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!

4 Good Lessons from 4 Reads

Google HR boss explains the only 2 ways to keep your best people from quitting:
1. The quality of the people they work with.
2. The feeling that the work they do is meaningful.

Tedious work doesn’t require 100% or Imagination. Workers tune out.

Mission, Vision & Values Are Dead & Forgotten (Here’s A Framework You Might Actually Remember). Purpose, Way and Impact: a three-stage rocket to clarity and growth.

Amazon did not kill the retail industry. They did it to itself with bad customer service.
Netflix did not kill Blockbuster. They did it to itself with ridiculous late fees.
Uber did not kill the taxi business. They did it to itself with limited the number of taxis and fare control.
Apple did not kill the music industry. They did it to itself by forcing people to buy full-length albums.
Airbnb did not kill the hotel industry. They did it to itself with limited availability and pricing options.
Technology by itself is not the real disruptor.
Being non-customer centric is the biggest threat to any business. [Linkedin]

____ 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
May 23, 2017 , NSP Strategist

Telecom Tidbits # 2457

Some help with Robocalls. Pass it along.

Private equity firm, TPG, last year acquired RCN and Grande. Now they are grabbing Wave Broadband in the Northwest for $2.36B. They will combine all 3 – Wave, Grande and RCN – to make a larger MSO. The PR says that they will be the 6th largest MSO, leap-frogging Altice. Altice owns Suddenlink and Cablevision. Comcast and AT&T have 22M and 25M respectively. The Top 4 all have more than 10M pay TV subs. After that it is splitting hairs with VZ at 4.6M to Altice with 3.6M at number 7. TPG’s exit strategy will likely be Altice buying them.

WISP Redzone claims it has developed a “fixed wireless spectrum aggregation technology that can support broadband speeds of up to 400 Mbps per customer”, according to press. Google Fiber must be excited.

Mitel has been making noise since early last year when it tried to buy Polycom. Now it is scooping up the assets that Toshiba is leaving behind as Toshiba exits the phone business.

Mitel also announced that it had broken 3 million users. According to investor presentations, Mitel has 3.2 million cloud users but only 588,000 recurring seats. To put that into perspective, Microsoft found 25 million subscribers for Office 365 (although the take rate is slowing to 900K per quarter). Broadsoft claims 15M cloud lines but that includes SIP trunks. Vonage is over 600K seats and 8×8 is close to that.

The details can be found in the 2017 Hosted VoIP/UC Market Report for the US, which was just released. See here.

Jive Software was acquired for $462M. That is a social collaboration software company based in Portland; not the UCaaS provider out of Utah called Jive Communications.

Amazon released Chime (a Webex clone) and cloud contact center. Now with Alexa devices it is taking over the speakerphone market. A few VoIP companies have integrated into Alexa for voice enabled dialing (something we need in cars!). Only a matter of time before Amazon gets into the dial-tone replacement game in conjunction with Twilio.

PanterraUC-creative1.jpg

Panterra Networks doesn’t do marketing. It’s a shame really. They have a better than average UC application that is secure (encrypted), HIPAA compliant and 24/7 hack monitored. It produces one contact management file without duplicates. Added Teams with the release of Streams, which integrates UC, team messaging, file sharing and analytics into a single customizable platform. Worth a look.

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    Copyright On Rad’s Radar?

    May 23, 2017 , On Rad's Radar

    How Will the Consolidation Affect Sales?

    If everyone did integration in a similar fashion to the XO-Verizon deal, it would be great. Slow and steady. It isn’t a sprint; it is a marathon. No confusion or chaos. The channel folks even seemed happy about it, but that might have been the effects of Stockholm under Icahn.

    What happens with Broadview Networks under Windstream? Windstream is only midway through its integration of EarthLink. It will now have 8 UC platforms.

    1. Broadsoft used for Hospitality and 1M SIP Trunks
    2. Acquired EarthLink (Metaswitch shop for Virtual & HPBX)
    3. Allworx (owned by Paetec and forgotten till recently)
    4. Now the Broadview home brew platform.
    5. MITEL
    6. Cisco
    7. Avaya
    8. ShoreTel

    That isn’t too confusing to all of the sales channels. Eight to choose from! WIND should be a one stop shop for everything UC and SIP at this point. [Similar to VARs hitting up a VAD like SYNNEX for many of these same vendors.] To do that, WIND would have to hire in some name brand SIP Experts to start beating that drum – loud, clearly and often. Currently, the message is a new flavor of UC every webinar. No over-arching

    The noise about T-Mobile and Sprint merging is getting louder. Here’s the problem: Recall the mess that the Nextel-Sprint integration was. This will be worse. Why? T-Mobile didn’t even really integrate MetroPCS. What synergies are there really? It would simply be to get bigger, not to be a better competitor. For at least 24 months, VZW and AT&T would simply kick its ass – and they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

    That sums up the Level3-CenturyLink merger as well. That is scheduled to start in September if California and a couple other states don’t derail it. This will be a mess for customers and partners alike. The product set is so different. Level3 is wholesale VoIP, international, transit and transport. CenturyLink is consumer, small business, mid-market, broadband, voice and some cloud. Very different sales skills.

    Both exited data center, but CenturyLink has acquired many cloud and security companies in the last few years. They haven’t done much with it because they don’t really sell to Enterprise like they would need to. Plus Branding. Plus confusion over at Savvis after that acquisition.

    None of that factors change post merger. None. One problem with many of these telcos is that they don’t bring in fresh blood. Frontier just hired from Verizon for VP of sales and retention. Pull in someone from outside telco. The biggest hurdle: Culture. Culture eats Strategy for lunch.

    Most of the major CLECs are gone: XO, EarthLink, Level3. Others are transitioning: TPX, AireSpring, Birch, Mettel to try to figure out what business looks like with network resale and managed services. It is a different world.

    Everyone was betting on UC, but most couldn’t get over the deployment headaches. Then when the price war started, they not only weren’t prepared for the war, but couldn’t or didn’t get into it. The latest top 10 leader board for UC doesn’t look too much different than 2015 or 2016. Next year it will for certain.

    Windstream and Charter should look different in 2018.

    Cisco’s Spark revamp at EC17 coupled with its latest acquisitions and lay offs might have an effect on Cisco UC seats later this year. Or the acquisition of West Corp by Apollo Management for $5B and change might stall sales. Some of Cisco’s other partners – like FLTG in NY – also got acquired. Integration after acquisition always affects sales (and retention).

    AT&T and VZ look to be big winners while the CLECs shift and transition. Some of the other players in the space – like Zayo and GTT – also made acquisitions. But are they really replacements for Ma and Pa Bell or even WIndsream, Level3 and C-Link? They have a window of opportunity that is for sure.

    Zayo grabbed ELI and Integra. All of the press is about fiber to the tower, so I am thinking that will not be a C-Link or WIND alternative.

    Comcast will pick up some business. At $6B in CLEC business revenue now, it almost surpasses most of the CLECs in revenue. They need to take some friction out of the quoting and ordering process. (Charter too! Unbelievable that at its size, it is so arduous to process quotes and orders.)

    Until the next merger is announced this is what it will look like. The channel often went to CLECs because of channel friendly attitude as well as suitable product set. This time round the channel will be looking at companies NOT in the midst of turmoil. Ease of doing business will be relative. Just another reason businesses like using channel partners: so they don’t have to deal with it!

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    Copyright On Rad’s Radar?

    May 19, 2017 , On Rad's Radar

    What Happened to LinkedIn?

    This week there have been two posts on my feed about “We can connect but don’t spam me!” The discussion was the same on booth threads: “that is cold calling / social selling”. Well, no it isn’t. If you did the exact same thing at a face to face event, no one would come near you.

    Show some creativity AND Patience. Spamming is just lazy. (So are auto-DMs on twitter. Just because you can automate doesn’t mean you should.)

    One of the congratulations messages that came in to me was a solicitation to advertise for $15K. Not only unsolicited — off target. And I know this person IRL.

    The feeds on LinkedIn look more and more like Facebook. People if you can’t separate business from personal this might explain your work/life balance issues. It also might explain why you can’t get work done in a timely matter. Time Management at its core is about focus.

    Recently, LinkedIn sent me a notice about only connecting to people I know. That’s funny because if that was the case we would all have less than 400 connections. Also, that notice flies in the face of most users AND how LinkedIn makes money!

    And what happened to discussion on LI? The groups are dead.

    I examined at least 35 posts on three groups (UC Insights and Channel Partners and Telecom Professionals). Engagement is Rare!

    Engagement is demonstrated mostly by Likes, rarely a comment on these groups. However, all of the posts are just headlines from articles or blog posts. It is all just click-bait. And that is annoying to everyone.

    On the UC group, CommsTrader, AT&T and other corporate communicators just blast stuff here (and elsewhere) hoping for clicks and likes. CommsTrader actually tweets to the group. (His tweets post to the LI group.) It is awful.

    Overall it has become nothing more than an online Rolodex (contact management tool). I think recruiters – who were the customer target for Reid Hoffman – started abusing it, but then Marketers got involved and those lazy bums ruined it for everyone.

    LinkedIn-Sucks-3d-Cover-300.png

    SIDE NOTE: LinkedIn explained in memes.

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    Copyright On Rad’s Radar?

    May 18, 2017 , On Rad's Radar

    The Duolpoly Dilemma (part III)

    There are about 1600 small operators in the US.

    “The NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association is the premier association representing more than 800 independent, community-based telecommunications companies that are leading innovation in rural and small-town America.”

    “NCTC has grown to serve over 850 cable companies across the United States.”

    These (mostly) small companies are facing some grim future. USF Reform changed some of their economics. But trends in the telecom sector have also hit their economics.

    2016 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) indicate that 50.8% of American homes did not have a landline
    telephone but did have at least one wireless telephone. [source] More than half of homes do not have a landline now. It tipped.

    “Over half of U.S. cord cutters (51.8%) canceled their pay-TV service subscriptions in 2015 and 2016, according to new market research TDG (The Diffusion Group).”

    “Just over 1 in 5 broadband households (22%) have no legacy pay-TV subscription, representing roughly 22 million homes, according to TDG.”

    “TDG observed long ago that incumbents were going to have to make a choice: either resign themselves to being a ‘dumb-pipe’ provider, or invest in using IP, change the TV experience, and become the go-to source for all things video,” he said. Comcast with Xfinity went for a better CX (customer experience). Just about everyone else buried their head in the and.

    Tele-Health is a big opportunity. Huge! I tell you. Just huge. Except: “A third of senior citizens in the U.S. say they never use the internet. That’s according to a new survey from Pew Research Center that looks at how digitally connected adults over 65 are. Seniors make up 15% of the U.S. population, about 46 million people.

    Getting people to adopt not just Internet but broadband and the IP enabled life is a challenge.

    Gigabit has reached 56M households in the US, according to Telecompetitor. There are almost 126M households in the US. That is a lot of digging, fiber strands and CAPEX! Verizon spent $1.3B on fiber to be deployed in the next 3 years.

    It was expensive for telcos to get into TV just as TV declined. Whoops!

    DSL can’t compete against DOCSIS 3.0. Cable is winning the broadband game – at the expense of telcos, especially RLECs. Smaller MSOs were already getting cherry picked by DISH and DirecTV. They had to double down on Internet — but at a considerable expense.

    In almost every pie – TV, voice, broadband, cellular – it is saturated. The only way through is Innovation. You have to make the Customer Experience so much better.

    It isn’t even just CAPEX. It is Strategy of where can you grow especially in a take away game filled with Me-too products (VoIP, TV, SD-WAN, cloud). Where is the opportunity? Where can growth come from? What skills do we have in house that can be leveraged?

    ____ 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
    May 18, 2017 , NSP Strategist
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