“It’s easy for a retailer to believe that the best way to succeed is to be cheap. But just about every important brand didn’t get that way by being the cheapest.” Seth Godin. There is a big difference between Value and Price.

What should cellular, pay TV and broadband services cost?

Kind of surprised that the Internet Access Report from the FCC is from 2014. It sure takes them a long time to process data.

The 2016 Broadband Progress Report has some good date. “39 percent of rural Americans (23 million people) lack access to 25 Mbps/3 Mbps. By contrast, only 4 percent of urban Americans lack access to 25 Mbps/3 Mbps broadband.”

For the E-Rate folks: “While an increasing number of schools have high-speed connections, approximately 41 percent of schools, representing 47 percent of the nation’s students, lack the connectivity to meet the Commission’s short-term goal of 100 Mbps per 1,000 students/staff.”

Broadband ISPs, CableCos Still Least Liked of Any US Industry by DSLR. “A survey of 10,000 consumers has found that broadband ISPs and cable companies continue to have the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any industry in the United States.”

Charter CEO Explains Why ISP Won’t Compete Against Cable! “As part of the Charter merger conditions the cable company is required to expand broadband service to 2 million additional locations — 1 million of which must already be covered by an existing broadband provider offering speeds of 25 Mbps or more.” That means they have to overbuild over ILEC broadband — so DSL will lose even more subscribers (which makes the return on copper less and less. Also, cable won’t overbuild on cable because then they cannot buy them down the road.

Cable One is using FICO scores to qualify video customers, CEO Thomas Might says.

One step towards more sales is to clearly articulate your value to your marketplace. Join the 4 week Marketing Workshop to walk through your value proposition with me and get started in marketing your business. Register HERE NOW!

Vendors We Quote and Provision

Still have my telecom agency. I still quote and provision circuits for you. Just a quick view of the top vendors in categories such as Ethernet, Internet Background, Data Center plus an overview of SD-WAN and other servcies you might want to add to your portfolio.

New speed test from Netflix: fast.com

AT&T begins Broadband Caps today!

Do you know what a Product Manager does? This article explains.

the ups and downs of selling your company (startup advice): here

the UCaaS space: is it a 3-way battle or not?

There are now 2015: 7.4 billion mobile subscriptions for 7.3 billion people.

3 Tips on Hiring by Seth Godin

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Analysts’ reports estimate that Cisco and Microsoft will take more than half of the Enterprise UC&C market (estimated at 55%). Cisco has three offerings chasing this market: Call Manager series; Cisco Spark (either hosted by Cisco or a Service Provider); and HCS. Small, medium and large.

Microsoft is already climbing past 55 million users of Office365 with Skype for Business. This slideshow of a survey about Skype4B. “This year’s survey of enterprise IT professionals, conducted in April, netted 445 respondents. Similar to what we found from our 2015 survey participants, half of this year’s respondents, or 224 enterprise IT professionals, said their organizations have adopted the on-premises version of Skype for Business.” One-third of the respondents use the cloud based version for Skype4B.

Slack is fast approaching 3 million daily users. It isn’t that employees don’t want to use UC&C. They just want it to be integrated and easy to use.

I worry that Broadsoft hasn’t taken more market share already. (They have been at it longer, probably longer than the marketplace was ready for them). Also it seems that BSFT does not have a true position. It is pitched from 10 seats to 10K seats. It is pitched for contact center. It is not integrated into Skype4B nor Slack. The service providers selling BSFT will need a clear value proposition and positioning statement to push up market and take sales away from both Cisco and Microsoft.

The biggest competitor to the small business space is actually the cellphone. GoDaddy didn’t buy FreedomVoice to sell a Hosted Phone system. They are selling them auto-attendant in the cloud (like Grasshopper, Phone.com and Google Voice) and toll-free numbers. Transactional products that can seem to add value to the VSB.

The hard part is the handset. VoIP providers are so set to sell phones, that they haven’t moved to sell the value of soft clients and mobile apps in a BYOD world. Maybe the Polycom purchase by MITEL will shake things up enough to get the VoIP Providers to go native.

Mast Mobile, which is an MVNO and a mobile UC provider, has what many VSB (1-5 employee businesses) would want: mobile app with UC capabilities; second line feature and maybe the calling plan. The marketing, customer acquisition and support costs may be askew to the revenue and capital. Most UC players are moving up market for 2 reasons: easier sale in mid-market (over 150 employees) because those buyers can appreciate the UC feature set more than a small business does (under 99 employees). The second reason is economic: the cost of customer acquisition, implementation and support can be easily recouped from 100+ seat deal — a lot harder on a 25 seat deal.

We are at a tipping point. No clear winner (despite the Synergy Research), but by the end of 2016 or 1Q2017, the winners will start to pull away from the pack. Part of it will be due to consolidation; partly because of capital (it takes money to bring on clients); and partly due to what providers have their shit together and are aligned with their sales partners to go get that market share.

SIDE NOTE:

West UC released an infographic from a survey about Video Calling.

Another S4B study: Most Businesses See Value of #Skype4B but Fear Change.

Need help with Marketing? Putting your Value Proposition together? Give the office a call at 813-963-5884. Or join the our workshop to create your marketing in just 4 weeks with our help. Register here.

3 visual stories. The first 5 reasons business use cloud in IBM’s view.</p

Integration is a vital part of cloud. Silos and stand-alone software just doesn’t fit into today’s business environment. We talk about ecosystems for a reason. IBM has many integration partners. Many.

The Enterprise SaaS market is growing beyond the Big 4.