Peter Radizeski is Founder and President of RAD-INFO INC. He is an accomplished blogalyst, speaker, author and consultant. He has helped many service providers with sales training, marketing, channel development and business strategy. He is a trusted source of knowledge about the telecom sector. His honest and direct approach make him a refreshing speaker.

Look for his innovative ideas and analysis of current technology on his blogs.

Meet him at one of the many conferences he attends and speaks at.

Hire RAD-INFO today!

What Gets Added to the BIll?

I don’t often see the fees because I don’t get the final bill.
On top of that each carrier charges different fees/taxes.
It isn’t easy to know what those fees will be. That’s on me though.

BGP – at least half the carriers charge something for this; either one time set up or a recurring charge.

IP Addresses – all of them charge for anything more than a /29

Off one bill for MPLS:

  • Total Taxes, Governmental Surcharges & Fees
  • Other Surcharges & Fees
  • Cost Recovery Fee
  • Federal Universal Service Fund (USF) Surcharge
  • State Franchise Recovery Surcharge
  • TX Municipal Franchise Fee
  • Total Other Surcharges & Fees

Off one bill for Dedicated Internet Access:

  • Taxes, Governmental Surcharges & Fees
  • Communications Services Tax
  • FL Communications Services Tax- Gross Receipts
  • State Sales Tax
  • County Sales Tax
  • District Tax
  • Local Sales Tax
  • Utility Users Tax
  • Total Taxes, Governmental Surcharges & Fees
  • Other Surcharges & Fees
  • State Franchise Recovery Surcharge

XO only charged an Admin Service Charge – no other fees/taxes – on Internet bandwidth.  This probably changes when Verizon starts billing XO customers.

On AT&T bills, I have seen:

  • Surcharges and Other Fees
  • Universal Connectivity Charge – Interstate
  • Administrative Expense Fee – Interstate
  • Property Tax Allotment – Interstate
  • Federal Regulatory Fee – Interstate
  • STATE COST – RECOVERY FEE
  • Plus County, State and Federal taxes

On ACC Business, the bills for Internet Access, the only fee is Federal Access Recovery Fee. And ACC is a subsidiary of AT&T!!!

On GTT bills: Regulatory Recovery Surcharge of almost 10%.

____ Peter Radizeski is a telecommunications consultant and analyst with RAD-INFO INC. Service Providers have called on RAD-INFO INC for assistance improving sales, managing online marketing efforts, channel sales enablement and overall company strategy. Contact RAD-INFO INC at 813-963-5884 or https://rad-info.net
July 28, 2017 , NSP Strategist

Tidbits (#2460)

RURAL BROADBAND:

Microsoft will try to bring better broadband to two million rural Americans in the next five years. The company’s so-called Rural Airband Initiative is an attempt to partner with local providers to boost wireless internet.

The FCC will invest $4.5 Billion in rural 4G LTE broadband expansion to rate of return carriers via alternative Connect America model (A-CAM).

FIBER:

Study Shows Home Values Up 3.1% with Access to Fiber.

Can Easier Make-Ready Change the Business Case for FTTH? “Make ready” costs (the cost of readying an aerial facilities pole for a new set of communication cables) might represent $4,000 to $35,000 per mile of cost for a new distribution network. That represents about a low of two percent and perhaps a high of eight percent of total distribution network costs.”

The war over high-speed access is fought on 40-foot-high wooden sticks.

POTS

End of copper landlines coming soon. Some people are not happy!

AT&T Looks to Discontinue Copper Landline Phone Service State By State.

Frontier bet $17B on landlines — and is in serious trouble by the WSJ!

MERGERS:

Atlantic Broadband, a Cogeco Comms subsidiary, will acquire all of the cable systems under the MetroCast brand for $1.4 B. [source]

The telecommunications industry has lost 39,200 jobs in the last year. [source]

Cincinnati Bell is buying Hawaiian Telecom for $650M.

Acquisition complete: Mitel owns Toshiba UC Systems Business Assets.

____ Peter Radizeski is a telecommunications consultant and analyst with RAD-INFO INC. Service Providers have called on RAD-INFO INC for assistance improving sales, managing online marketing efforts, channel sales enablement and overall company strategy. Contact RAD-INFO INC at 813-963-5884 or https://rad-info.net
July 11, 2017 , NSP Strategist

Is This the Way to Get Attention?

If you want to get a partners attention, want to know some of the best ways to do that?

  • Spam them
  • Don’t use BCC. Show all the emails of everyone on the invite!*
  • Invite them to events that are thousands of miles away – in another state.
  • Be lazy.

You got my attention. I already had one go around with Convey and LSI over this.

Convey Services is SAAS company that runs a portal for master agencies. LSI and ByteGrid hired Convey to handle their portals and an event. Convey did a poor job on the details of this. The email came from them, not LSI or ByteGrid. The email didn’t explain clearly anything actually.

Convey tracks agent usage of the portal. Where they go, what they look at. I figured they scraped my email from that. Convey says it was provided by LSI, who got it from a LinkedIn connection with one of their executives.

Everything about these 4 or 5 emails has been the showcase for the Lazy Marketer. Quick, Dirty and Hurried.

It was a blast email, but the emails were CC’ed instead of BCC’ed. (So I will likely get even more spam.) If you can’t Blind CC, do I really think you can handle Compliance issues?

For your own education, HIPAA is not HIPPA. This does not exude confidence.

I asked to be removed from the email twice – both to Convey and LSI. No idea how ByteGrid got it. I have never done business with any of these companies.

Also, it takes one minute to look at my website or my twitter or my LinkedIn profile to know that I reside in Tampa Florida. Why do I get invited to so many events in Atlanta and Miami? One is a 7 hour drive and the other is 4 hours. From companies I have no relationship with?

If you aren’t careful with my email, why I would I trust you with my client?

I know you think I made a mountain out of a molehill, but I get tired of the pile of email I get that is this or even more irrelevant.

I understand you want to get the word out. It’s a fun event. Let’s Blast it out! NO!!! STOP!

It’s like when a Channel Manager from a carrier I quoted but never sold, does the musical chairs to another company and pings me from there. I shake my head.

3 Things:

  1. Seth Godin wrote Permission Marketing in 1999. It’s 256 pages but the gist of it can be read here.
  2. Trust is huge component of sales. If I don’t trust you, I will never buy from you.
  3. Marketing is Everything, every touch of the prospect/customer/marketplace.

Don’t Be Lazy.

Tags: , , , ,
Related tags: , , , , ,

Related Entries

  • The Job Jumper and His Rolodex – Jan 09, 2015
  • Email Encryption on the Rise? – Dec 30, 2013
  • It is All Distribution Now – Dec 13, 2016
  • Why Your Marketing is Hurting Your Sales – Oct 18, 2015
  • What Do the Security Hacks Mean for the Channel? – Jun 30, 2015
  • One Way to Privately Differentiate – Jun 29, 2015
  • News Tidbits Part 2915 – Feb 09, 2015
  • About Email Marketing – Dec 09, 2014
  • 3 Reasons Channel Management Needs a Slap – Oct 31, 2014
  • Info You Need That I Didn’t Blog About – Aug 14, 2013
    links.png

    • TrackBacks
    | Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | On Rad’s Radar? Home | Permalink: Is This the Way to Get Attention?


    Copyright On Rad’s Radar?

    July 5, 2017 , On Rad's Radar

    LANTelligence’s CEO on Channel and Contact Center

    After a short conversation with Martin Tracey, CEO of Unified Communications Solutions Provider, LANtelligence, we decided to do an interview to share some of the points we were discussing.

    lan-rad.jpg

    RAD: The Telecommunications/UC space is changing. It is a lot different than when we both got in during the heyday of the 90s. How will these changes affect channel partners?

    CEO: The evolution of Cloud offerings in the UC space is changing the fundamental structure of the type of partners that are required for a successful channel. The classic VAR’s face the challenge of a major change in becoming solution focused, not product focused. This also entails a change in the type of technical talent required within the VAR’s to execute on their new solution offerings. A market that for more than a decade had only 5 to 10 top providers, now as the shift to cloud continues, has 30 or more providers with UCaaS offerings. With this, VAR’s that navigate the change will have to focus on providing solutions that incorporate integrations to other work flows, CRM’s and related solutions. On the positive side, it does allow VAR’s to truly become solution providers by having the ability to easily offer multiple Cloud solutions, finding the best fit for each prospect.”

    Tracey continues, “As a result of these changes, many of the providers turned to alternative channels like Master Agents and Value Added Distributors (like CDW and Jenne). This opened a larger market reach than the classic VAR channel, but has compounded the problem of finding resources to deploy and support these solutions as they grow in numbers and scope.”

    “As we sit today there is a lot of uncertainty in the channel and lots of scrambling for solutions. Channel partners that can adapt and overcome will have plenty of opportunity and the re-occurring revenue streams should provide many opportunities for growth beyond that of the traditional VAR.”

    “What is really needed to succeed is the technical talent and execution of a top VAR, with the exponential sales growth opportunity of a channel like the Master Agents built for carrier services.”

    RAD: What have you seen that is a positive indicator?

    CEO: “We see growing demand from the providers for an answer to their execution and support issues. The demand for organizations that specialize in UCaaS/CCaaS and have the required skilled engineers to successfully design, deploy and support these solutions will see tremendous opportunity. We also see growing demand for technology in the business space that can improve companies’ ability to compete in their markets. We see increase value put on UCaaS and CCaaS solutions as a key for organizations to succeed. It opens lots of opportunities for those organizations that are ready to take on the challenge of these changes.”

    RAD: How do you see the Contact-Center-as-a-Service space evolving?

    CEO: “I see the CCaaS space evolving ahead of the UCaaS space. Contact Centers are often the heartbeat of an organization and its key factors – revenue and service. The more organizations realize that Contact Center productivity is a driver for their business, the more demand we see for the business applications/features to be built in to the Contact Center solution. The line between CRM and CCaaS is blurring as more companies demand integrated access to multiple communication channels and data sources. And today it’s true not only for bigger business players but also for SMBs.”

    “There’s a very limited number of competitive premise-based Contact Center offerings in the small-to-medium market. Cloud solutions are stepping forward bringing top-level Contact Center functionality to this market along with the reliability, scalability, continuous software advancement and next to zero hardware requirements. Smaller contact centers now can afford to operate on the same level as business monsters with less risk and more opportunities to grow.”

    Tracey adds, “We see some big SaaS CRM platforms presenting themselves as Contact Centers to play as CCaaS solutions but they are still lacking lots of expected Contact Center functions and they lack the ability to route interactions from multiple channels effectively. They face a step climb to catch up to the rapidly expanding feature/application sets of specific CCaaS solutions. At this point in time with some many of the CCaaS players offering integrations into these big SaaS platforms and having open API’s for continued advanced integrations. It just makes more sense for CCaaS to be integrated into complete CRM than the opposite.”

    Tracey remarks, “When it comes to the channel, CCaaS business is a great source of MRR revenue. The average CCaaS deal will have a Top Line of 4x to 5x in comparison with UCaaS, and it is still a field with fewer players. MSPs, VARs and Agents who see the writing on the wall about declining top line revenue in their carrier business should really start considering CCaaS as an alternative.”

    Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
    Related tags: , , , , ,

    Related Entries

  • A View of UC from Broadvoice – Sep 24, 2015
    ucass22.jpg
  • The UC Install Opprtunity – May 19, 2014
    megapath_185221.jpg
  • POTS and PBX – Jun 20, 2017
  • What Channel Are You Watching? – Apr 25, 2016
    PBX-PUSHERS.jpg
  • Channel Strategy: A Quick Look – Mar 21, 2016
    hamster2.jpg
  • Cloud Comms On the Rise – Dec 28, 2015
  • Edgewater-Metaswitch UC Study – May 29, 2015
  • The Next Step in UCaaS – Aug 27, 2014
  • Is the Channel Too Lazy to Sell Cloud? – Mar 29, 2013
    salesman1.jpg
  • TCA Moves – Aug 09, 2012
    Thumbnail image for TCAlogoBig.jpg

    • TrackBacks
    | Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | On Rad’s Radar? Home | Permalink: LANTelligence’s CEO on Channel and Contact Center


    Copyright On Rad’s Radar?

    June 30, 2017 , On Rad's Radar

    How Much Will 5G Cost?

    “A $130 billion to $150 billion fiber infrastructure investment is required in the U.S. to unleash innovation, close the digital divide, and fully prepare the country for 5G, according to a report from management consulting firm Deloitte.” [source]

    Some facts from the report are interesting:

    “One of the key findings of the Deloitte report is that fiber passes less than one-third of U.S. homes and only 39% of consumers can chose from more than one service provider to get a 25 Mbps speed service.”

    “Deloitte found that 10 million rural homes and 3 million urban/suburban homes do not have broadband of at least 25 Mbps.” (Which is the FCC definition of broadband 25×4)

    “Perhaps even more troubling is that in rural communities, only 61% of the population have access to 25 Mbps wireline broadband, and consumers can pay nearly three times more than customers in larger cities.”

    Full report HERE.

    ____ Peter Radizeski is a telecommunications consultant and analyst with RAD-INFO INC. Service Providers have called on RAD-INFO INC for assistance improving sales, managing online marketing efforts, channel sales enablement and overall company strategy. Contact RAD-INFO INC at 813-963-5884 or https://rad-info.net
    June 28, 2017 , NSP Strategist
    « Previous Page
    Next Page »