Category: Improving Your Business

Categories
Improving Your Business The Industry

Who is Going to Pay for the IP Network?

Peninsular Telephone Company (Photo credit: Nick Suan)

Small telcos and most CLECs are waiting to see what will come from the changes due to converting to an all IP network for telephony. Today the telephony voice network utilizes TDM (time division multiplexing) technology that was originally developed for copper but that has been upgraded to use fiber. But the FCC has said that this old network is going to have to be upgraded to all-IP, meaning that voice will be carried by Ethernet similar to the way that data is transmitted.

I don’t think anybody is arguing that this kind of shift makes sense. IP trunking is far more efficient in terms of carrying more calls in the same amount of bandwidth. And a lot of companies have already implemented some IP trunking.

The important issue for small telcos and CLECs is how this transition is going to change their costs. In order to understand the possible change, let’s look at how voice traffic gets to and from small telcos and CLECs today.

  • Independent telephone companies connect with larger companies and neighboring companies by physical interconnection at mutual meetpoints. Historically, most of the meetpoints are located at the physical border between two neighboring telephone companies with each company owning the fiber and electronics in their own territory. And each telco is responsible for the costs of their portion of the network. Historically local calls have been exchanged for free in both directions and there are access charges in place for all telcos to get paid by the long distance carriers for using their network and facilities for long distance calls.
  • The rules governing CLECs were established by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This Act laid forth the basic rule that a CLEC can interconnect with a telco network at any technically feasible point. This idea was fought hard by the large telcos who wanted CLECs to bring traffic to their tandems (regional hub offices). Once a CLEC has established a meetpoint, then it works pretty much the same as normal telco interconnection in that both parties are responsible for costs on their side of the interconnection. Sometimes local calls are interchanged for a fee and sometimes they are free (called bill and keep) and this is negotiated. The CLECs also bill access charges for carrying long distance calls.

There are a number of ways that IP trunking could be implemented, and each of them has financial consequences for small telcos and CLECs:

  • The IP network could be built to mimic the current PSTN. The routes would be roughly the same but the rules of interconnection would stay the same. But with IP trunking the network would be more efficient.
  • The large telcos could establish regional hubs and expect everybody else to somehow get their traffic to those locations. This would be a radical change for small telcos who would have to build or lease fiber from their rural location to the nearest regional hub. For CLECs this would completely undo the rules established by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and would put all of the cost to get to the hubs onto them.
  • In the most extreme IP network there would be only a few large hubs to cover the whole US. This would be the most efficient in terms of the hubs, but it would require all telcos and CLECs to spend a lot of money to get their voice traffic to and from the hub.

Since I have been working in the industry the RBOCs (now AT&T and Verizon) have tried several times to put the burden and the cost of transporting calls onto the small telcos. But regulators have always stepped in to stop this because they realize that it would greatly jack up the cost of doing business in rural areas. I certainly hope that as we move to a more efficient network that we don’t end up breaking a system that is working well.

The downside to any plan that shifts cost to small telcos is that the cost of providing local and long distance service will increase in rural areas. The consequence of changing the CLEC rules will be less competition. The current interconnection and compensation rules have served the country well. Every caller benefits by having affordable rates to call to and from rural areas. And there is no doubt that higher communications cost would be a major hindrance to creating and keeping jobs in rural areas.

Categories
Improving Your Business The Industry

So, You Want to Get Into the Data Center Business?

Today’s guest blogger is Mike Fox. He was one of the founders of CCG and we still work together on a number of projects. He is working today for Fox Management Advisors.

Cloud computing, business disaster recovery and continuity, off-site data storage, co-location, managed services, mirror site operations, data warehousing ….. what does it all mean, and, more importantly, how can you get some of this business?

On the surface, data centers are closely related to telco operations – high capital costs, spiky investment, technology driven, and (hopefully) good long-term investments.  Furthermore, telephone companies are natural partners (or owners) of data center operations due to the requirement for robust (and redundant) bandwidth connectivity (preferably fiber based).  Site security is also a critical factor; something telcos are well acquainted with and can naturally support.  However, given the fast-moving nature of both businesses (telecommunications and data centers), there are several key aspects that must be considered.

Location, Location, Location

As with real estate, one of the most critical factors when considering whether or not to invest in or build a data center is location.  In addition to other issues, location impacts costs (e.g., power costs – which are one of the primary cost elements), vulnerability to natural and man-made disasters, access to qualified technical personnel and your sales opportunities.  Some of the key location-based factors include, but are not limited to:

  • Cost and availability of real estate – is there sufficient open space for expansion
  • “Green” attributes – availability of green power and other low sulfur emission power sources
  • Cheap and abundant power from multiple sources
  • Climate – e.g., climate can affect HVAC cooling costs and design
  • Available education resources – colleges, universities and technical training
  • Access to redundant sources of broadband facilities – especially fiber optics
  • Local/State income tax rates – including any ‘incentives’ available for tech-based companies

Locating a data center near or in conjunction with a telephone company can be advantageous from the perspective of securing an anchor client (telcos house and store a lot of data), proximity to superior broadband connectivity, and access to technical expertise (e.g., it is not too far of a leap for telco IP technicians to be trained to be able to handle many of the technical needs of a data center).

Access to sufficiently trained technical personnel is very important.  While telco technicians have many of the same skill sets necessary to meet the needs of data center operations, it is likely that you will need more highly trained and certified employees than are necessary for traditional telco operations.  Therefore, locating close to colleges, universities and technical training centers, while not a requirement, can be a great advantage.  That said, I am personally aware of several data center operations that are several hundred miles from such educational facilities.  These operations were able to attract very qualified people due to their unique location – e.g., sometimes people would prefer to NOT live in the big city!

Not being located in the ‘big city’ is also positive from the perspective of site vulnerability.  Assuming you have sufficient broadband and power availability (again, redundant feeds, if possible), then locating in rural areas is very attractive for companies wishing to house their data in secure locations with very low risk profiles from both man-made (e.g., terrorism) and natural (e.g., hurricanes) disasters.  Coincidentally, most rural telcos are NOT in high risk areas; particularly with respect to terrorism and other man-made disasters.

The cost of power is also very location dependent.  In many rural states (e.g., Wyoming, where I reside), the cost of power is below the national average (often way below).  For example, the cost of power in Wyoming is consistently below $0.04 / Kwh (again, depending upon the exact location), which is less than half the national average of over $0.11 / Kwh.  Furthermore, availability of power is a location-based factor – is your location subject to issues such as rolling brownouts, which are common in some of our country’s more populated locations?

Know Your Business; Know Your Market

Like many technology-based businesses, the data center business is rapidly evolving.  What might have been a great business model a year ago, may have no legs today.  Rates, services, packages, bundles and even target customers are changing daily.  However, there is no doubt that in one form or another data storage, remote site availability, business disaster recovery and ‘cloud computing’ (the meaning of which is also evolving daily) will be viable products for years to come.  The key is to know where to start and how to focus effectively to meet your customers’ needs for many years to come.  It’s not necessarily ‘rocket science’ but it’s also not child’s play.  As such, we are prepared to assist with the evaluation of these and many other similar opportunities and, if it looks positive, help you launch or expand existing data center operations.

Categories
Improving Your Business

Do You Know the Margins for Your Product Lines?

That sounds like a straightforward question and most businesses in the country can say yes to that question. But I find that a large percentage of telecom companies don’t know the margins on their products.

There are a number of reasons why it is important to know your margins.

  • You need to know if you are selling any product at a loss. It’s okay to consciously have a loss-leader product if selling it always also sells more profitable products. But it makes no sense to sell a product that loses money as a single product. If you have products that lose money you need to consider raising the price or stop selling the product.
  • You should be trying to sell what makes you the most bottom line. All too often I see telecom companies push products that get them a lot of revenue but not much margin.
  • Without knowing your margins you can’t understand where you need to cut costs. While raising rates is one way to increase margin, cutting costs can have the same effect.

Regulated telcos are very used to having separations studies performed that define their access costs. But these studies have no practical value to management and tell you nothing about your profit margins by product line. And many CLECs and cable companies have never done any kind of cost study.

There all kinds of studies that can be done to look at your margins. The most common are:

Fully allocated fully distributed costs. In these studies every cost in the company is distributed to products. Done properly these studies will define your gross margin (revenues minus direct costs of producing a product), your net margin (the margin after also allocating joint and common costs), and net income by product which will look at depreciation or a surrogate cost of the network layered onto your other costs.

Incremental costs. The large phone companies have historically produced TELRIC or other forms of incremental cost studies for state commissions. These studies do not calculate margins in the same way as a fully distributed cost study. Rather, they look at the incremental cost of producing one unit of the product. The main purpose of these studies is to prove that you aren’t selling products below cost, but otherwise they have very little practical value for management.

Luckily it is a very straightforward process to understand your margins. A fully allocated fully distributed cost study can be as simple as a spreadsheet that allocates every cost in your ledger to products using some logical allocator. The whole key to getting believable results is to develop the best allocators that you can find for the way your company operates.

CCG has done these kind of margin studies many times and we don’t see them being offered by a lot of other consultants. There are a ton of companies that do separations studies or TELRIC studies, but not nearly so many who do straightforward cost accounting studies that management can use. Once you have a good margin study on hand then management can begin to understand how costs affect your profits. As an example, you can quickly see what will happen to your margins if you hire a new employee or if the cost of your Internet backbone goes down. That kind of basic information is vital if you want to maximize the bottom line. Knowing your margins lets you concentrate on those things that will have the best impact to the bottom line.

Categories
Improving Your Business What Customers Want

What Business Customers Want

A significant percentage of CCG’s clients sell telecommunications services to businesses. When I ask them what they think businesses are now looking for from a telecommunications provider, I most often get the responses listed below.

Interestingly, saving money is not on this list. While most of my clients sell at competitive prices, they say that business customers value a reliable network much more than they do a lower price. Since phones and computers are often now tied together using IP, a network outage effectively can completely cripple a business if they lose both phone and the Internet.

Single service provider. Ideally, most small to medium businesses would like one service provider to take care of everything from data, phones, IT, computers, etc.

Reliable network. They want to be served by a reliable network, with reliability measured in terms of outages. This is often why a new network owner in a town will see slow sales to businesses for a few years until the local market perceives that their network as reliable.

Faster data speeds. While faster download speeds are always important, many businesses also covet fast upload speeds.

Employee mobility. Businesses want the ability for employees to be able to work from home or on the road.

Off-site data storage. Businesses want key data stored offsite to avoid catastrophic data losses. They feel safer if they know the company who is storing their data.

Fast provisioning and changes in services. Businesses want to be able to change things on the fly, be that moving an employee to a different office, changing the features on a given phone or computer, or increasing data speeds.

Physical security and surveillance. Businesses want next generation security systems with features like biometric access, motion detectors and hidden surveillance cameras.

Redundant connections. More and more businesses want physically redundant data connections since their businesses are more reliant on the Internet to be profitable.

Moving to the cloud. Lately businesses have been asking about cloud services since they hear it is a way to eliminate or reduce their IT functions and let outside parties take care of updates, security, etc.

Unified communications.  Businesses want phone calls and data to get to them over multiple devices across multiple networks.

Categories
Improving Your Business Technology The Industry

HD Voice

A spectrogram (0-5000 Hz) of the sentence &quo...
A spectrogram (0-5000 Hz) of the sentence “it’s all Greek to me” spoken by a female voice (Image:en-us-it’s_all_Greek_to_me.ogg). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

HD voice (or wideband audio) is a technology that delivers the full frequency range of the human voice.  Traditional telephony has delivered a narrowband voice transmission and only transmitted sounds between 300 Hz and 3.4 kHz. However, the human voice extends between 80 Hz and 14 kHz, so traditional telephone has chopped off parts of every voice transmission.

The range of frequency was curtailed for traditional telephony based upon the limited bandwidth available for transmitting voice calls over a twisted copper pair. But voice that is sent over an IP path does not have those limitations and can send the full range of the human voice.

There has been an industry standard for wideband voice since 1987. However, until recently the only uses of the standard were in high-end video conferencing systems and for transmitting sports announcers back to the home station for rebroadcast.

But the industry is starting to use the HD voice protocol for calls made over VoIP. For example, Skype and some other PC-to-PC voice providers use the full HD voice bandwidth and the higher quality of the call can be experienced by a caller using a high-quality headset or handset. These same calls don’t sound better when listened to on a standard phone due to limitations in the speakers. There are also a number of vendors offering wideband telephones such as Avaya, Cisco, Grandstream, Gigaset, Polycom and others. These sets are capable of both sending and receiving a wideband voice signal, but the phones at both ends must be wideband capable to engage in an HD quality call.

So what are the business opportunities with HD Voice? Businesses are interested in having high-quality calls, particularly in conference rooms, noisy areas and other places where the quality can make a difference. The business opportunity is to make the phones available to businesses that are served with IP voice paths. HD Voice can then be sold as an add-on feature or as a more expensive voice line. A company that wants the higher quality calling is a great candidate for moving off of traditional TDM services onto VoIP, IP Centrex or other IP voice solution.

Categories
Improving Your Business The Industry

Should You Become an MVNO?

This article compares the price of US cell phone plans to those around the world. It shows that the basic packages from the large US providers are in some cases twice as expensive as in other countries.

The small oligopoly of nationwide carriers, being AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, have no incentive to lower prices. The only thing that will get them to come down in price would be competition or some sort of regulatory action.

The large carriers have created an opportunity for some competition against their products by selling bulk minutes, data and messaging. Companies that buy these bulk minutes are known as MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators). There are scores of MVNO providers in the country with the largest ones listed here.

The three original MVNOs are TracPhone, Virgin and Boost and who still had over half of the pre-paid cellular phone business in 2012. However, note that Sprint recently bought Virgin and Boost, so perhaps part of their strategy is to create sub-markets and then gobble them up to make more profit.

MVNOs have various marketing strategies:

  • Republic relies on shunting a lot of traffic to WiFi which greatly lowers their costs.
  • Ting lets customers design their own rate plan.
  • Kajeet has plans for kids that are parent-controlled.
  • Solavei uses multi-level marketing similar to Amway.
  • Voyager Mobile competes on price and is selling very low-cost plans.

If your carrier business already has a loyal customer base you should consider becoming an MVNO. Your loyalty will bring you customers, and your existing customers will appreciate being able to save money on cell phones while buying from somebody they trust. As long as you do it smartly there are significant profits to be made in the MVNO business. All that is really needed is having good existing cell phone coverage in your area and the desire to expand your product line.

CCG can help you get into the MVNO business. We can assist you with finding a good deal on bulk minutes, help you design products and prices, help you create a business plan, and help you with technical strategies such as a handphone strategy, and using WiFi to lower costs.

Categories
Improving Your Business

Launching a New Product

At CCG we often introduce clients to new products. Historically our clients had the leisure to introduce products slowly since they were not operating in highly competitive markets. However, today we see speed to market being a major factor in being successful. Since there are many steps needed to launch a new product and because it will touch every part of your organization, it is mandatory that you are organized and have a plan to develop and launch a complex product on time and do it well. Lack of organization will inevitably lead to delays, or worse, to a product that is half-baked and full of problems.

At CCG we are experts at the process of launching new products and many of our clients now include CCG as part of the new product development and launch team. We can provide the needed discipline and the extra manpower and expertise needed to insure that a product is launched on time and is customer-ready.

The following (using the example of launching IP Centrex) is  a list of the basic steps required to launch a new product. This list is abbreviated but demonstrates how launching a new product will touch every part of your organization. Without a clear plan it is easy to get bogged down and delayed.

Steps needed to launch IP Centrex

Define the Product. Define the specific market for the product. In the case of IP Centrex, should you have different packages to reach different parts of the market? (For instance there might be a version for typical small business, a more complex product for more businesses like doctor’s offices, and a product for businesses with a centralized receptionist). Define the equipment and software needed to launch the product. What kind of handsets / functionality do you want to offer? Will you let subscribers use their own devices like smart phones and tablets? Will you support integration of phones and computer systems (Outlook, etc,)? Will you be supporting 911 portability (supporting 911 when the customer moves the phone off-premises)?

Determine Technical Readiness. Is your switch ready to support the product or do you need an upgrade? Will your OSS/BSS support the new product’s billing and operational requirements? If you are going to launch using something other than a softswitch, take the steps needed to choose the right gear and/or partner. Find a 911 mobility vendor to support remote 911 if you go this route. How are you willing to distribute the product – over your own network, over leased facilities, or over the open internet. Anticipate and address any IP addressing issues. Analyze the customer premise network requirements –  premise wiring alternatives, customer demarcation points, VoIP quality assurance capabilities, etc.

Product Pricing. Create a name and branding for the product. Determine the market prices of competing products (trunks for existing PBXs, B1s, traditional Centrex, other VoIP providers, etc.). Determine your pricing strategy (one price fits all vs. pricing based upon what the subscriber is using today). Determine your pricing elements (individual service elements like stations, talk paths, features and calling plans or a more all-inclusive element). Determine if you are going to sell and/or lease handsets as part of the product. Will this be bundled with other products like data or long distance?

Testing. Buy test handsets/stations. Activate and then test each switch feature with the handsets. Create a common or custom profile configuration for supported and chosen handset types. Make sure that you have an easy way to load the profile configurations into handsets/stations. Make sure the chosen features will work with each other (a common problem when combining multiple complex features). Test OSS and billing system.

Regulatory. Are tariff updates needed? If you are going into new markets will you need to open new 911 PSAPs? If sold as a regulated product, how does SLC charge apply? Are there any CALEA issues?

Sales and Marketing Readiness. Define the value proposition for the subscriber. Develop marketing literature. Update website. Develop order form that will capture the complexities of the product.

Internal Training. Train salespeople and CSRs on how to use the product. Train help-desk staff. Train anybody who will install or train on the product. Should your own company be the first test customer?

Customer Training. Develop customer training material/manuals.  Consider a web tool andor video tool. Develop training plan. Will you train every employee or train the trainers? How much will you charge for training? How do future subscriber employees get trained?

Implementation. Develop installation plan/checklist. Order IP stations. Perform any customer premise network changes required. Install and verify data connection(s). Install stations and any managed network equipment required. Develop plan to verify that every station is updated and provisioned correctly. Conduct subscriber training sessions. Ask for subscriber feedback on the quality of the implementation. Render and verify first bill.

NOC/Customer Support/Troubleshooting. How will you handle customer support? Will the first level of trouble shooting be done at the CSR level or by specially trained individuals? Who will have access to the tools and training required to assist subscribers?  Will billing issues and technical issues be handled by different employees or by the same employees?

Ongoing Product Maintenance. How do you stay abreast of new features, services and apps that may benefit your subscribers?  How and when do you introduce updates to subscribers?

Exit mobile version