Qwest had a forbearance petition in at the FCC for the Phoenix metro area. It was denied by the FCC last week. It was denied in 2008 by Martin's commission as well.

Qwest claims that cable, VoIP and cellular are stealing all the market share. I don't know what the market breakdown is because Qwest did not share that data with the FCC or the public. (Hence, the denial).

Why is it that every time the FCC rules against an ILEC, the response is the same: "Ultimately, the FCC's decision will undermine competition in Phoenix instead of promoting it."

Can someone explain that statement from Qwest to me? How does continued regulation of Qwest undermine competition?

If we have learned anything it is that Duopoly is NOT competition. And forbearance would have meant duopoly like it did in Omaha in 2005.

Qwest's two biggest problems are that they do not have a cellular division and they can't get out of the monopoly mindset.

Not having a fiber play in Phoenix like FTTN or FTTH means that their triple-play is weak compared to cable. DSL speeds and DirecTV means less revenue for Qwest.

If I had to run Qwest and lost this forbearance petition, I would be mad. Mad at the previous CEO's for selfish, short-sighted policies that drove the USWest-Qwest ship into the arms of a CenturyLink take over. All those fiber routes and data centers without a clear strategy on how to be profitable long-term in a data-centric landscape where cloud, CDN and collocation are booming. Maybe Sprint and Qwest execs can lament together on the number of ships that left the dock that they missed out on.

Exhibit A: Fairpoint Communications. Small rural telco merges with New England Verizon assets and billions in debt. The 3 state utility commissions were uneasy about the merger to begin with. Two years later, Fairport is struggling to get out of bankruptcy court.

IBM has a 2015 Telco report that starts with:

"In 1999, only 15 percent of the world's population had access to a telephone; by 2009, nearly 70 percent had mobile phone subscriptions. This decade has also brought steep declines in public switched telephone network (PSTN) voice revenues, an explosion of over-the-top (OTT) communication services, phenomenal growth in mobile communications, global industry consolidation and even ground-breaking telco decisions to outsource their networks."

IBM writes about survivor consolidation stating: "Investors' loss of confidence in the telecommunications sector produces a cash crisis and elicits industry consolidation."

I don't know if that is the root of the Windstream and CenturyTel consolidation moves, but the increased debt with declining wireline revenues does indicate a long term problem. No FTTX and No cellular play makes for a tricky future, especially to repay that debt.

Look at the trouble Fairpoint is having. Competition is taking lines away from the bankrupted carrier in New England, which might be why Vermont's Public Service Board rejected Fairpoint's plan to exit BK.

"Those projections, the board said, were "based upon the assumption that FairPoint's losses in local revenue due to competition will be less than the company has experienced recently, that it can increase revenues from broadband services and special access services faster than it has recently, and that operating costs will trend downwards relative to recent experience."

This is the second BK for ILEC's. Eyes will be on Frontier (Exhibit as it merges with the rest of VZ's rural assets.

Meanwhile, eyes are on VZ (Exhibit C) to see how it can grow revenue as it spends billions in all of its divisions - international, FiOS, wireless, and business services (managed services, Internet, MPLS, CDN, Cloud). Lots of billions in two flat markets - FiOS and cellular - besides the wireline. However, VZ isn't experienced in selling anything like business services like managed services, apps and the cloud. Net-head stuff versus Bell-head organization. And then there's VZ's massive debt ($61B in outstanding debt, according to VZ; $22.2 billion of Alltel debt; $187B total debt according to Yahoo.

Exhibit D: IOC's. Independent Operating Companies. These telcos have the same issues: declining landline revenue and no cellular replacement money. During the real estate boom, some of these IOC's were seeing increases in subscribers. That has halted. The NTCA works hard to educate its members on emerging technologies and success stories (mainly during webinars).

There are ways to make gold out of copper, but you have to be creative. And the customers have to be geographically dense.

Will cloud be an answer? Or just the ultra-fast dumb pipes to the apps? We'll have to wait and see.

Ethernet over Copper is picking up steam. Hatteras Networks has something to do with that as they are the vendor for Metro Ethernet over Copper for former BellSouth. XO also has EoC in most of their markets. I saw an ad today from Tele-Pacific's EoC. Many of my clients - regional CLEC's - are selling G.SHDSL based services. Mammoth Networks offers EFM - Ethernet in the first mile. 

EoC is a great way to turn the copper plant to gold for facilities-based B2B CLEC's. (I know Dave Rusin will argue with me, but what can you do). However, because it is very distance sensitive, it has to be marketed in a sharpshooter kind of way. In telecom, we see the shotgun approach all the time. Throw it all out there and see what we hit. To market like a sharpshooter, you have to target who can actually receive the service. 

In the early days of DSL, no one did this well. Often prospects would receive numerous pieces of collateral that said they could get DSL, when in fact they were out of range of the service. It left a bad taste.  Our industry shouldn't repeat that mistake with EoC (or with FiOS or VDSL).

Marketing EoC is a lot like fixed wireless providers marketing a tower. The tower or the Central Office is the center of the circle. The targets are in a radius around that circle. 

Today, with all the data available to be mined, it is fairly easy to almost personalize a letter or postcard to each prospect about your offering that is specific to their vertical.  It just takes time and effort, which I know is a bad thing.

So you have EoC as a way to maximize copper for bandwidth and ARPU. That means that you can deliver higher bandwidth to a customer (and get more monthly recurring revenue) than you can with just DSL or a T1.

Most customers understand the concept of Ethernet. It is easier to integrate Ethernet with their LAN than a T1 or NxT1.  Keep it simple, right?

Due to distance limitations, it has to be carefully marketed to prospects where the service is available. The last thing you want to do is take calls (or orders) from customers who want it, but can't have it -- and you have to sell them a more expensive T solution. (Bait and switch?)

Target marketing is the key to EoC success.