It is the 4th quarter, do you have strategic meetings with your key stakeholders? One VoIP company holds a 3 day summit to discuss strategy and goals for the coming year, plus review what the past year was like.

Every year I hold a webinar on Goal Setting. This year it will be on Wednesday, December 10th at 1 PM Eastern. It’s less than $20!

Do you want to have the best year ever? Then let’s set some goals for you and your team — and put in place some action items for your team to actually hit the goals!

2015 is a new year. Let’s not just coast through the year. Let’s set a plan of action to have the best year ever!

Got goals? What about your theme? Finish this sentence: “2015 is the year of_____.” Are your goals, theme, values & priorities aligned? – Keith Rosen.

Let’s spend 45 minutes together putting your goals to paper and a plan of action in place.

Salesforce is the $3 Billion giant in the CRM (customer relationship management) software space. Long ago it was ACT! which Sage bought and still sells as Sage ACT.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is out there for the folks partial to Microsoft.

For those partial to Google Apps, you have Insightly and Batchbook.

For folks that like a suite of services not Google or MS, Zoho has a CRM along with a host of other collab and productivity software. [Nice review of Zoho CRM at PCWorld.] Zoho has plug-ins for Outlook, Google, and QuickBooks. Zoho also has developer support.

Infusionsoft is used by many SMB, especially by internet marketing businesses.

For do it yourself-ers, there is the open source Sugar CRM, which you can host or now get hosted for you.

Highrise by 37 Signals for folks partial to Basecamp. BTW, during their 15 year anniversary, 37 Signals renamed themselves after their biggest product, Basecamp.

Landslide was acquired by J2 in 2012, which changed it to CampaignerCRM. It incorporates email marketing into the customer database.

Couple of others: Nimble and ContactMe (see reviews at CIO). Nimble is the most social of the CRMs, listening in on social networks, which makes Nimble a Social CRM app.

Pipedrive and Contractually are reviewed here (along with Highrise).

Some of these are free for single users up to 3 users. Many cost money. Some are complex; some are simple. Simple does not mean ease to use, but use you must. The reasons to use a CRM system are many, including having a database of all of your customer interactions. Customers are the reason you are in business.

In 2013, this article explains why 11 CRM apps are terrible. “These applications are terrible when managers don’t insist on the reports they should be using, don’t enforce rules for entering new opportunities and don’t commit to long-term, consistent and repetitive drip-marketing and communication campaigns using the information maintained by their CRM system to keep their prospects informed and their customers close.”

This is not an exhaustive list by any means.

A few interesting articles that I read this week.

Belkin Routers Everywhere Choke on the Cloud, Refuse to Work

Found this out at Comptel: Most Consumers Have No Idea What a Gigabit Is.

Google: Paying for TV Content Google Fiber’s Biggest Obstacle. He said this during an interview at Comptel. Ignore the comments because most of those knuckleheads don’t know what they are talking about.

Fun Fact: Milo Medin, Google Fiber chief, founded @Home and M2Z Networks.

Peter Thiel “sees as a lack of innovation in the technology business.” Me, too, really. “Thiel said he is skeptical of sectors that are identified with buzzwords. He said he looks for companies that are “one of a kind” and hard to identify. For example, Airbnb, in which he is an investor, “doesn’t fit the narrative,” he said.”

Fiber is being installed a quite the rate right now. I spoke with the CFO of Lumos at Comptel. (He was one of my 20 interviews for Comptel TV). Lumos has a dense fiber network.

“Lumos Networks is a fiber-based provider in the Mid-Atlantic region serving Carrier and Enterprise customers offering end to end connectivity in 23 markets in Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and Kentucky. With a fiber network of 7,467 fiber route miles, Lumos Networks connects to 633 Fiber to the Cell sites, 13 data centers and approximately 1,400 on-net buildings. In 2013, Lumos Networks generated over $104 million in Data Revenue over its fiber network.” [CEO interview]

The headlines below are just a piece of what is going on. Lumos, C Spire, Google Fiber, Socket, Sonic and so many more CLECs are building out Fiber to the Premise. In some cases, the premise is a home; in others a business or a multi-tenant building, an office park or an office building.

Fatbeam and Lumos mentioned using all of the technology available to bring broadband to under-served markets. That includes fiber, but also fixed wireless, licensed spectrum, hybrid cable/coax and satellite.

More often today, it is fiber, but most CLECs told me a story about building out with an anchor tenant. No more building on spec (or build it and they will come). Google Fiber explained how they get 80% signed up before they even begin construction of a FiberHood. Fatbeam and Lumos use schools and medical facilities as anchor tenants. TDS has a CLEC division that uses muni government for its fiber anchors. Admittedly, much of the fiber is for cell towers for almost all of the players.

Hunt Telecom’s Jason Hunt speaking with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler at FISPA booth @ Comptel Plus Dallas 2014

Headlines from Comptel Plus:

• EarthLink deploys Gulf Coast DWDM routes
• PEG Bandwidth launches PEGWave, offerings wavelengths along its entire network
• Unite Private Networks expands fiber network in Nebraska
• INDATEL adds PoPs to rural Ethernet eXchange network
• Allied Fiber begins southeast route construction
• Tower Cloud added Ethernet private line in sizes 50Mbps-100Gbps
• Neutral Path Communications is building Omaha (NE) to Windowm, Minnesota to Dallas.
• Iowa Fiber Network, Kansas Fiber Network are getting denser.

The other big news was that Comptel had reached 188 members. I don’t find that reassuring. FISPA has about 130 members. Comptel isn’t much bigger. They should have over 300 members considering that they have billing & tax companies like BillSOft (now called EZtax), law firms, VADs like VARDATA and Walker & Associates, the I+C-LECs (Windstream, TDS), cloud folks, NTCA, EarthLink, XO, Google, and the core companies (Neustar and iconectiv).

I have often been tough on Comptel for things it wasn’t doing – like the Ethernet exchange or the SIP Peering hub or any volume buying (like FISPA and the Agent Alliance). It is mostly an advocacy group. And to do that well you need 2 things: lots of members (voices) and money. In the last year, Comptel hired former Congressman Chip Pickering to be the CEO and, following the industry path, hired some folks from DC to join them, including Angie Kronenberg from the FCC.

And then there are those that just aren’t helping the Digital Divide at all – like say this one.

If you need help finding fiber, RAD-INFO INC has a fiber locator service. Call the office at 813-963-5884 to find out more.

The FCC Chief is talking about raising the definition of Broadband from its current “4 Mbps down to 10 Mbps down (if you’re getting subsidies) and 25 Mbps down in general.” Carriers are griping, but even worse will be DSL and Wireless ISP’s who will have a hard time delivering 25 Mbps in rural areas. So will that mean that to get CAF or USF funds, you have deliver 10 Mbps?

Read the whole discussion at DSLR HERE and HERE.

In a similar vein, TracFone files petition to allow text messaging to constitute usage of Lifeline Service.

Regulators Approve $2 Billion Frontier-AT&T Deal in Connecticut.

Cisco and InterCall are having an argument at the USAC over whether or not to collect USF fees on the audio conferencing.