Looking at other industries makes me scratch my head about our own. Kodak, Xerox, HP, Lucent and so many others that didn’t see the light of the train coming at them in the tunnel.

When I examine the pharmacies, which consumes a large number of my dollars now, I see a train wreck coming. Amazon acquired PillPack that is disrupting Walgreens, Medco, Rite-Aid and especially highly leveraged CVS ($92B in debt after acquiring Aetna). At least, CVS is fighting back for MRC (via NYU Prof. Galloway).

There is a shift to direct to consumer marketing in many areas like Harry’s Razors and clothing options like Empress Mini or the other 30+ subscription services. Roman and Blink Health (and to a smaller extent PillPack/Amazon) are marketing direct to consumers services that are attacking the Big 3 pharmacies (who were already fighting a battle against supermarket pharmacies and Wal-mart). Now e-commerce mixed with tele-health is set to take a bite out of its ass. You just don’t know where it will come from.

One thing is certain: companies are grasping at branding so they are switching to a subscription model to mimic customer loyalty. It worked for gyms; it can work for others too. Until consumer spending dries up anyway.

I’ll give you another example. Ten years ago, newspapers were in a perfect position to establish blog networks—they had their reader’s attention and advertiser’s trust. But they blinked. Today they keep erecting pay walls so fewer and fewer eyeballs see the ads, which is there only revenue stream.

It is a takeaway game in many sectors including voice, TV and broadband (except for greenfield builds). However, over-building penetration rates are still small. Mainly because the game being played is the same game as the incumbent.

When I was watching the Twilio announcements a few weeks ago at their Signals Conf, I was astounded that Twilio is going to address the robocall issue better than AT&T and Verizon.

Twilio announces it’s “Trusted Communications” service, Verified by Twilio. Custom interaction APIs that identifies the caller.

Twilio discussed “how nuisances like robocalls are leading to not trust our phones for unknown callers. Verified by Twilio is their approach make sure the good calls get through and the unwanted ones don’ts.”

Most of my time has been spent on messaging, specifically Value Proposition, USP, and Positioning. This was Laddering at its best. Twilio established itself separate from the telcos in solving the robocall problem. If they offered flat rate service for POTS replacement, they would win market share tomorrow.

In the Toothpaste Problem, looking at these issues from a different angle can help you stand out. If you want to discuss it give me a call at 813-963-5884

One of my clients had services with TW Telecom and Level3 (plus other carriers like Rapid Systems and AT&T). Those services are now with CenturyLink due to the merger.

Last year, we tried porting international toll free from AT&T to CenturyLink. The client also wanted to add a block of DIDs to their PRI. The Account Rep at CenturyLink switched twice in a year – and did not complete either of these orders. Instead they reassigned the account to the channel team.

Well, I’d like to publicly shout out to my CenturyLink team: Jacque Snyder, James Luteran, Wendy Michaelson, and Tracey Nelson for getting the DIDs in record time and upgrading the EPL in short order.

I rail on companies so I figured I should make note when things are going well too. Thanks for all the support, folks!

On a call today with other partners about UCaaS, the question was who will win or lose in the Unified Communications space in two years. It is hard to say since anything can happen. Zoom came out of nowhere (meaning not in any analyst’s guess).

It could be Twilio or Dialpad to leapfrog 8×8 or RingCentral. It could be that RC or 8×8 or Vonage make a misstep – like outsourcing customer service. With all of the musical chairs, losing one or two quality project managers or a top sales executive could change someone’s future.

I think one of the factors is “What is the corporate goal?” Nextiva may want to be 8×8 but is that what Evolve IP’s founders want? Fuze has been nearing an IPO for two years. Rumor had Nextiva for sale. These considerations do affect execution and focus.

Another factor is where in the market are you focusing? Enterprise and Fortune 5000 are great deals but the margin, pressure and deployment suck the air out of the room. There is an awful lot of space in the 25-99 employees space — and even more in the under 25 employee space. I think 8×8’s Express offering is aimed at self-serve to very small business. I think Vonage/Nexmo is also – just not as focused. At one time the VSB (very small business) market was the aim of OnSip, Dialpad, Phone.com and many other providers; then everyone starting pushing upmarket. Why? As is often quoted: It takes just as much effort to sell 10 phones as to sell 100.

Microsoft partners are holding their breath waiting for Microsoft to catch up to the market so that Teams is a UC and Collab platform that can replace the phones from Avaya or RC.

Cisco partners are re-examining Webex Teams in light of the Broadsoft integration.

LogMein bundled Jive in with a new product launch with lower pricing as well as a marketing push that includes getting on an analyst list or two.

Can 8×8 keep growing at 18%? Everyone says that this is a $50B market. But is it really? Avaya has not gone out of business. Mitel neither. CPaaS will start accelerating, which is why 8×8 bought a CPaaS company and Vonage has repositioned Nexmo. Others such as Intelepeer and VoIP Innovations have jumped into the CPaaS+AI space that kandy.io is finally starting to get traction in. All are playing catch up to Twilio, who continues to innovate.

Can RingCentral keep growing at 25-34%? And never ever have a profit? Probably. You can buy sales all day. Cut corners other places. That increases churn, so you have to add more fuel to sales – and the wheel goes round and round.

One reason it may not be 8×8, VON, RC or Nextiva that win in 2 years is because they have been in the space for 10+ years and have not really figured out what the customer wants. Think about how similar all 4 are as platforms that include chat, voice, CRM, contact center, analytics and UC. People are buying it but not in droves and only as ARPU stalls.

Zoom demonstrated what could be done by an upstart (founded in 2011). Today disruption comes out of nowhere – iPod, iPhone, Uber. Lyft, AirBnb, Alexa.

How do we disrupt the UCaaS space?

FreedomVoice had a nifty iPhone app called Newber back in 2008 that Apple tanked after $500K in development. It would have been the start of mobile UC being connected to the desktop. Nothing like it has come out since.

I have tried to get a few providers to ditch the Poly/Yealink addiction and offer tablets with bluetooth instead — but nope! It is THAT thinking/mindset that is holding back the industry.

Counterpath and ADTRAN have had some outside the box thinking. ADTRAN has a collaboration suite (probably powered by Broadsoft like the Pro UC offering they also have). That is outside the hardware company’s main focus. Yet reselling a white label service after paying for some dev work is not going to be that profitable. But points for effort.

Counterpath Stetto adds collaboration and more to the standard UC product by layering on top.

All 3 (Adtran, Freedom & Counterpath) were thinking mobile extension of the product set.

UCaaS companies have to figure how to Re-Think what they are offering. Maybe package the service offerings differently to appeal to other/different buyers. Or launch a new set of functions to draw in new customers to land and expand in. the first step would be to examine what your customers are really using in your stack and re-imagine that (with a bow to Tom Peters).

At Twilio’s Signal conference, they announces a “Trusted Communications” service, Verified by Twilio.

There was talk “about how nuisances like robocalls are leading to not trust our phones for unknown callers. Verified by Twilio is their approach make sure the good calls get through and the unwanted ones don’ts – great idea.”

Certainly the telecom providers have added some spam calling and robocalling measures (usually through a third party). Some are starting to adopt STIR/SHAKEN, but why did they wait so long?

One reason is the bigger telcos just don’t care. They are worried about real calls not getting through and being fined. (As if any fine at the FCC that was actually collected was too much for them!)

Another reason is that they make money on robo-dialers. Plain and simple: revenue.

If a carrier is doing 6 second billing and doesn’t have a short-call ratios, then they are just in it for cash. But once it gets out that a carrier does this – powers robo-dialing – how do you think that will work out for them? Just ask the owner of Soul Cycle. (and everything comes out.)

Google Fi is my cellular provider. (It is an MVNO that provides me native Android on my Pixel.) It has call screening and it will let me suspected spam calls. I get anywhere from 5-10 per day! (My business line forwards to my cell most of the time.) But even that isn’t enough protection.

The telecom providers – USTelecom with NCTA and INCOMPAS – could have worked out a plan. Did they? Of course not. No extra money in it.

When the first provider figures the blocking out, they will win. And win in droves! The rest of the telcos will wonder what the heck just happened.

And it will not be a member of USTelecom who figures this out!