4 quick news items and one big one you need to really pay attention to.

The DCMA did not protect Cox from a $25 Million fine after letting subscribers pirate music online. The Appeals Court ruled that the ISP didn’t do enough to curb illegal downloads.

The most successful SMB SaaS Launch is… here. 95% Channel sales.

I know we don’t think of UCaaS as SaaS but it is. SaaS Lead Gen practices here.

Cyber Security and VoIP – what the Black Hats have to say. BTW, humans are the weakest link in any security.

FYI….  22 Military Veterans and 1 active duty soldier commit suicide every day! Stop Soldier Suicide

Cloud is driving all bandwidth sales.
Cloud is driving network re-design.
Cloud is driving SD-WAN.

“CenturyLink says that it’s trying to offer gigabit connections in more markets, but believes that the majority of its customers simply don’t need anything that fast….CEO Glen Post made the case that 100 Mbps was more bandwidth than most customers need,” reports DSLR.

That notwithstanding, “gigabit service does help in one regard: it helps sell slower speeds. Numerous ISPs have noted that when customers see gigabit ads they often call in because they don’t remember what their current speed even is. Gigabit often either isn’t available, or the user decides that a slower, cheaper tier is good enough.”

Why when just 5 short years ago people were only buying 3M, just enough for a single stream of Netflix? More Than 90 Percent of U.S. Households Have Three or More Devices Pinging the Internet, says ReCode. (btw, the device report from Pew in 2015 has good data.)

The only term that captures consumer attention is Gigabit. Not DSL, not broadband. Thanks Google.

C-Link does have a powerful mission statement: “Improve the lives of our customers by connecting them to the power of the digital world.” I wonder how many employees even know that.

“A new AT&T GigaPower map leverages interactive GPS technology to plot AT&T’s gigabit capabilities across 425,000 eligible apartments and condos. This gigabit coverage spans 56 markets nationwide, AT&T reports in a blog post. [source]

Windstream looks to fiber investments, cloud services to tighten bond with mid-sized businesses.

Mid-market isn’t looking for broadband (except in remote offices). They have a complex Hybrid WAN that MPLS is struggling to contain. SD-WAN will be the next evolution for MPLS due to all the traffic outside of the WAN to Azure, AWS, Rackspace, SAAS, etc.

Cloud is driving all bandwidth sales.
Cloud is driving network re-design.
Cloud is driving SD-WAN.

“CenturyLink says that it’s trying to offer gigabit connections in more markets, but believes that the majority of its customers simply don’t need anything that fast….CEO Glen Post made the case that 100 Mbps was more bandwidth than most customers need,” reports DSLR.

That notwithstanding, “gigabit service does help in one regard: it helps sell slower speeds. Numerous ISPs have noted that when customers see gigabit ads they often call in because they don’t remember what their current speed even is. Gigabit often either isn’t available, or the user decides that a slower, cheaper tier is good enough.”

Why when just 5 short years ago people were only buying 3M, just enough for a single stream of Netflix? More Than 90 Percent of U.S. Households Have Three or More Devices Pinging the Internet, says ReCode. (btw, the device report from Pew in 2015 has good data.)

The only term that captures consumer attention is Gigabit. Not DSL, not broadband. Thanks Google.

C-Link does have a powerful mission statement: “Improve the lives of our customers by connecting them to the power of the digital world.” I wonder how many employees even know that.

“A new AT&T GigaPower map leverages interactive GPS technology to plot AT&T’s gigabit capabilities across 425,000 eligible apartments and condos. This gigabit coverage spans 56 markets nationwide, AT&T reports in a blog post. [source]

Windstream looks to fiber investments, cloud services to tighten bond with mid-sized businesses.

Mid-market isn’t looking for broadband (except in remote offices). They have a complex Hybrid WAN that MPLS is struggling to contain. SD-WAN will be the next evolution for MPLS due to all the traffic outside of the WAN to Azure, AWS, Rackspace, SAAS, etc.

Short post from GapingVoid starts out: “What is so darn intriguing about being an entrepreneur?

It’s the idea that no matter how specialized your training, the real requirement is that you be a generalist….” Read the rest here.

Verizon Offers ‘Tech Support Pro’ — For $10 More a Month. Do you have options to increase ARPU?

“Rural broadband has come a long way in the last 15 years, according to new research from NTCA – The Rural Broadband Association. One hundred percent of NTCA’s small rural telco members who responded to a 2015 survey offer broadband to some part of their customer base — a big jump from the 58% that offered broadband in 2000, when NTCA did the first of what became an annual broadband survey.” [READ MORE HERE]

G.Fast is being deployed by WIND in Lincoln Nebraska (into MDUs).

Does Google for Work plus RingCentral present a good alternative to Microsoft Off365? READ HERE.

Studies have shown that over a third of an employee’s time each day is spent looking for information versus being productive (via RC prezo). Collaboration, Slack, Sharepoint and other Workflow suites are supposed to help with that by containing documents and info for each project in a folder. CRM – if used correctly – does that organization for client and prospect communications and information.

“Industry-agnostic platforms are losing ground to vertical systems. As time goes on apps are going to become more specialized and industry-specific. You may find yourself using apps for things you never thought you would need to.” This according to the State of SAAS report.

64 percent of small and medium businesses today rely on cloud-based technology.

43 percent of small business owners use mobile devices as the primary device for running their operations.

This aligns with data from Intuit, revealing that 67 percent of business owners utilize desktops. So where does DAAS/VDI fit into a mobile model?

The numbers are in for most service providers. Here are some highlights.

For Windstream, a RLEC, CLEC, fiber and cloud provider that recently raised minimum sales order from $300 to $1200 to the channel.

• “Windstream’s management is making necessary investments in its business to meet consumer and enterprise demand for additional bandwidth, according to the analysts at Jefferies.” [source] 
• Windstream will have to spend double the CAPEX in order to compete against consumer cable broadband in its market. 45% of their market is one of the Big Boys (as opposed to a mom-and-pop cableco). 
• Building out fiber to the enterprise is trading CAPEX for margin and control (over using Type II circuits from ILECs or IXCs).
• Windstream’s consumer and small business ILEC service revenues were $397 million in the first quarter, a decrease of 1 percent from the same period a year ago. Driven by growth in high-speed internet bundle revenue, consumer service revenues were $312 million, an increase of approximately $1 million from the fourth quarter.
• However, Windstream lost 40,000 broadband subscribers to end the quarter with a total of 1.09 million subscribers.

The big warning: “the Jefferies analysts sounded the alarm on Windstream’s legacy business, which they said accounts for roughly 40 percent of its revenue. “As such, Service revenue is expected to decline ~2% in 2016, and while we could see some modest improvements going forward, we expect revenue declines to persist for some time,” the analysts wrote. “Importantly, like its peers, the mix shift in revenue pressures margins and free cash flow and we anticipate margins to decline further, despite management confidence in margin stabilization.”

It isn’t just WIND. Most of the ILECs have the same problems – cable, CAPEX, declining revenue, while face declining revenues in legacy business — in small business ILEC/CLEC, carrier services and regulatory revenue for the foreseeable future.

CenturyLink revenues were flat at $4.4 billion in quarterly revenue.

For Broadsoft, “On the BroadCloud expansion front, we ended the quarter with more than 290,000 BroadCloud subs, which is up from 200,000 subscribers we announced at the end of last year’s Q2.” It was mainly European growth.

SaaS revenue was $12.8 million as compared to $12 million last quarter and $8.5 million in last year’s Q2.

The focus is on Project Tempo, UC-One and BroadSoft Contact Center.

Rogers Communications in Canada selected BroadSoft as the underlying engine for Unison, a new mobile solution for our businesses. The service is designed to provide large enterprise-wide communication features in a full mobile environment that even SMB customers can access.

For RingCentral, “RingCentral office is now in almost $300 million annual recurrence revenue business, growing over 40% year-over-year, and representing over 95% of our net new business in Q2.”

Integration especially with Microsoft Office 365 was noted.

For 8×8, total revenue in 1Q2017 “grew 25% year-over-year to $60 million. Service revenue of $55.3 million also grew 25% year-over-year, both on an organic and inorganic basis.”

Service revenue from mid-market and enterprise customers grew 44% year-over-year and now accounts for 52% of our total service revenue.

Channel sales teams increasing 62% year-over-year, accounting for 58% of total monthly recurring revenue booked in the quarter.

Vonage numbers were hard to decipher due to Nexmo acquisition. No organic quarters to look at there.

AT&T 2Q16 consolidated revenues of $40.5 billion, up more than 22%d (includes the acquisition of DIRECTV).

For Verizon, “Total operating revenues in second-quarter 2016 were $30.5 billion, a 5.3 percent decrease compared with second-quarter 2015. Excluding second-quarter 2015 revenues from divested local landline businesses and second-quarter 2016 revenues from AOL, which was not part of Verizon a year ago, total operating revenues on a comparable basis (non-GAAP) would have declined 3.5 percent year over year. AOL delivered strong revenue growth in second-quarter 2016.”

“New revenue streams from IoT for VZW continue to grow, with revenues of approximately $205 million in second-quarter 2016, a year-over-year increase of about 25 percent.” Almost $1B in revenue!

It is all about business services in the upper markets. Channel is driving sales. Another factor is integration and collaboration functions.