These acquisitions are coming faster than I can type!!! Sheesh! Broadsoft is buying VoIP Logic!

This is ironic because when BSFT bought Intellinote and made a bunch of announcements about spreading BroadCloud and BroadBusiness, I remarked they should just buy VoIP Logic. And then they did.

This adds some white-label expertise to the mix for Broadsoft as it looks to ramp up white-label revenues. There aren’t any more carriers to bring on the BroadWorks platform, so from here on out, BSFT has to sell white-label licenses. And acquisitions make Wall Street happy because you confuse the organic revenues with inorganic ones.

It pivots now from a software company to a service provider — and directly competes against many of its clients either directly or indirectly. As it powers Verizon’s One Talk, Rogers’ Unison and ACCESS4 (in Australia), it is picking one carrier in a market over another. This isn’t sitting well with quite a few BSFT clients.

But what can you do? On the one hand, BSFT should have been a more innovative software company (where’s the Slack integration?). On the other, it decided to look quarter to quarter at licensing revenues. It didn’t want to become like Taqua (who was scooped up by Sonus ).

The VoIP industry has a problem: too many providers, more coming every week and not enough buyers. It reminds me of the cellular industry. MVNOs come and go pretty fast. The Top 4 guys are battling it out in a bloody price war.

Only in VoIP, it is a struggle to find ways to bring value. Cellular is stealing the small business market. Most other small businesses that I speak to just want to replace POTS or PRI. The PBX industry is do a slow fade at about 3-5% per year but that isn’t the erosion everyone predicted. Cloud Communications just isn’t selling like warm donuts at Krispy Kreme.

More consolidation is needed. And not mergers like VTech and snom. We need stronger VoIP companies to emerge – with a brand to build some demand and be able to execute on it.

Congrats! to VoIP Logic. The CEO, Micah Singer, was on a number of my ITEXPO panels over the years.

Tags: broadsoft, mergers, UC, voip
Related tags: white label, software company, white, label, broadsoft, industry

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The rumor on Friday turned out to be true: CenturyLink is buying Level3. CenturyLink has its roots in the RLEC business. It has acquired a number of smaller RLECs throughout the years including VZ and GTE assets. In 2002, it started making mistakes when it sold its cellular business to ALLTEL. It acquired Digital Teleport and renamed it LightCore. Every year it has acquired some assets, mainly smaller RLEC companies and the accompanying POTS lines.

In 2008, C-Link bought Embarq, formerly Sprint/United.in $11.6B deal including assumed debt. In 2010, C-Link bought Qwest which included RBOC assets that flew the US West banner. “The valuation of CenturyLink’s purchase was $22.4 billion, including the assumption of $11.8 billion of outstanding debt held by Qwest.”

In 2011, CenturyLink begins to stray from grabbing fiber and POTS lines in favor of the data center business it acquired with Qwest. Much to the chagrin of the agent channel, Savvis was scooped up for $3.2B including debt. This started a series of acquisitions to beef up a cloud business that for all intents and purposes C-Link is mired in for no reason.

The ITO Business Division of Ciber (managed services), AppFrog (PAAS), Tier3 (IAAS), Cognilytics (analytics), DataGardens (DRaaS), Orchestrate (DBaaS), netAura LLC (security services) and ElasticBox (VPS) – all scooped up in the last 3 years to make a soup out of a cloud division that it is still trying to sell. The rumor today is that Savvis will be spun off. No word if that will be just data center or both data center and cloud. And that makes even less sense since Level3 actually knows how to sell colocation – unlike practically anyone in Monroe.

I understand that being rural and watching your CAF and USF subsidies slowly decrease makes you yearn for fatter and happier days. And when you look at Level3’s $10B in NOLs, you start to think like Carl Icahn. However, have you seen what Icahn did to XO???? Have you seen what C-Link did to Qwest and Savvis??? That husk will next be Level3.

With debt this deal will be worth about $34B to get combined revenues to $25B.

Not a single merger in telecom in the last fifteen years resulted in anything good. Not one.

The integrations rarely go as planned. These two companies probably have 26 or more separate and different software systems in the BSS/OSS. These will NEVER be integrated. Orders, status and asset availability will be a nightmare. I know. I know. You think I am a pessimist. But truly this will suck especially for the channel.

Any agent that says this is good is either (a) looking for press or (b) is delusional.

There is now less choice. When VZ takes over XO, except for Zayo, who is left that isn’t a LEC or cableco? What happened to the CLEC industry? Totally collapsed as its owners cashed out. Everyone got bigger and no one got better. One by one they have fallen.

It is why Cable is winning the broadband game. (Cable is single minded.) It is why businesses buy cloud services from OTT. (Bell-head mentality precludes anything but network and voice.)

This is the LEC problem: lack of focus; deficient long term strategy; and a missing willingness to win the customer. It’s all about the creation of value without actually creating any value.

Since the Board will almost stay intact and the CEO remains, what new gen strategy or thinking do you think will occur with the combined entity? I get why the L3 CFO is staying: someone has to keep that debt at bay and play with the NOLs so that the stock doesn’t crash when revenues start to slide.

I won’t even get into the culture differences between the 2 companies. L3 and TWT had only slightly different cultures but most of the TWT people exited. This is a good payday for L3 CEO but he will go down as the guy who killed a good idea. The blood of thousands of employees and agents are on Story’s head.

Hopefully, someone else will make a big for Level3 as a white knight – Comcast, Zayo, or a PE firm*.

**Although STT owns about 13% of Level3, I don’t see a PE firm wanting the company, except to do to it what Icahn did to XO. L3 doesn’t throw off enough cash.

According to CenturyLink press release, the deal, which is expected to close by the end of the 3Q 2017, results in:

• 200,000 route miles of fiber, which includes 64,000 route miles in 350 metropolitan areas and 33,000 subsea route miles connecting multiple continents
• CenturyLink’s on-net buildings are expected to increase by nearly 75 percent to approximately 75,000, including 10,000 buildings in EMEA and Latin America

Tags: centurylink, change, channel partners, financials, level3, mergers, rlec
Related tags: route miles, centurylink buying, buying level, business acquired, centurylink, level

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It Finally Happened – Apr 11, 2011

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The rumor on Friday turned out to be true: CenturyLink is buying Level3. CenturyLink has its roots in the RLEC business. It has acquired a number of smaller RLECs throughout the years including VZ and GTE assets. In 2002, it started making mistakes when it sold its cellular business to ALLTEL. It acquired Digital Teleport and renamed it LightCore. Every year it has acquired some assets, mainly smaller RLEC companies and the accompanying POTS lines.

In 2008, C-Link bought Embarq, formerly Sprint/United.in $11.6B deal including assumed debt. In 2010, C-Link bought Qwest which included RBOC assets that flew the US West banner. “The valuation of CenturyLink’s purchase was $22.4 billion, including the assumption of $11.8 billion of outstanding debt held by Qwest.”

In 2011, CenturyLink begins to stray from grabbing fiber and POTS lines in favor of the data center business it acquired with Qwest. Much to the chagrin of the agent channel, Savvis was scooped up for $3.2B including debt. This started a series of acquisitions to beef up a cloud business that for all intents and purposes C-Link is mired in for no reason.

The ITO Business Division of Ciber (managed services), AppFrog (PAAS), Tier3 (IAAS), Cognilytics (analytics), DataGardens (DRaaS), Orchestrate (DBaaS), netAura LLC (security services) and ElasticBox (VPS) – all scooped up in the last 3 years to make a soup out of a cloud division that it is still trying to sell. The rumor today is that Savvis will be spun off. No word if that will be just data center or both data center and cloud. And that makes even less sense since Level3 actually knows how to sell colocation – unlike practically anyone in Monroe.

I understand that being rural and watching your CAF and USF subsidies slowly decrease makes you yearn for fatter and happier days. And when you look at Level3’s $10B in NOLs, you start to think like Carl Icahn. However, have you seen what Icahn did to XO???? Have you seen what C-Link did to Qwest and Savvis??? That husk will next be Level3.

With debt this deal will be worth about $34B to get combined revenues to $25B.

Not a single merger in telecom in the last fifteen years resulted in anything good. Not one.

The integrations rarely go as planned. These two companies probably have 26 or more separate and different software systems in the BSS/OSS. These will NEVER be integrated. Orders, status and asset availability will be a nightmare. I know. I know. You think I am a pessimist. But truly this will suck especially for the channel.

Any agent that says this is good is either (a) looking for press or (b) is delusional.

There is now less choice. When VZ takes over XO, except for Zayo, who is left that isn’t a LEC or cableco? What happened to the CLEC industry? Totally collapsed as its owners cashed out. Everyone got bigger and no one got better. One by one they have fallen.

It is why Cable is winning the broadband game. (Cable is single minded.) It is why businesses buy cloud services from OTT. (Bell-head mentality precludes anything but network and voice.)

This is the LEC problem: lack of focus; deficient long term strategy; and a missing willingness to win the customer. It’s all about the creation of value without actually creating any value.

Since the Board will almost stay intact and the CEO remains, what new gen strategy or thinking do you think will occur with the combined entity? I get why the L3 CFO is staying: someone has to keep that debt at bay and play with the NOLs so that the stock doesn’t crash when revenues start to slide.

I won’t even get into the culture differences between the 2 companies. L3 and TWT had only slightly different cultures but most of the TWT people exited. This is a good payday for L3 CEO but he will go down as the guy who killed a good idea. The blood of thousands of employees and agents are on Story’s head.

Hopefully, someone else will make a big for Level3 as a white knight – Comcast, Zayo, or a PE firm*.

**Although STT owns about 13% of Level3, I don’t see a PE firm wanting the company, except to do to it what Icahn did to XO. L3 doesn’t throw off enough cash.

According to CenturyLink press release, the deal, which is expected to close by the end of the 3Q 2017, results in:

• 200,000 route miles of fiber, which includes 64,000 route miles in 350 metropolitan areas and 33,000 subsea route miles connecting multiple continents
• CenturyLink’s on-net buildings are expected to increase by nearly 75 percent to approximately 75,000, including 10,000 buildings in EMEA and Latin America

Tags: centurylink, change, channel partners, financials, level3, mergers, rlec
Related tags: route miles, centurylink buying, buying level, business acquired, centurylink, level

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It Finally Happened – Apr 11, 2011

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Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

As an agent I get invited to too many webinars, training, lunch-n-learns and events. Here is where you go wrong:

Vendors try to puke every ounce of information at me in 40 minutes! UGH!!!

Look at it from this view:

• What makes a TED Talk great?*
• What is popular on radio? Howard Stern, Sports talk radio, Rush
• What makes podcasts work? Interviews, banter, tips and tricks
• What makes YouTube work? Gary Vee!

What doesn’t work? You puking your entire catalog and every fact and figure at me.

Have you taken an online course or a college course recently? They teach one chapter of a book per week in college according to my adjunct professor friends. One chapter per week. Not the whole book in 45 minutes!

The key is to pick one nugget, one take away and present it clearly and concisely. Be Interesting, so that people become Interested.

You know what we want to know?

• How do we make money from this one product you are pushing (this quarter)?
• Who is buying?
• Why are they buying it?
• Why are they buying it from YOU?

* If you don’t know what a TED Talk is, stop presenting!

Also, Practice. Don’t wing it.

Present from a quiet place like an office, not the airport, your car, or live from Starbucks.

Tags: advice, expo, webinar
Related tags: makes, buying

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Nothing But Vanilla Pudding – Jul 29, 2016

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