It’s the end of the year. Time for Reflection. Time to set some Goals for 2012. Time to review those goals from 2011 to see how you did.

Here are a few articles with some good advice.

There’s an article trending about 30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself. It’s a good read.

Here are 10 great tips from successful small business owners. I like this tip: Stick to your core business.

Here are 7 tips from highly productive people.

Mojo Marketer Angela has 4 tips for telecom email marketing.

Gary Vee asks a really good question, “Why do we celebrate fund raising instead of sales?”

Have a safe and happy holiday season!

ADTRAN “announced today that it plans to acquire, through an asset sale and purchase agreement, the Nokia Siemens Networks fixed line Broadband Access business (BBA), and associated professional services and network management solutions. The planned acquisition would include the Broadband Access intellectual properties, technologies and the established customer base.” This gets ADTRAN some revenue and a foot into International customers.

IN other acquisition news, HyberCube is being bought by West Corp.

“West Corporation, a leading provider of technology-driven, voice and data solutions, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire HyperCube LLC, a premier provider of tandem switching services to telecommunications providers. …. Founded in 2005 and backed from its inception by Kamine Credit Corporation, Annex Capital and Chambers Street Investors, HyperCube has rapidly grown to become a leading provider of toll-free origination services in the United States. HyperCube’s unique network provides neutral interconnection services for all types of providers, including wireless, wireline, and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP). Hypercube currently serves eight of the top ten largest wireless companies in the U.S.

That’s an interesting grab for West Corp, which bought Intercall (conferencing) and Smoothstome (Hosted PBX). Now to grab some toll-free minutes. Maybe its just a revenue play.

Luckily, T-Mobile knows where’s its bread can get buttered: T-Mobile Keeps Eyes On The Channel Amid AT&T Merger Turmoil

According to its own press, LightSquared Has Now Signed More Than 30 Wholesale Customers. Clearwire’s financial stability coupled with the SpectrumCo-VZW deal has probably helped. Or maybe LSqd was giving it away cheap just to get commitments, some cash and some buzz. However, that GPS issue won’t go away. A document leaked to Bloomberg states that 75% of GPS devices experience interference. OOPS!

LSqd called for an investigation stating that only select data was leaked and it was misleading. Personally, I don’t think it is misleading. There are few radio operators that have a tight control of the power and frequency that they broadcast on. GPS was their first, LSqd. Too bad. (Plus you don’t have the cash to do it anyway!)

According to Adage, Sprint has a new CMO, Bill Moyer, who fired the old agency for a new agency to handle the $1.4 Billion ad spend of Sprint. I looked at that number and my jaw dropped. Sprint spends more than 1 billion in marketing dollars?

Surely there is a better way to spend that money than more black and white ads of Dan Hesse.

Yesterday, I asked some friends – all in marketing of one flavor or another – if they had seen the new Rocket Man VW ad. All said no. One said, “AH! But you remember it.” Yeah. I like the Elton John song. I thought it was creative. But I would never buy a VW – even if it is a great stereo system. And this is VW’s second creative commercial.

There are many elements to an effective commercial. It has to be creative or innovative or original. It has to be memorable, which is usually tied to an emotional response or connection with the viewer. Linking an emotion with a brand is HUGE!

However, today, we see that companies want more than “just” branding. They want – no, need – to move the needle of sales with their marketing spend.

Some companies are migrating ad dollars to social media. Too many get caught in the trap of social media numbers, while still others view social media as just another broadcast channel. Both miss the whole point.

Branding is important, especially in a commodity market. VW seems to be spending its time featuring features – the stereo and the remote start. More success could come if the brand centered around the customer experience. Customers own that car for 5 years and own that cell phone for at least 2 years. What are those years going to be like dealing with the Brand?

There are thousands of companies selling Hosted PBX. Call it anything you want, it’s hosted PBX and it’s fast becoming a commodity because everyone is selling it – Parallels, Intermedia.Net, Broadsoft’s 400+ customers, Metaswitch’s client base and more. To differentiate, it won’t be about the features since you all have about the same ones. It will be about the Customer Experience, the Quality of Service and the Integration. At the end of the day, the marketing will have to demonstrate to your market what it will be like to have your service. Get there first. (Want help? Call me.)

Great quote from this Bloomberg article, “We don’t have any confidence that we are spending all this time and effort and the taxpayers’ money and that we’re not being spun,” U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle in Washington said. 

Every lawsuit, every court appearance costs the taxpayers money. Not just to pay the judge and attorneys but the rest of the court costs – personnel, security, physical plant, etc.

One of my coaching clients has had some issues with BYOB (bring your own broadband) ITSP’s (VoIP providers) over the last couple of months. I have too. My Aastra IP phone died and I moved to an ATA, which has added an incredible amount of echo and tin to the line. He says that he has one way calls and the two of us have experienced garbled calls. 

All that makes it difficult to sell VoIP to businesses.

Some of it – like the echo – is the CPE. Some of it is the configuration by the ITSP. Some of it is the broadband.

The ITSP should correct all issues with the CPE and the configuration – without doing finger pointing to the broadband. If you deliver BYOB VoIP, you can’t spend all your time blaming the ISP.

If you buy and use BYOB VoIP, you can’t expect POTS quality service either. Seriously. VoIP isn’t POTS. And Voice over the Internet (which is what BYOB VoIP is) is going to have quality issues. Period.

My ISP has been giving me indigestion over congestion issues for a while, but what can you do? 

The Duopoly – cable and telco – want to meter broadband because they want more revenue. They don’t want to upgrade the networks any more unless they can make more $$. They need the ARPU to go up, which in the current economic climate is just not going to happen. So the result is to decrease CAPEX spending on network upgrades. We see this on cellular networks. Despite spending $7-9B per year on the cell network, the cell networks still experience congestion and that is after the cellcos have capped consumer usage too! What happens when the wi-fi offload to broadband hits the point of congestion? Metering. (We already have capping in place on consumer broadband.)

How is this going to affect business down the road?

More and more workers are working from home. That means day time broadband networks are being used like never before. (It used to be around 3 PM when the broadband would get hit as kids came home from school.)

Smartphone users are switching to wi-fi when they can to save dollars and the broadband networks – more than 60% cable today – are congesting – at a few points. The bottlenecks are in the neighborhoods and in the peering points.

When David Byrd was talking about BYOB in his blog and stated, ” For the most part, 90-95% of the time, this works out very well and an overwhelming majority of our customers are very happy,” I believe he was talking about DIA not broadband. Big difference. A business broadband circuit of 10MB x 2MB is not the same as a T1. The numbers look better but broadband is best effort, shared bandwidth and DIA is a dedicated circuit. The quality of bandwidth is degrees different.

Many ITSP’s have moved to looking for bigger deals where the business will buy DIA or MPLS or a dedicated VoIP circuit. Converged is a nice idea for a network, but at the end of the day, it is about quality, ease and of course price. With the cost of customer acquisition increasing, no company wants to lose a customer over quality. (Besides that churn number makes Wall Street unhappy. 2.8% is not a friendly number.)

For businesses with less than 25 handsets, BYOB VoIP may be the way to go, but think about having two broadband circuits – something to alleviate the VoIP quality issues that may arise.

Look for an ITSP that is connected to your ISP as that can alleviate some of the path quality issues.

Try a demo phone for a day or two to see what it will be like.

Fax, alarm circuits and other special needs lines will still have to be POTS for now, but that’s okay – you’ll have a back-up line in case something happens to the VoIP or the Internet or the power.