One-in-five Americans are now ‘smartphone only’ internet users at home, according to Pew Research.

About 20 percent of U.S. residents now use their smartphones and mobile data services exclusively for internet access. That is a seven point increase from the 13 percent who used mobile exclusively for internet access in 2015. [Gary Kim from the Pew Research]

Bundling like Triple-Play is about reducing churn (as well as increasing revenue per account). Gary Kim on AT&T churn.

Small Business just wants POTS! “An annual survey of small and mid-sized businesses conducted for Edgewater Networks of North American organizations seems to suggest that a majority of SMBs of all sizes still rely on TDM solutions for voice.” [Gary Kim]

Facebook has upgraded its Workplace platform in an apparent bid to counter Slack in business accounts, Reuters suggests. True believers include Vonage, which launched its Vee chatbot for Workplace by Facebook.

CoreDial, a cloud services company that works entirely with small business MSPs, has reached the 300,000 seat milestone in the UCaaS market, via channele2e. The CEO of Coredial told me that they are past 300K and looking at the next milestone.

Cisco is buying AI firm Accompany for $270 million in cash and stock, but found out Rowan Trollope left to be CEO of Five9. So the BSFT strategy at Cisco will flounder for a while.

Verizon launched TechSure, tech support started at $10 per month. “Laptops, tablets, TVs, thermostats, security cameras, doorbells, light bulbs – these days, almost everything in the modern home is connected to the Internet. With that in mind, Verizon has launched TechSure to give Fios and High Speed Internet customers both the digital and physical protection they need for their increasingly digital lives.”

Broward College has signed a $1.9 million managed IT services contract with CSPi. As part of this contract CSPi will design, deploy, integrate and manage a private cloud to support enterprise applications. CSPi will also deploy a new campus WLAN and NAC Solution forming a solid foundation needed for secure high-availability, scalability and growing demand to support IoT devices.

Improving the in-home Wi-Fi experience has become ‘table stakes’ in the competitive broadband marketplace.

SOFTWARE:

Netflow Monitoring with Elastic Stack or
Brave Browser, the privacy browser.

FYI… Last month the FCC recommended that carriers adopt a number of security measures to help block against hacking in the SS7 Signaling System 7. Read more here.

American Cities Are Fighting Big Business Over Wireless Internet, and They’re Losing via BLOOMBERG

“Re-declaring itself a “connectivity business focused on broadband,” Comcast reported the addition of 379,000 new high-speed internet users in the first quarter, with overall revenue up 10.7% to $22.8 billion, driven primarily by a hot NBCUniversal division,” according to Fierce.

A technical alert jointly issued by the FBI, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Center warned that hackers linked to the Russian government have routinely compromised U.S. consumer and business network hardware… https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-106A

In its 2018 Internet Health Report, the Mozilla Foundation cited consolidation of power as a concerning issue.

Have you looked at Cloudflare’s DNS tool? via CNET

Fiberlight has finally done some kind of exit – but not in the way anyone thought. “Satellite communications company Globalstar is merging with metro fiber provider FiberLight. The deal will be worth roughly $1.65 billion. Investment firm Thermo Acquisitions, which controls both, pulled all the levers to make the deal happen,” according to Fierce. “Jay Monroe controls Thermo and is the CEO of Globalstar. The merger is seen to be Thermo’s attempt to stabilize the business of Globalstar.” Keeping it in the family. Ramblings has a deeper look at it HERE. The numbers? ” In 2017, FiberLight generated adjusted EBITDA of $67M and had some $200M in net debt.”

Just as Avaya exits bankruptcy and it looks like Mitel might have some fresh legs in the UC race, Mitel gets acquired. “Searchlight Capital Partners has acquired Hosted PBX provider Mitel for $2.0 billion in cash, including Mitel’s net debt. Mitel will become a privately held company.” More here.

Meanwhile Cisco finally made a move since buying Broadsoft. Spark will merge with Webex to be Webex Teams (original name, right?) Then Broadsoft will add CC-One to its contact center package.

U.S. Telcos Have Lost 87% of Voice Accounts in 18 Years

Can Independent ISPs Get 50% Market Share? “Can independent internet service providers (public or private) actually get 50-percent market share when competing against telcos and cable companies? Ting Internet believes so, but results from other firms suggest the level of competitor pricing really does matter.”

Will Fixed Wireless Be a “Deploy at Scale” Choice for Telcos? TPX, Windstream and others have offered fixed wireless for years, but hardly at scale.

Bonus:

There was research that shows outsourced IT billing shrank 33% last year.

Fans Not Customers: How to Create Growth Companies in a No Growth World by Vernon W. Hill II with Bob Andelman [There is a review HERE.]

Tom Peters has a new book out yesterday. The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last

from GapingVoid:

“Business is by definition, transactional. After all, things are bought and sold, services are rendered, and value received.
The issue is that you don’t want your people inside your business [with a couple of exceptions] to be only focused on transactions. What matters more is meaning, purpose and connection.”

Attention is Currency (kind of about content marketing) is an ebook available HERE.

The follow up ebook to that came out last week: Once Upon a Digital Age.