice messaging."

It is harder to resell cellular services than it is to resell UNE-P, which makes me think that with all of the subsidizing of handsets; 2.5G, 3G, 4G build-outs; tower rent; backhaul; marketing; churn; and brick-and-mortar stores, the Baby Bells hide their cellular losses better than a stand-alone company like Sprint-Nextel can.

BIND Unbound

According to the press release, "Four companies led by Dutch non-profit NLnet Labs have launched an open source, Linux-compatible DNS (Domain Name System) server. "Unbound," which is also sponsored by VeriSign, Nominet, and Kirei, claims to offer a validating, recursive, and caching DNS server that is faster than the open source DNS mainstay BIND." Yes. Besides OpenDNS, BIND, UltraDNS (Neustar), we now have yet one more option for DNS.

"Since the 1980s, the open source BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) has been the de facto DNS standard in the Unix and Linux worlds. Last year, BIND was updated to version 9, adding support for DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions), a security enhancement to the DNS protocol that protects against attacks such as DNS cache poisoning. ... DNSSEC support is also a central focus of Unbound. Like BIND, Unbound is released under a BSD license. ... Unbound 1.0 is available for free download under a BSD license from the Unbound site, here. NLnet Labs offers support for Unbound through a bug-tracking system and user mailing lists, and promises to provide two years warning if the company ever decides to cease providing support. Unbound runs on POSIX-based operating systems such as Linux, MacOS X, FreeBSD, and Solaris, says the group."

Unbound was designed to be recursive DNS server. Neustar (under the UltraDNS branch) offers Recursive DNS service for free. (Tell them RAD-INFO sent you!)

Want more detail on a DNS Query? See Dummies.com. (And no I am not calling you names!

WISPA Ratifies New CALEA Standard

The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) has ratified a new CALEA intercept standard for wireless ISPs. The new standard makes it possible for ISPs to comply with the lawful intercept requirements of CALEA without requiring a trusted third party (TTP) to deliver intercepts to law enforcement.

The new WISPA standard takes advantage of existing Open Source software such as tcpdump and OpenCALEA to intercept network traffic moving to and from a target. Capture files are stored on a server in PCAP format so law enforcement can pull the intercept files on demand. This store-and-forward approach is preferred by law enforcement because it does not allow packet loss, and it does not require law enforcement to have the facilities required to receive streaming intercepts.

The all-volunteer WISPA CALEA committee worked for nearly 18 months to deliver the new standard. The committee produced two versions of the standard: Version 1 provides the industry’s first safe harbor for ISPs with wireless access points (APs) that cannot disable NAT, and Version 2 supersedes Version 1 in 12 months and eliminates the “NAT exemption.”

The WCS also creates a new XML framework for reporting out-of-band (OOB) signaling. CALEA requires OOB events to be reported, so a new standard for reporting these events was required. OOB events cannot currently be delivered using off-the-shelf software tools, however open tools that support the WISPA XML framework are expected from a number of different vendors and Open Source projects soon.

WISPA’s new IP Network Access (IPNA) intercept standard can be freely downloaded from the WISPA Web site at http://www.wispa.org/calea/WCS/. In addition, WISPA has developed an implementation guide for service providers who need help implementing the new intercept standard. The guide can be downloaded on-line for $100 USD, and it will be available June 1st.

About WISPA

WISPA is an association of wireless Internet service providers and equipment vendors that work to promote the development, advancement and unification of the wireless Internet service provider industry.

Keys to Selling VoIP to SMB

Ike Elliott has a post about 8x8 re-focusing on the Business Hosted VoIP customer. 8x8 is chasing the Very Small Business (5 and employees and less). Ike makes a couple of important points:

1. "Virtual Office product is designed to appeal to very cost-conscious buyers, and these buyers are concentrated on the small end of the small business size scale."
2. Over-the-top VoIP providers can not control the quality, so expectations and experience of the customer sometimes result in unhappy customers, which equates to churn over 3% (both Vonage and 8x8 have churn of about 3.3%).

Every VoIP and PBX vendor is in the SMB space for investor purposes. (It's a huge market). The problem is one of marketing. (It's a huge market to talk to). How do you get to market? Keywords (Adwords), search engine marketing (SEM), call centers, direct mail, strategic partners, and local.

It costs millions to advertise to the entire SMB segment. As per my ISPCON session, it is best if you Be Specific. Who is your best customer? What do they look like? How do I get to them? The better you can describe your Best Prospects, the easier it will be to define a plan to market to them.

I say Local because if we take a VoIP Provider like 8x8 or M5, we would wonder why with one based in Santa Clara and one based in NYC, why they have not taken enough market share locally to keep them busy. M5 has roughly the highest concentration of businesses in its home market of NYC plus probably one of the more "wired" cities. The only reason I can think of to branch out beyond Metro NYC/NJ/LI is because your Investors insist.

But back to the marketing, if you go Local, you are closer in proximity to your prospects. Charity events, networking, and interacting around town will get you noticed. You can be High Touch because your clients are local. Offering connectivity to your customers becomes easier. Quality goes up. Churn goes down. And finally you can partner with other companies to introduce your services. Milk the cows at home.

Lowfat Lattes is High Touch

For those of you who skipped ISPCON (or were there but missed it), the keynote from Elliot Noss, CEO and President of Tucows, is available in audio and video on Tucows site. [thanks to Alex for pointing it out]

The main point of the keynote: High Touch. Huh? Well, I'm in technology but it has even outpaced me. Twitter and hundreds of other apps and widgets that I have not tried. I can't get the email to work on my Sprint PPC 6700. So when I have said that a Tech Concierge would payoff (here and here) (especially for you Resi ISP's), it wasn't that silly.

The PC today is more powerful than the IBM mainframe 3033 that I worked on at RPI freshman year. That computer had a team of professionals keeping it running day and night and was housed in an air conditioned special room. Do you see the disconnect?

Elliott talks about classes on Flickr and digital cameras. I mentioned Tupperware-like parties [here and here] to sell Tech gadgets and give classes numerous times over the years. To my knowledge none of my clients actually did it.

In Jan. 2006, I quoted a post from Jennifer Rice: ---> Convenience and Choice are things that people are willing to pay for.

If you solve someone's Pain, you can sell them service in the form of a Band-aid, Insurance, pain management, or a shot in the arm. Find the pain and you can make a sale.

How Cogent Pays Sales Folks

Cogent has a sales problem.Sales are down and they were losing sales reps. Sound like a familiar problem?

Cogent is having another issue: Level3 is moving into its market space and selling at a very competitive rate.

Here's what Cogent pays its reps:

Cogent’s sales force has three tiers, all of whose members generally make about half their pay from a base salary and half from meeting quotas. Entry-level reps average about $80,000 per year (with a base of $40,000), mid-tier reps average $95,000 and senior reps average $140,000. [telephonyonline]

The Autopsy of VON

I have been reading the autopsies of VON. My guess is that it died because it didn't make money. While people liked Pulver & his crew, they mainly attended VON to hang out with their pals. But the one knock on that is that without the secret decoder ring, you were shut out from most of the networking. And the vendors were able to get enough ROI to attend VON East, West, Midwest, London, this and that.

Add to that the fact that there are tons of shows in telecommunications: NXTCOM, Phone+, VoiceCon, IT Expo, VPF, Telx, NCTA, Cable Show, NAB, CTIA, IP Possibilities, Rural telecom, CES, Comptel, Capacity, etc. (Most of these shows have 2 conferences - one in the East and one in the West).

In addition, there are the niche shows like ISPCON, HostingCon, InterOp, SAAS-Con, Web 2.0, E-tel, Office 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Data Center World, and the rest of the Long Tail. It makes it very challenging to get the vendors to your show, have compelling speakers, and to drive in attendees.

At ISPCON last week, while the show is smaller than last year in Orlando, the crowd was very engaged. For vendors that is key. For attendees, being able to network with your peers is the main driving force to traveling to the show.

Seth Godin writes about the cost for traveling to a show in both time and money has increased, so it better be an awesome show. I think it has to be both Customer-Centric and evolving. By evolving, I mean the Expo Hall and the agenda have to continue to change, to be unexpected. Surprise is a good thing.

Are we ready for a Virtual Show? I don't think so, but what do you think?

What a Loss

After Sprint announces that they lost another 1 million subs in a quarter, Clearwire reports that it has lost big money as well.

"Clearwire, which would (un)wire America for WiMAX, has now burned through $1.36 billion - and it doesn't have even one paying WiMAX customer." [telecomweb]

• Total revenue up to $51.5M
• a loss of $176.4 million
• Total revenue rose 76 percent to $51.5M
• 48,000 net new subs, ended March with approx. 443K subscribers
• ARPU, rose slightly to $36.86
• Gross margins declined to just 26%

"In separate but related Clearwire bad news, a Sprint Nextel affiliate, iPCS Inc., says three of its subsidiaries have filed documents in an Illinois court to block the Sprint/Clearwire deal, alleging the service would compete with iPCS within its markets and that it violates an exclusivity agreement Sprint signed in 1999."

Vonage Churn

Ike Elliot writes about Vonage's incredible 3.3% churn, according to their 1Q08 numbers. That means that "Vonage's 3.3% subscriber churn in the 1st quarter has driven their cost per net subscriber addition above $2000."

• ARPU is $28.85
• Quarterly revenue was over $225M

BTW, one suggestion is that Vonage is being replaced by cellular not other VoIP lines.

XO Hires Bank for what?

XO hired Morgan Stanley in Feb. XO is bleeding money. It is still building out fiber laterals to light customer buildings, but at $10,000 to $50,000 per build (plus equipment), how do you keep that up, especially when:

1. You have mounting losses
2. Your debt load is high
3. Your debt holder doesn't want to re-fi
4. The market won't let you re-finance
5. Your stock is OTC at 60 cents
6. You take a punch in the eye from a Top 25 blogger.

We were discussing this problem at ISPCON. It isn't just an XO issue. Nuvox has some debt issues as well as it sells service so far underwater that I'm amazed it is still in business. (Selling T1's at $400 or less is not a profitable strategy).

In 3Q2007, Nuvox re-financed.

The Loans, as described in NuVox Communications’ original application, would consist of a $180 million senior secured seven-year term loan, a $10 million senior secured six‑year term revolving credit facility, and $70 million of senior second lien secured eight‑year term loans.[source]

It will be interesting to see how CLEC's fair in the next 18 months with the credit crunch, the bad debt, the slowing economy. Customer Retention will be more important that Customer Acquisition.

UPDATE: [XO 1Q08 from The Bear]

Their Core Data and IP revenue is growing at a very respectable pace–30%. However, their overall growth rate is only 3.2% as legacy TD.

"R2 Investments owns a 6.6% equity stake in XO Communications," and according to Zayo's Dan Caruso (and other sources), the minority shareholders at XO are tired of Icahn's preferred status and singular benefit. XO's board did not re-fi their whopping debt that Icahn owns when the market was easy and cheap

An Angry Penguin at ISPCON

Here at ISPCON outside Chicago, Jack and I gave another decent showing with Meatball Marketing this morning (with some help from Alex Goldman from Jupiter Media). Elizabeth of Aristotle.net did a great job with e-Commerce and PCI Compliance. Dave Snead and Kris Twomey (with some help from Chip) did a bang up job on Privacy and regs (PCI, CALEA, and other acronymns).

So why the title? Because working as a PM in Cubeville has turned me into an Angry Penguin, according to a couple of guys at the show from Tampa. I don't know how people commute 90 minutes to get to a J-O-B to just put in the hours trapsing from meeting to cube. UGH!!!!

That thought wraps back to material from the panel. Marketing yourself by being one of the Best Places to Work. Astoundry includes this in their email sig file: Ranked #2 on the list of the Best Places to Work for in Texas 2008.

Talent acquisition (and retention) is challenging right now. Have a great workplace for 3 reasons: to easier acquire the best talent; to retain your current employees; and happy employees give better customer service.

Muni Wireless gets cabled

Just as EarthLink closes the New Orleans wireless network, Cablevision decides to spend $350M to light up NYC (using 15,000 Belair AP's), according to WiFi net News. ELN also returned the networks to Milpitas and Corpus Christi. ELN is in the process of telling Phillie and Anaheim bye-bye. ELN took a $3.4M loss on these operations this quarter, on its way to $54M in net income on $263M in 1Q08 revenue. [bizjournals]

Some cable companies won 700 MHz spectrum in the last auction, and will likely roll wireless out to augment their own cable broadband offerings in-region.

Marketing Through the Recession

Michele Miller is an author and marketing whiz. She blogs about 3 ideas to help you market through the recession. I'll probably repeat some of these next Tuesday at ISPCON (10:15 AM Meatball Marketing).

1. Spend more time Retaining Customers.
2. Give special attention to your Best Clients.
3. Continue to build your Brand.

Not many small businesses have a Brand. Some aren't even sure what a Brand is. Simply, a Brand is the 1K piece of memory that your marketplace has of you. The impression. The word association. The emotion. Or worse the blank because they have no idea who you are.

To build a Brand you have to Identify what is Unique about your service In the Eyes of the Client. Customer-centric. Not features or tech stuff. You take that and create a message around it. Some of the best brands in the world - like Coke, Bud, McDonald's - have a story wrapped around them. When you think about Coke, what comes to mind? You want to create that type of association with your audience. Then repeat that message over and over again.

Your business card is your billboard. Your logo is part of your brand because many people can remember visually better than with just words. (People actually remember best smells). Keep those things in mind as you continue with your marketing in these challenging economic times.

Guy Explains The Office

I'm doing a gig for Corporate America, working in Cubeville Monday through Friday. After 9 years of working as an independent consultant, this has been a wake up call. If you have more than 5 employees, you might want to stay reading some Guy Kawasaki. Guy came out of Apple and is now a VC. Ten Things to Learn This School Year includes How to Survive a Boring Meeting, How to run a meeting, and How to survive without help. I have needed all of this because most meetings I stare at the window wondering if it would hold me if I tried to leap through it or I spend the whole time smiling (except that tends to peeve everyone in the room). Give it a gander - so at least you know what you are missing.

Oh, Sprint

Well, it's been another fun week for Sprint.

Qwest dropped Sprint as their Wireless Vendor to go with VZW. [businessweek]

Sprint loses re-banding appeal on Nextel's iDen network:

"Federal court says June 26 deadline to vacate iDEN 800 MHz spectrum stands firm regardless of whether public safety is ready to move. Sprint will have to vacate its Nextel 800 MHz spectrum in June, even if public safety agencies haven’t vacated the spectrum by then, a federal appeals court ruled today. Sprint has said that if it lost its appeal, the fallout could cost it as much as $3.4 billion, resulting from the loss of its iDEN network in hundreds of areas." [source]

T-Mobile's parent DT rumored to want to buy Sprint even though TechDirt has reasons they shouldn't. The main reason is: how do you integrate iDEN, CDMA with GSM??

UPDATE: On the one hand I can see why DT would want to buy Sprint:

1. It's cheap right now (Junk status actually)
2. Under-utilized assets like its fiber backbone and IP Network.
3. iDen network can be spun-off for a Public Safety play. Sprint is already thinking of spinning off Nextel.
4. Pivot - its partnership with cable companies.
5. All that 2.5 GHz spectrum.
6. XOHM, WiMax, and the VC money to build it from Intel et al.

On the other hand, what does T-Mobile gain by buying Sprint-Nextel? The CDMA and iDen mixed signaling isn't compatible with T-M's GSM network. The 2 systems are one of the reasons that Sprint is crippled. Handsets don't come with chipsets for more than one signaling code.

Big reason not to: Sprint just lost its largest cellular customer - Qwest.

Why would DT want this mess? Sprint just lost an appeal of an FCC order to move off the spectrum that Nextel shares with public safety by mid-June. Estimates are that it will cost about $3B more than the $1B it has already spent to re-allocate spectrum.

There were rumors months ago that DT wanted to sell T-Mobile. I guess it was a case of go-big or go-home. (The only other GSM carrier in the US is AT&T - and DT won't be buying that.)

I'm surprised that the cable coalition (Pivot, maybe) has not thrown the money in to buy Sprint. It would give them a wireless component, VoIP patents, and a voice termination network. It would also give cable a Top 10 IP network. I guess, cable is saving its pennies for that DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade that analysts expect to cost another $100B. (It cost about that to upgrade to DOCSIS 2).

VZW can't buy Sprint because even this crazy FCC and those fine folks at Anti-Trust would have a hard time right now passing that merger.

That leaves Alltel, a fellow CDMA carrier that went private last year. I doubt they could scrounge the money up.

My last guess would be McCraw. If anyone could raise the capital to buy Sprint, he could. But we all know that he would just be flipping it. Paint it. Plant some flowers. Then re-sell it. That wouldn't be good for the employees, the channel or the customers.

BPL is dead

Broadband over Power Line died. BPL was the FCC's third pipe to the home, since every dwelling has electric power. (BPL also refers to using in-house electric wiring to run the LAN, like HPNA.) BPL had a couple of trials, mainly under 500 homes. There was trouble passing the frequency through transformers. The AARL (ham radio operators) have been arguing for years that BPL bleeds into ham frequencies. Guess they won that fight, huh?

The F Agency

Here's a couple of interesting articles about the regulatory agency we all love (the FCC)

What A Concept: The President Should Appoint People Who Understand Technology

"We've complained plenty about elected officials who don't understand technology but have no problem regulating it -- but the problem extends way beyond elected officials. Tim Wu has a bunch of recommendations on how the next President can fix tech policy in the US and it pretty much all boils down to one thing: appoint people who actually understand technology. That means not appointing lobbyists and lawyers to the FCC and getting a real infrastructure expert to be a "broadband czar." These aren't bad ideas, but it's positively frightening that it even needs to be brought up at all. Have we really reached the point that almost everyone in charge of crafting tech-related policy doesn't have even the slightest tech background?

"We have conducted more than 30 interviews with current and former [FCC] employees as well as industry representatives and private citizens. The bottom line is that the [FCC] process appears broken and most of the blame appears to rest with Chairman Martin," stated an April 28 staff memo to Dingell and oversight and investigations subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak (D-Mich.)." [source]

NetZero delivers.... flowers

I have always said that TV and radio ads for ISP's don't work. You can't compete against the RBOC-MSO advertising budget. Individually they spend millions. To spend just $100K per month against $2M is not going to be effective (unless the ad is truly remarkable and goes viral).

NetZero is owned by United Online, which owns Classmates and Points.com. UO just bought FTD, the flower delivery service. That's goofy. But I'd like to see them combine all that into one ad:

"With our dial-up, you can order flowers, visit with Classmates, and earn rewards from online shopping ... all at 56k!"