Gustav Looms as Opportunity

Y! news is reporting that New Orleans is mulling over evacuation due to the looming hurricane threat of Gustav.

First off, just mulling it over? I would already be making reservations in ATL or Dallas. Anyway...

How to leverage Gustav. FUD. Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. "Remember Katrina". What will happen to your customer files, your databases, your paper, your important documents? Storage. Back-up. Removable devices.

Satellite. Cell phones. Hosted PBX (because as long as the NOC is up, voicemail is still working). VoIP Lines with IP Phones and softphones that can work in a hotel in Houston or Atlanta. Just some thoughts running through my head.

Here are some thoughts from the NFIB Florida:

• TRACK current Tropical Storms and Hurricanes here: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
• GET important Hurricane Preparedness and Recovery Information here.
• BE AWARE of your responsibilities under the Florida Price Gouging Law here.
• REGISTER your business with the State Emergency Response Team (SERT) (strongly recommended) here:
• SECURE your computer data from loss in a disaster here.
• RE-ROUTE your shipments with comprehensive road closure information here.
• CONTACT directly the State Emergency Operations Center / Emergency Support Function for Business and Commerce with any special needs your business has here: ESF18@em.myflorida.com

Generators. Canned goods. Guns and ammo. Gasoline. Extension cords. Duct tape. Sleeping bags. Bug spray. Mace. Fill up all vehicles. Water. More water. More duct tape and ammo :) Be safe. Think ahead. Have a plan.

USP

How to Develop Your Unique Selling Proposition

View SlideShare presentation

Buy Skills, not Subs

Alex Goldman of JupiterMedia, ISPCON and ISP-Planet blogs about not buying an ISP or WISP today. Instead, you will likely get more bang from your buck on buying a skill. In other words, add services to increase ARPU. Add services to increase stickiness. You want profitable customers. If you take away churn, customer acquisition costs, and marketing expenses, but increase the amount your customers pay you, you could be better off than just buying more customers.

I haven't seen too many WISP purchases make the buyer happy and profitable. In many cases, a WISP is like a boat - your favorite days will be the day you buy it (open it) and the day you sell it. (There are exceptions).

Buying local ISP's with the same model as you (for example, buying another DSL reseller or dial-up) means that economies of scale can work for you. In the case of a DSL resellers, how can you even afford to buy them?

IT Expo West - Sept. 16-18

I am moderating two panels on VoIP at the Internet Telephony Expo West - one on Deploying Hosted VoIP and The Role of Apps. I'll be staying all week in Los Angeles because the AVP Manhattan Beach is that weekend. I come back and shoot up to Atlanta for the Microcorp One-on-One, where I am moderating a panel on SIP Trunking.

If you are attending IT Expo West, let me know as we are planning a dinner on the evening of the 16th.

Have You Plugged the DNS?

The DNS Security flaw or hole or bug or whatever has been in the news for weeks. Have you patched it yet? If not, PC World has an executive summary that tells you what you need to know.

FCC 477 Due 9/2

This is a reminder that Form 477 filing is due on Sept 2, 2008. The instructions can be found on the FCC site and the form can be downloaded here. All Broadband providers are mandated by law to fill out this form twice a year. (Thanks, Rick for the reminder).

Hiring a RainMaker

Keith Rosen has an insightful look at the hiring process for a top sales dog (a rainmaker).

Finding your next star player requires more than having them simply sell you on why they are a solid fit for a position on your sales team. And it goes beyond anything you'll be able to decipher or read into when evaluating their resume.

Rosen then lists 20 in-depth questions to ask any candidates, including this one:

Were you selling based on a bidding process, RFP's, etc.?

I'm going to add a couple of my own:

• What does your Sales Plan look like?
• Please ask me a couple of your Open ended / probing questions for prospects.
• What does your Lead Generation Process look like?
• Please outline your sales process.

If your company uses CRM, make sure that your salesperson does too. Also, did he have a team of folks helping him close - like a sales engineer and an admin to do paperwork and a call center to make appointments.

Gamble

Do you like to gamble? Play a little Texas Hold 'Em? Maybe hit the casinos in Biloxi or NOLA or Vegas? Just curious how much gambling do you do in your business?

Are you backing up your data? Do you have redundancy? Are you staying in front of your best customers regularly? Do you have business liability insurance?

Install and Support

First, the big box retailers of Circuit City and Best Buy brought the consumer Geek Squad and Fire Dog for HDTV Installation and PC tech support. Now AT&T is offering Home Theater Installation as well as PC repair in all 50 states.

Cox also has started a tech support division. VZ already offers PC and printer support for $10 per month.

If the largest access line players are moving to Customer Support Programs - and getting paid - what are you doing?

I'm not saying that you should have the same model as an RBOC or an MSO. In fact, I rail against having a Bell-Head model. It has not worked for the CLEC's. However, you need to be Everything to a select target audience.

The giants are masters at the Upsell and Cross-sell, which results in increasing revenues and ARPU. It increases profitability; reduces churn; and lowers customer acquisition costs. Create a program to work on the upsell and cross-sell opportunities that arise from contact from your customers (and prospects).

A real big point: You don't have to do it all your self. Leverage the power of the White Label. Work with a Strategic Partner (or two) to offer more services that you do not have the in-house skills or manpower to deliver, but that your client base wants.

I look at Hosted PBX Providers and believe that since they are already offering Voice Apps as a Service (SAAS), they should roll CRM and Hosted Email into the mix. Broadsoft hooks into MS Exchange/Outlook and Salesforce (and ACT CRM). In a business with 25 handsets like insurance or mortgage, a managed package of PBX-CRM-Email makes sense. Just my two cents.

A Lifestyle Business

At the Channel Partner Expo in Boston, Larry Kesslin, president of 4-profit, an advisory firm to the IT channel, told agents that they needed to choose which business they were in.

Kesslin said a business owner has a just a few options: grow his business, groom it for sell or maintain it to support his/her lifestyle... “You can’t be all three,” he cautioned, noting the business decisions required in pursuit of each path usually are contradictory. For example, a growth business owner would reinvest profits in expanding the company, while a lifestyle business owner would take that money out of the business in support of his/her lifestyle (e.g. luxury homes and vacations or greater freedom to pursue non-work interests, hobbies).... Similarly, a growth business has systems and processes while a lifestyle business has little infrastructure, he said....The type of work talent that’s attracted to each of these models also varies. A go-getter salesperson might be lured into a growth company, but will find no career trajectory in a lifestyle-oriented business. [Phone+]

Which business are you in? Decide because it really matters today.

PCI Compliance: Best Practices Webinar

Qwest sent me an invite to a webinar: PCI MOVING FORWARD: Best Practices to Achieve and Maintain Compliance.

PCI compliance is a constantly changing security requirement for all businesses that process, store or transmit consumer credit card information. Shifting parameters, looming deadlines and increasing responsibilities all pose a challenge to becoming compliant and staying that way. This joint webinar between Qwest Business and Cisco Systems will introduce ways to reduce risk and shorten the journey to compliance.

Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Time: 10:00 a.m. Pacific/1:00 p.m. Eastern

Register here: www.pcinext.com/partner

So You Want to be in Consumer VOIP

As consumer broadband sales plateau, ISP's have to look for greener pastures. For some that means VoIP, but if you look at Vonage and Packet8, you have to wonder if its worth chasing. Packet8 re-focused its vision on Business VoIP, where the ARPU is higher. When your ARPU is $250, you can afford to higher someone to sell it. When you are diving to the bottom, how you do pay for customer acquisition costs (or costs of sales and goods)?

"The largest player in the space, Vonage, is spending $65M per quarter just to keep their subscriber base from shrinking."

As I tell clients all the time, you are not selling to everyone unless you can spend more than $1M on a marketing campaign. Focus your marketing to your best possible prospects. Test a product. Selling to Verticals and Niches is easier.

But back to the consumer VoIP market. If you own the network like cable or ILEC, it is easier to market VOIP because you have captured clients and can maintain quality. If you resell network, it gets tougher. But let's look at a case. Let's say you have 300 broadband subs who you have spent 5 years cultivating, acquiring, and retaining. At best you will be able to sell another service to 20% of them. That's 60 people.

Do you really want to roll out an Asterisk box and maintain it for 60 customers? I still hear complaints about what a bitch it is to run email servers and spam. Voice is twice as challenging - to say the least.

While the second service sale will reduce churn, you have to ask yourself if the costs and effort is worth 60 customers. Or you have to ask yourself, what can I offer my clients that I can provide now? What can I leverage to make technology easier for my clients? Or just go out meet your clients, talk to them and sell something.

BTW, ATT is even getting out of over-the-top VOIP as it starts closing down its CallVantage service.

Broadband Slowing Down

Gary Kim has this chart to demonstrate the sharp decline in new broadband customers. And if that isn't enough Ike Elliott has more detailed info on his blog today. It's a good thing for the ILEC's that their churn is less than 2% and closer to 1%. If you are in the broadband access race, you need to start looking for another horse to ride.

This is Telecom Sales Now

So this is the new telecom sales approach. Spam everyone you know in a mass email. (I would like to know how Renee got my email address). Add a bunch of buzz words like DR, BC, and fiber in a sentence that barely makes sense. Then stick a signature file on it that is 3x as long as the email. WTH?!

Sales is all about the PROSPECT not the company. A better approach would have been to say that you were having a seminar at the offices of twt on DR/BC, would you like to attend. Then when people replied NO, you could have individually contacted prospects to ask if they wanted individual attention on their BC Plan.

From: Renee
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2008 11:36 AM
To: Renee
Subject: Business Continuity Plan

Good Morning,

I was hoping to set a time with you to discuss your current voice and internet network and maybe even look at a fiber connection to assist you with a cost savings, upgrade, disaster recovery and your business continuity.

Please let me know a day and time that works best for you so we can do a brief analysis of your services.

Thank you in advance.

Renee
Account Executive II
tw telecom, inc.
813 office
fax
813 mobile
renee.email@twtelecom.com
Check Us Out- http://www.twtelecom.com
tw telecom, inc. services available:

• Native LAN or Metro Ethernet solutions: 10M, 100M, 622M, and Gigabit Ethernet
• Extended Native LAN: Long-Haul Ethernet Transport from 2 Mbps to GigE
• Point-to-Point Transport: DS-n, OC-n, Optical Wavelength, Private SONET Rings
• Storage Transport for SAN applications: Fibre Channel - ESCON, FICON; Ethernet - 10/100M, GigE
• Dedicated Internet Service: DS-1, DS-3, OC-3, and Ethernet
• Data/Voice Collocation Space
• Integrated Voice & Data; Single and Multi-T1 Service: Bundles Voice and Burstable Internet, from 1.5Mbps to 4.5Mbps
• Traditional and Advanced Voice Services, Long Distance

The content contained in this electronic message is not intended to constitute formation of a contract binding tw telecom. tw telecom will be contractually bound only upon execution, by an authorized officer, of a contract including agreed terms and conditions or by express application of its tariffs. This message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the sender of this E-Mail or by telephone.

Amazing! And they get paid $50K + for this stuff.

Why Are You in the Access Business?

I have hit this rant before: Why are you still in the Access Business? News this quarter proves that the pure access business is a Red Ocean:

• Video: DISH Takes a Hit. FiOS + U-Verse have not exactly caught on fire. And VZ is only rolling out FiOS in communities that they can predict a 25% market share. So far they have not hit that (according to the latest figures I have seen.) So that plan to do IPTV... maybe put it on the backburner.
• Cellular - Wireless Growth to Slow Down, just ask Sprint, Alltel or T-Mobile. If it was rosy would VZW being doing Wholesale Wireless deals with LightYear MLM?
• Landline - analysts are talking about is a merger between Embarq and Windstream due to 8% landline loss per quarter. VZ has dumped all its rural plant.
• Broadband - Growth plummets for two straight quarters.

Repeat after me: Layer 7! Layer 7! Managed Services.

Rackspace IPO

RackSpace's IPO (initial public stock offering) struggles. WSJ says that tech IPO's are struggling and Rackspace is no different.

After initially planning to raise $400 million in an IPO this year, San Antonio-based Rackspace raised $187.5 million Thursday night when its shares were priced at $12.50 each. That was on the low end of the $12 to $16 range the company expected to garner through its IPO auction. ... On Friday, Rackspace shares sank nearly 20% from their offer price, closing at $10.01 in the company's first day of trading. [statesman]

The bonus for reporters and bloggers about IPO filings is the info it contains. As TechCrunch points out:

With the filing we also get a clearer picture of Rackspace’s business and financials. Its revenues grew 62 percent last year to $362 million, but it posted net profits of $17.8 million, which were down 10 percent from the year before. Cash flows from operations, though, remained healthy at $105 million last year, up from $61 million in 2006..... At the end of the year, it had 29,193 customers, compared to 12,677 the year before. But nearly all of that growth was due to its acquisition of Webmail.us.... Rackspace has 36,692 servers across seven data centers ... The company makes $3,504 a year per square foot [techcrunch]

Rackspace Hosting Inc. is NYSE symbol: RAX

Why do tech IPO's struggle? My thoughts are IPO's to many people is a lottery - it's a short term play to make quick cash. In addition, many companies offer a service or product line that the majority of the people do not comprehend. (We live in a world filled 95% with idiots, which doesn't stop them from driving, having kids, or playing the stock market with their kids' college fund).

Start Conference

There was a "Start" Conference for Entrepreneurs in San Fran over the weekend. Here is what you would have learned:

• Where to start. Hear how founders got started, where they screwed up, and why they kept going.
• What you need. Hiring? Firing?!? Who’s watching the books? Do you really need a lawyer?
• How to pitch. Hear some of the web’s most formidable entrepreneurs giving their best five-minute pitches. Then learn to hone yours.

These are the reasons you should attend conferences and events. Local events are good for Networking (= Marketing), but can also help you hear about how other business people are solving the same issues as you.

See you in Atlanta in October or at ISPCON in San jose in November.

Try This

"I would like to talk to you about what your business does because our firm provides businesses like yours with communications and productivity tools."

Cellular Summary for 2Q08

I am copying this from GigaOm because it is a great summary:

AT&T reported Q2 earnings on July 23:

• Wireless revenue: $12 billion
• Wireless operating income: $3.1 billion
• Churn (postpaid only): 1.1 percent
• Net adds: 1.3 million
• Total subscribers: 72.9 million
• Data revenue: $2.5 billion
• Average ARPU: $50.60

Verizon reported Q2 earnings on July 28:

• Wireless revenue: $12.1 million billion
• Wireless operating income: N/A
• Blended churn: 1.12 percent, postpaid 0.83 percent
• Net adds: 1.5 million
• Total subscribers: 68.7 million
• Data revenue: $2.6 billion
• Average ARPU: $51.53

Sprint reported Q2 results on August 6:

• Wireless revenue: $7.7 billion
• Wireless operating loss: $142 million
• Churn (postpaid only): “just under” 2 percent
• Net loss: 901,000
• Total subscribers: 51.9 million
• Data revenue: N/A
• Average ARPU: $53.47 (excludes wholesale customers)

T-Mobile reported Q2 earnings today:

• Wireless revenue: $4.85 billion
• Wireless net income: $452 million
• Blended churn: 2.7 percent, postpaid 1.9 percent
• Net adds: 668,000
• Total subscribers: 31.5 million
• Data revenue: N/A
• Average ARPU: $52

CBEY Chugs Along

Everyone knows I like this company (Cbeyond), but I like the plan they execute on. Cbeyond spent months putting processes and people in place to be able to handle the back office to deliver on the projected sales goal. Then they picked 3 products - Dynamic T1, Internet T1, and SIP Trunk. Then they added the HUGE differentiator of BeyondMobile (cellular MVNO) lines. Simple message. Simple pricing tool. Easy to target your qualified audience.

So you train for a day and unleash the sales feet who have 2 tools in the belt (SIP Trunk and Dynamic T1 because they don't push Internet only and the mobile is an upsell to the Dynamic) which means the pitch is simple. And you disqualify prospects fast to get to the qualified prospects faster.

CBEY met their numbers this quarter. This is how Hosted PBX is supposed to be sold.

Email Affected by DNS Flaw

I'm not sure everyone is aware of the DNS flaw that Kaprinsky identified and flogged in the last few weeks. OpenDNS can solve that for you (if you are lazy and want to repoint instead of patch and fix).

CNN is reporting that the "Internet Security Flaw Could Compromise E-mail, Too"

A newly discovered flaw in the Internet's core infrastructure not only permits hackers to force people to visit Web sites they didn't want to, it also allows them to intercept e-mail messages, the researcher who discovered the bug said. Considering the silent nature of the attack and the sensitive nature of a lot of electronic correspondence, the potential for damage from this second security flaw is high.

UPDATE: "DNSSEC is a great answer to the DNS problem (DNS Cache Poisoning), but deploying it in an ISP environment is not a trivial task. ....Greenwood, Colo.-based Secure64 has a solution that will make deploying DNSSEC easier." Read the rest at ISP-Planet.

Will Paetec Survive?

It's one thing to run a private region CLEC when it can be all about your people. It's another thing to merge with 2 other public CLEC's. Now you are public with an (almost) nationwide footprint and 3800 employees. Now the dance is different.

It isn't about your employees. Now its about Execution of a Game Plan. It's about telling a new story to your prospects. It's about planning.

Except for some fiber that MacLeodUSA owned, PAETEC doesn't own network. So everything is purchased as a UNE or Special Access. PAETEC plays in VZ-Land more often than not, so it is likely Special Access more often than they would like.

After announcing a slow 2Q08, PAET dropped from $6 to under $3! It was at $13 in October of 2007. Paetec adjusted 2008 outlook as well - maybe due to a soft economy.

Today's Paetec is a Billion Dollar CLEC. Take some lessons from Intermedia and other CLEC's Arunas: Get some help before it crumbles.

HostedPBX Compare

You will love this site: pbxcompare.com. It compares Hosted PBX offerings. That should help clear it up. Who's cheapest?

The Losses Continue

Sprint. AOL. Qwest. A BIG OUCH!

As Phone+ writes, "Those Sprint Nextel (S) wireless subscribers are dropping like proverbial flies.The Kansas City-based provider shooed away another 901,000 customers during the second quarter of 2008. Losses totaled $344 million." OUCH! I guess all the advertising isn't working. I would suggest a customer lovefest. Dan call me and I'll explain. Because it looks like more bad news is coming next quarter:

In fact Sprint said in a statement that it “currently expects to report higher post-paid subscriber losses in the third quarter due to a seasonal uptick in churn when compared with second quarter 2008 results.” Translation: Sprint is losing more customers in the next three months. [seekingalpha]

In other news, Qwest reported a 24% drop in net income in 2Q08, while its brethren all tallied big numbers due to cellular adds and triple-play adds, which Qwest lacks. "Revenue was down about 2 percent overall to $3.38 billion" writes Fierce. And the FCC only gave them forbearance on DSL, Fiber and Packet-switched Broadband.

Then there is AOL. "The provider lost 604,000 subscribers in the second quarter alone and is down 2.8 million from the previous year, leaving it at 8.1 million subscribers. That's a $200 million loss (29 percent drop) for the company, which had raised fees on the dial-up service in late June. ... Operating income at AOL dropped 36 percent, to $230 million." [Y!] I was asked by a reporter this morning about this. TimeWarner has too many silos under attack: magazines are losing subs and ad revenue; so is TV (it's moving online). Movies and music are being pirated -- but still making money. TW is in the Cable biz too.

Time Warner Cable (TWC) added 251,000 residential VoIP phone customers in the quarter. Voice revenues climbed 39 percent--$112 million for the quarter--for a total of nearly $400 million. TWC now has a total of 3.4 million digital phone subscribers and a growth rate likely to continue to give incumbent telcos heartburn. [fierce]

While AOL is now 2 separate companies - ads and ISP - most CEO's can barely keep a single silo afloat (see HomeDepot and others). So the sale of AOL ISP to EarthLink should be soon. The ad part will probably go to MSN.

Meanwhile, InterNAP had a bad day too.

UPDATE: Well, it looks like TW may have an AOL exit strategy because Liberty Media's Malone says that "We'd swap our Time Warner stake for AOL Dialup cash cow."

For a detailed look at AOL and its recent activities, see SNL Interactive.

EFF Switzerland

The EFF has released a tool for consumers to use to test their ISP connection for tampering. Comcast and the government folks must just love the EFF guys.

At present, the EFF admits that the Switzerland utility is targeted more toward sophisticated end users. More user-friendly versions are promised in the near future. The "Test Your ISP" Web site (www.eff.org/testyourisp) hosted by EFF lists seven other ISP-testing tools with links to many of the utilities. The EFF hopes to collect results from user tests throughout the world to get a comprehensive look at how ISPs are handling their users' access. The data will also help the open-source effort to develop even greater tools in combating ISP abuse. [source]

The Low Price Game

If you want to play in the low price game, you better sharpen your pencil. While the king of selling VOIP for low price is Vonage at $24 per month and Packet8 likes to help out consumers at $199 per year ($16.58 per month), there's a new winner in town: MagicJack. At just $40 for the first year including the purchase of the USB device, it is by far the lowest priced VOIP since Skype or Net2Phone.

Having been on the receiving end of quite a few calls on MJ, it's like listening while someone wraps packages in tissue paper the entire call. Crinkle, crinkle. I doubt the MJ user notices, but then in VOIP it is not usually the VOIP user that can detect the hisses, klunks, buzzes and dropped words. It is the listener that has to repeat, Huh? What did you say? throughout the call. Annoying for sure.

MJ sells via the infomercial.

Ike Elliott has a round-up of cheap VoIP services. So if you want to sell on price because it is easier than actually selling, you better drop your pants lower.

Jon Arnold also does a round-up of the cheapos. Jon thinks that MJ "looks like a Trojan Horse strategy to me. The name of the game for magicJack is numbers - get lots and lots of subscribers. Yes, this drives subscription revenues, and maybe even a bit of international calling, but there's a Web 2.0 element to this, and you're not going to like it. .... Whether you like it or not - want it or not - magicJack is going to serve up advertisements."

And finally, Thomas Howe rings in with his view that MJ's Advertising and Product Claims are Deceptive. Howe explains the deceptions in MJ ads including the claim that Dan invented Internet Telephony. Howe then makes a statement I agree with (because MJ sounds like a dash for cash: "My second conclusion is that any company so willfully deceptive in its advertising must have serious corporate morality issues." In the comments folks threatened his children. Ah, the anonymous web.

So to summarize, if you sell too low, the intelligient will wonder how it is possible. There is such a thing as too low -- and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Are You the Nordstrom of VOIP?

In a BizJournals article, the author, Michael Griffin of Experts.com, chooses an ITSP (Internet Telephony Service Provider aka VoIP Provider) that he is happy with.

"They are the Nordstrom experience in the VoIP sector," Griffin said. .... The name "Voxitas" might not ring a bell. The seven-year-old company with a staff of 24 was known as Net Logic until last November.

The article doesn't really explain why they would be Nordstrom's, but the connotation is that they gave impeccable service - hand-holding even. (That's what Nordstrom's is famous for).

Are you giving that kind of service?

Some VoIP 2Q Numerical Facts

8x8 changed its focus from consumer VOIP to business VOIP in December 2006. One and one-half years or 6 quarters later, 56% of its revenue is from Businesses. 8x8 has been buying some of its growth.

8x8 Inc. signed a deal with Minneapolis-based unified-communications (UC) solutions provider Avtex LLC, under which it will take over the iTELConnect hosted PBX and unified- messaging subscriber base of approximately 1,500 companies.... [telecomweb]

This acquisition means that Packet8 will serve 13,500 businesses. That's one of the largest. Of course, cablecos are just getting into the Hosted PBX game for business telephony. Bright House is rolling out a 2-line Digital Voice with Internet, email, back-up and security for $139.

According to Andy at VOIP Watch, CableVision has 2 million voice lines now. Because they are focused in NY and fairly dense, they have had an advantage. VZ has just started selling FiOS triple-play in this region. CableVision is launching a wireless network in the Greater NY area to counter the FiOS marketing machine.

Comcast added 555k new voice lines in 2Q, according to Forbes.

Back to Packet8. It's average business customer takes 7.1 lines, less than the standard 8 lines that CLEC's offer on an Integrated T1. The average spend (ARPU) is $237 which is $33.38 per line. Churn is 3.5% this quarter down from 4.6% last year. It's Overlay VOIP and it is played on price. Tough to have QOS with this model. That's why I say Milk Your Own Cows. I wonder how many businesses they have in Santa Clara?

the FCC Should Forbear for Benefit

According to Dave Rusin, the FCC should grant forbearance to help consumers and the economy. (Read more here). Of course, he thinks the CLEC Industry is doomed, but then he is in the fiber game. He is CEO of American Fiber. Dave writes:

What forbearance does is stifle pent-up demand. When the FCC maintains/limits competition to legacy copper facilities where do they think we are going? This supply protectionist desire by the FCC to stimulate “demand” has not demonstrated anything appreciable in the world theater of global competitiveness on the part of the United States. The same FCC that denies forbearance is the same FCC that said cable company infrastructure is closed to competitors and new fiber deployments by ILECs are closed to others. It’s the same FCC that is trying to figure out how much a pole attachment should cost depending upon what application that a physical cable may be carrying!!!

To me, Dave is saying that fiber guys like AFS got it right by sinking money in facilities and the rest of the CLEC's (like the 370 in Florida) got it wrong.

To an extent, I agree. Most CLEC's still do go after some arbitrage play to make money. (If I hear I will save you money one more time in a marketing session!!!) The whole idea behind TA96 was for CLEC's to get a footprint started by using Bell facilities, then create their own. (It's also why spectrum was sold -- as facilities replacement).

But I would argue here (heavily) that Dave is wrong about Forbearance. The reason: because the FCC has done such a sloppy job of their job. Flip flopping on everything. If the one goal was an effective third party provider, the FCC would have stayed that course. Spectrum would have gone to companies other than the Bells to be used for a copper replacement.

The FCC could have driven us to a 3-way system by now, if the F Agency had that vision. I don't think it ever did. Or ever will.

And to jump to forbearance now would destroy our economy in ways that the credit crisis couldn't.

BTW, Dave, even AFS only hits about 1% of businesses in any market. That's kind of limiting.

Forbearance

Dave Rusin has a good explanation of Forbearance in his blog.

Differentiating VOIP

SimpleSignal has announced a big differentiator: molded to Microsoft Exchange and Voice-enabled.

SimplyMobile translates e-mail from text to speech and allows users to call Outlook contacts via voice commands on a mobile phone. Users can change the time of a meeting in their calendar verbally and Exchange will send an e-mail notification of the change to the meeting participants.

As I was explaining to a client last week, Hosted PBX will have to be married to email (specifically a Hosted Exchange type product). Why? Email and Voice are combining on mobile handsets and on laptops and on PC's.

Another reason is because to sell VOIP, you need to manage the network so you should be providing and managing the Internet, the router, the phones, the email, back-up/archiving, the Address Book, voicemail, and the digital voice service. Hosted PBX = Managed Services.

Florida Phone Survey

The Florida phone survey says that 1.2M households do not have a landline.

The Florida Public Service Commission released its 2008 Telecommunications Report to government officials over the weekend compiling data from 370 companies certified by the PSC to operate in Florida. While Wireless, Voice-over-IP and broadband services have some of the most significant shares in the state’s communications market, landline service fell 15 percent during an 18-month period between June 1, 2006, and Dec. 31, 2007....The PSC estimates that 1.2 million households in Florida are wireless only as 15 million cell phones were in use in the state. The PSC does not regulate wireless services but is required by state law to provide “the status of competition in the telecommunications industry.” [TBBJ]

It could have been a good story if it wasn't written by the BizJournal which does not know tech from turf.

Lessons on VOIP

Rich Tehrani has a post about magicjack. He saw one of the company's many infomercials. (Someone said that Isenberg is hawking them in one!) Anyway the one thing MJ is doing is promoting VOIP without talking about VoIP. Vonage does it as well.

This ties in with why Tech Companies fail. Tech companies fail because the techies are beloved of the tech. The consumer loves what it does not what it is.

No one loves the iPhone because it is a smartphone.

People buy VoIP to save money. And since that is getting harder to offer every quarter (especially against $20 magicjack), you have to figure out why someone would want your VOIP service.

It is sold on price for a reason: because it requires one-on-one selling to actually SELL a service on benefits. Consultative Selling, SPIN Selling, yadda requires sales people who can ask the open questions, listen actively, propose the solution by reiterating the benefits of the service.

the other way to do it is to bring in an HD IP Phone and call another HD IP Phone. Or to dial from your cell and transfer the call to the propsect's phone. Or load a video softphone from a flash drive on the prospect's computer so he can have a video call with your tech support team. Let them experience the service.

Just don't talk about the technology. When you shop for a car, when was the last time they explained the horsepower or mechanics?

Sales is emotional. Make them want the experience and they will buy.

A Degree in Selling

In his blog on AllBusiness.com, Keith Rosen mentions that people are "enrolled in professional selling at the University of Central Florida". I did not know that UCF had a program on Selling. It only accepts 32 students. You should go hang out there to hire your next professional!