“Hackers caused a phone outage in the Clay Center area Friday, just as a local radio station was trying to raise money for a good cause.” [source]

Big River Telephone is the underlying provider that was hit with a denial of service attack. Just making you aware that this stuff can happen.

FCC to Hold Second Webinar for Form 477 Filers

The Wireline Competition and Wireless Telecommunications Bureaus issued a Public Notice on August 14, 2014, announcing they will hold a webinar for the filers of FCC Form 477, Local Telephone Competition and Broadband Reporting, on how to use the new filing interface and other filing requirements, on September 5, 2014.

TELX is using a movie to market its data centers in NYC.

“Between 1928 and 1932, Western Union and AT&T Long Lines built two of the most advanced telecommunications buildings in the world, at 60 Hudson Street and 32 Avenue of the Americas in Lower Manhattan. Nearly a century later, they remain among the world’s finest Art Deco towers — and cornerstones of global communication. “Urban Giants” is an 9-minute filmic portrait of their birth and ongoing life, combining never-before-seen-construction footage, archival photographs and films, interviews with architectural and technology historians, and stunning contemporary cinematography.” On VIMEO HERE

Gizmodo picked it up (or was paid to write it) on their Aussie site HERE.

If you need data center space – anywhere in the world – I can quote TELX and a couple of hundred other data centers. Call 813-963-5884 today.

On Voiceops there has been an on-going discussion thread about Broadsoft – versus other platforms like Metaswitch and Asterisk; wholesalers; and Broadsoft’s own offerings.

The person who started the thread is not happy with his current white-label provider because it isn’t current or complete (meaning all the bells and whistles). Personally, I think that all the bells and whistles are nice IF your customers will buy them AND IF your sales team can sell them. For probably 85% of customers, a basic Broadsoft deployment will work.

To expect a white-label platform to be your be-all, end-all is kind of ridiculous. White-label is foremost about a stable platform, uptime and ease of use/ordering/support. That doesn’t lend itself to upgrades often.

There are a bunch of confusing brand names for the services that BSFT sells. Here is they are:

BroadSoft – the company
BroadWorks – the software that BroadSoft write
BroadCloud – a cloud deployment of BroadWorks wrapped with a BSS/OSS system operated by BroadSoft. It includes a series of products (e.g. IM&P, SMS, PacketSmart, PBX) some of which can be used by BroadWorks customers (e.g. SMS and IM&P) and some of which offer an alternative to buying BroadWorks.
BroadTouch – a brand for a group of clients written by BroadSoft integrated with BroadWorks and available on BroadCloud
UC One – a branded bundle of BroadTouch software and BroadWorks services that provides a specific user experience.
BTW, there are 7 instances of UC-One on the Google store.

“BroadCloud has a very specific target market – it’s designed to be a “standardised” deployment of BroadWorks coupled with Rialto, a “quote to cash” provisioning system (Broadsoft’s marketing material).”

I understand not wanted to make the half-million dollar investment plus hiring the engineer who has to make the softswitch work. I have seen where service providers just can’t get it done. Yet if you want full control of the servcie you offer, how else can you do it?

On the other hand, there are enough white-label providers in the US for Asterisk, Metaswitch and Broadsoft that you have a lot to choose from.

More on UC-One today from BSFT. “BroadSoft Introduces UC-One Hospitality, enabled by acquisition of SDD. BroadSoft has acquired SDD, a services provider to many of the largest and most prominent global hotels.” [bsft]>/p>

My current hosting provider, IXwebhosting, has been giving me fits for about a year. I will be transitioning my websites to TriParish.net, a client of mine for many years. With those DNS changes, my email may be wonky this week, so if you don’t hear back from me, please try calling, texting or another email addy (I have about 10).

My publisher, Lulu.com, has discounted all of my books, so it is a good time to buy them. My last book, SELLECOM2: Selling Cloud Services, is available for more than 40% off the original price!

Also, the Soft Selling for Customer Service people webinar was full and well received. The playback is available for 60 days. (If interested, let me know.) Upselling for Technicians is this Wed. Register NOW!

See you in Vegas at ITEXPO!