VoIPWatch

Avaya In Play is Good for Telecom Startups

Avaya, the Phoenix that rose from the ashes and out of bankruptcy is reportedly in play to be acquired by an unnamed private equity player via an LBO. And that's great news for telecom startups and growing independent companies.

Avaya has had their share of ups and downs dating back to even before Silver Lake was their paymaster. The company, which has been many things to many, has been forging ahead with their hardware and software for some time. But they have also been moving more and more to the cloud, and there lies the opportunity for the startups and independents in a few catagories.

Where do I see the opportunities and best places to expect to see money flowing to or buying up?

Session Border Controllers - the gateway to all things are the SBCs. Think of them as the firewall, traffic cop and routing engine. Marry that up with billing and a few other dull and boring functions and you have the piece that makes your telecom money. The SBC is the guard at the door, the teller at the window and the key to the vault.

Device Management and Configuration - another not so sexy, but essential part of the telecom equation. As more and more of the telecom stack moves from the premise to the cloud there's more stress and strain on the reduced IT staff to keep things connected. As enterprise businesses switch from one carrier to another, hop from this service provider to the other the CFO doesn't want to be buying new hardware each time. Enter the Device Management and Configuration company in the cloud.  They keep the endpoints running, connected and up to date. If they do their jobs, the IT tech ends up like the Maytag repairman....waiting for the call that never comes.

CPaaS - yes, CPaaS is going to have its day, and I don't mean the posers who are repackaging their ancient software, figuring out how to reducng it into little bits and the way a chop shop takes a stolen car and parts it out for more money than the car is worth. No, real CPaaS companies who bring enterprise customers solutions that work for them, not where the enerprise has to go to work for vendor by doing the work and fixing things.

WebRTC - let's face it, with most of the smart telecom people from the days of hardware doing other things, it's the software folks who are running the show. But it's the web types who get UI, UX, CX who are making things happen. Eventually they need real time communication and collaboration built into the modern day endpoint version of the phone, and that's where WebRTC comes in.

When the money comes into Avaya, then the market's smart money will start to look for hidden value. I feel it's in the four sectors above...so watch what happens.

AT&T and Comcast : Robocalling Non News

On the surface the Robocalling announcement about the efforts by AT&T and Comcast yesterday sounded like a big deal. Well folks, it really isn't. The move by the two is more of what can be labeled as a "pushback defense" ploy against the FCC telling the two giants to get moving on the robocalling problem than delivering a real fix. It PR terms it's grandstanding. In marketing speak it's "directional" but anyone with a B.S. detector, it's a more of a tactic to slow down the FCC by following the doctrine of the industry doing something so govenment doesn't (the govenment that governs best govern's least.)

Given landlines are a dying breed vs. mobile, this STIR/Shaken this news is not really "big news." As a matter of fact, it's not really news at all, but more of a deflection to buy time before the FCC comes down on the two telecom giants.

Granted this deployment of SHAKEN/STIR is something that eventually every operator, carrier and service provider will have to do, or chooses to do, but companies like (former client) YouMail and T-Mobile have been doing this without a standard to follow. So too has Google, which has had a reporting mode in GoogleVoice for spam calls in the service for as long as I can remember. 

Unfortunately, a closer read of the announcement, which was picked up by many a media outlet to some acclaim, really shows how thinly SHAKEN/STIR is deployed by the two behemouths as it's not yet being implmented yet by Comcast's Xfinity Mobile, nor AT&T's own mobile service. It's only being deployed on landline services from both companies, and not even for all of those either.

In the announcement  "AT&T Phone digital home service and Comcast’s Xfinity Voice home phone service" are what's been tested. For those who don't know what AT&T Digital Home Phone service is, it's only available to customers who have UVerse, AT&T's upgraded DSL service, and in some places gigabit fiber, not all the customers connected to AT&T POTS/PSTN service.

To Comcast/Xfinity's defense, they're totally dependent on Verizon which provides the wireless network's RAN, switching, calling features and mobile connetivity to Xfinity. That reliance on Verizon gives Comcast's mobile team an excusable out for not being part of the testing or deploying SHAKEN/STIR on their mobile network yet.

Here's why. As an MVNO Xfinity is presently totally dependent on Verizon for just about everything beyond selling the service to their customers.  Note: I do think this will change over time as it affects Xfinity (and Spectrum's) ability to fully integrate with their own Internet and VoIP services. The upside to them in going more with their own technology is as they start to add "advanced" features and services that can work with to their VoIP platform, the more money they can make, and the more Verizon becomes more of a dumb pipe. This will naturally occur as the cable operators layer in more cloud based services, move traffic over their own networks, and take greater advantage of CPaaS, WebRTC and API's that are the flavor of the year, as it mirrors their own strategy of putting fiber of their own in the ground and the types of hires the MSO's been making.

So while Comcast has a good reason for not including their mobile customers, AT&T on the otherhand has revealed how old school their mobile voice network is and revealed that it's not SIP or IP based, but still circuit switched, by limiting the sevice to the smaller segment of Digital Voice customers, and ignoring their millions of mobile customers who receive the bulk of the Robocall annoyances.

 

Voxbone's Goes CaaS and Takes Aim at the Enterprise

Voxbone, long known as the provider of numbers and carrier services to VoIP providers has packaged up and moved their services to the cloud, and are offering enterprises a Communications as a Service model. This move takes aim at the enterprise market and appears to make them a bit competitive to many of their own customers, while also paving the way for more parts of their communication stack to be made available to more customers worldwide.

"Historically, Voxbone has provided its services under a resale framework, to sophisticated clients that are power users of the Voxbone core network and functionality. With the Voxbone Platform for enterprise we're addressing an entirely new, and currently unserved, market segment, which is the mid-market," said Voxbone's Matt Brown. 

That segment is something ofen coveted by many of the VoIP players.

Brown said Voxbone's rationale surrounds an "unserved mid-market segment where enterprises are too big for UCaaS and too small for managed services. These enterprises are at a point where it makes economic sense for them to bring their communications applications in house. So the requirement for them becomes finding a communications infrastructure provider, with a global voice/messaging network upon which they can build their applications."

To reach the enterprise market, Voxbone is rolling out four services that previously were sold to the larger service providers and carriers.

The four services include:

• Voxbone Voice

A single-source, fully compliant alternative to both legacy carriers and limited SIP providers, Voxbone Voice provides global scale on demand and unparalleled local presence – packaged up with our regulatory expertise in every market and coverage across 92% of the world economy. According to the news release the four services are:

• Voxbone Mobile

Two-way messaging and voice on mobile numbers in 25+ countries. Perfect for omnichannel customer comms, with enterprise-grade security built in as standard.

• Voxbone Connect

Don't come to the source, let the source come to you. Interconnect into Voxbone's global backbone via our partners' 400 local access points around the world for best-possible security and lowest-possible latency.

• Voxbone Insights

Analyze your call capacity, numbers, voice traffic and more in real time to identify breaking trends. Make data-backed decisions about your business communications off the back of our insights.

As far as Voxbone Mobile Brown added that their numbers are from true mobile ranges and not VOIP or nomadic numbers, are SIM-less and provides businesses the ability to unify their voice and messaging use cases through a single number.  "Our mobile offering is strengthened by focusing on serving true mobile range numbering services, which can be embedded into customers’ apps and adhere to both technical and regulatory guidelines."

 

 

VoIP Innovations Builds a Channel Marketplace for CPaaS

With Enterprise Connect coming up next week, already the companies who are exhibiting there are sharing their news. One that sounds innovative, given the team behind the current iteration of VoIP Innovations, stands out as something worth checking out.

The idea of a channel marketplace for CPaaS is not far off from what CEO Dave Walsh sought to do with his previous company Shango, nor is it far off from what Luis Borges-Quina, who sold ApiDaze to VoIP Innovations, had up his sleeve either. The reason this idea has legs is the "showroom" aspect of the concept.  Anyone who ever was a buyer and visited the NYC showrooms that showed off toys, clothing or furniture knows how buyers put various products together to pull together a full line of products to sell. In essence that's what VoIP Innovations is doing.

In their showroom, developers get to put their apps, routines, API's and services up for sale much like a seller on eBay does. The digital mall approach also puts VoIP Innovation in a different bucket vs. Twilio, Nexmo, SignalWire, Plivo or Bandwidth, as they can become the modern day manufacturer's rep of communications services, giving buyers a shopping mall like experience, which means they are both a competitor and a partner or outlet for what those companies have to offer.

Think of it as the current era Sears catalog for telecom.

The big plus though is by being available to devs, resellers, channel partners and more, the showroom provides the opportunity for home grown VoIP Innovation applications and services, as well as solutions from others like Voxist, VoIPly, and FaxLogic to all be combined to create something new and different. 

 

Contact Centers Analytics and Wait Times

I just read a fascinating and very logical article about contact centers and wait times published by Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. If call centers or contact centers are core to your business, or if you've ever waited on hold to get help or support, it's a must-read.

With algorithms and analytics at the core of so many businesses today, the challenge of wait times and hold times to get problems solved is directly tied to customer satisfaction and over time, customer retention. In the cases where there's a competitive environment the customer's ability to leave is directly proportional to how much support is in place.

For example, Apple customers really don't have an option on where to go for support and help, as Apple is Apple. If you're an Android user and you get tired of the challenges of waiting on hold for Samsung you buy a phone from LG or One Plus and move on. If you're a Dell customer, you stick with Dell until you get tired of their support times and move to a Surface from Microsoft. 

In Apple's case they can keep adding support people, but as a long time customer (since 1984) their support times have increased not decreased, only because they can't really keep up as they have gone from being a single line product company with only computers to now being smartphones, tablets, watches, TV boxes and more. Even Genius Bar appointments that were usually obtainable in a day require you to book in some cases farther out than to see your dentist. 

If you're a monopoly market-based business, your customers have nowhere to go and wait. But if they can leave, they eventually will.

Read the article and think about your support process.

HBO vs. Netflix - A Battle of Movies, Not Words

HBO's new chief Bob Greenblatt says Netflix doesn't have a brand. What a juvenile statement and one that is more fighting words than facts. Not only is Netflix a brand, its multi-generational, it's the brand that has replaced HBO as the "other place to watch." 

For starters Netflix knows more about its' audience than HBO does. Netflix has for years been using audience metrix to determine which content it puts on the screen. It is also way ahead of HBO on deployment of compression technology, and has figured out how to best work with the broadband and mobile providers. HBO, because it was always a part of Time-Warner, and now AT&T had to always play nice, to not erode the business of Time-Warner, and not impact it's cable provider base which were also investors.  In essence, HBO pre-AT&T acquisition was a political and financial football of the cable industry that delivered amazing content that made people sign up for cable subscriptions.

Netflix changed all that, allowing cord-cutters access to the kind of programming that HBO was known for. But I digress.

To say Netflix doesn't have a brand is so off base one has to understand why a comment like that is made.

1. The Spielberg Oscar war with Netflix  This is about parity. By picking on Netflix brand (or claiming there isn't one) AT&T is trying to make their competiition look unworthy.
2. Market Share-with cord cutting, HBO, who was late to the game with an OTT app, has lost share to Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu. It's why they now have deals with Amazon to get a "channel slot" for their OTT app.
3. Competition for creative content-let's face it, back in the era of The Wire and The Soprano's HBO was where cutting edge writers shopped their works. Shows like "Sex in the City" never would have been network prime time as they were too racy and edgy in their subject matter. Now those types of shows are part of everyday programming but it's been Netflix that got the House of Cards going. Sure Showtime has Ray Donovan and Homeland as well as Billions, but some of the best new mini-series and arc programs like Travelers, The Umbrella Academy,  have been on Netflix and Amazon. The Kominsky Method, which starred Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin was another cult-hit that was so much in the Seinfeld or Cheers mold that it could have been a prime time killer. Those programs happen on Netflix because the creative talent puts it there, and because Netflix knows its audiences better than HBO does.

No brand? If that was the case the stars, writers, directors and producers who are creating the content at Netflix wouldn't be there. In the world of words, all Greenblatt did was do nothing more than a "drive by shooting." Fire a few rounds off and see how Netflix reacts. My guess, they'll just put out better content, because at the end of the day, content is king.

Apple And San Diego

Apple is repeating a proven strategy in it's move to add 1200 or more jobs to a new office campus it plans to build in San Diego, not far from Qualcomm. The decision to go there, and establish a mobile chip engineering team is well timed, as Qualcomm has been laying off and shedding bodies quietly for the past six years.  This has been happening due to pressure from one of its investors a few years back, and while publicly they have denied it, the efforts in San Diego with people prove otherwise.

The logic is simple. Qualcomm is suing Apple. One solution that helps both parties is a settlement where Apple buys a division or joint ventures with Qualcomm, with the end result being Appl etaking some of the staff onto theie payroll. Qualcomm did this before with Ericsson. We call it, the "don't beat them, join them" strategy. What resulted was a ramp up of activity, the establishment of a Ericsson staffed, but Qualcomm run division in San Diego. If Apple and Qualcomm do this, everyone wins.

The second reason to go to San Diego is Apple can pick up a lot of talented senior people in San Diego who left Qualcomm over the past few years, many of whom took packages to leave, along with the stock. 

This makes Apple's entry well timed because the talent is already in San Diego. 

Google Fi, Duo and Voice

I've been a user of Google Fi for a few years now. I've also been a longtime user of Google Voice and Hangouts. Of late, I've been experimenting with Duo, Google's version of Skype meets Apple's Facetime. Like Skype, Duo let's you make outgoing calls, presenting your choice of numbers, much like Skype. Like Facetime you can make Duo to Duo calls without the chat.

Somewhere, Android Messages plays into this. 

What I see is Google converging all the services, as they blend the OTT capabilities of Voice and Duo with the data centric service known as Fi.