The Romeos: Nine retired telco men talk of transitional time.

The Romeo’s is a 9 minute documentary on MN telecom in the 50′s. The interviews are with retired telephone men describing a time of transition for telecommunications. They started at $16 at per week, climbed iron wire poles, converted crank phones to dial phones, installed suit case sized mobile phones, and sent 100 words per minute high speed data using punch paper.

The documentary was produced as a part of the Minnesota Historical Society’s greatest generation film project, coincidental with the 100 year anniversary of the MTA – Minnesota Telecom Alliance, and with plans for more in a series of documentaries on Independent Telco’s. Call or write me for details on sponsoring or helping to fund the production of these history of telcom documentaries. Roger Bindl at 608-268-5704. roger at viodi com

Paula Eller of Yukon Telephone, reflects on the life of a key industry figure that started in the industry that at age 16. TelAlaska’s Jack Rhyner, who lost his battle with cancer a few months ago, worked tirelessly to ensure Alaska’s rural areas received the support necessary to bring telecom services to the most remote reaches. Eller, a pioneer in her own way, worked closely with Rhyner on these common goals. She has seen and participated in many of the changes in the industry and her common-sense wisdom for balancing work and family have made an impact that would be sorely missed if she, her family and their company quit serving their community.

In this brief interview given at the IP Possibilities Conference & Expo, John Rose, President of OPASTCO, talks of the concept of universal broadband. OPASTCO represents 500+ independent telecom operators, which primarily serve rural areas of the U.S. and Canada.  Rose suggests that broadband is not a one-size-fits-all service and, as such, operators will have to tailor services to meet the wants of their customers.

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Introductory pricing for telecom services has caused this author extreme frustration. Warren Lee, President and CEO of NeoNova, explains how one cable operator gradually gets their customers to pay more for services they might not have ordered in the first place. The operator has something like an 88% retention rate of its customers using this technique. Lee also implores telcos to look at bundles as more than just speed and to shape bundles to meet customers’ lifestyles and needs. 

ViodiTV at IP Possibilities 2008 is being brought to you by Entone.

“Soon the Millennials and Gen-Xers will take over,” so said telecom analyst and journalist, Gary Kim. In this brief video, Kim talks about why this shift in culture is important to service providers. He also suggests that operators, particularly mobile operators, need to consider more than bandwidth when determining network robustness.

ViodiTV at IP Possibilities 2008 is being brought to you by Entone.

The above video provides highlights of the ViodiTV coverage of MTA – the Minnesota Telecom Alliance’s 2008 Convention in Minneapolis.   Viodi provided approximately 30 minutes of daily video coverage over the course of the convention that aired on cable channels within the MTA Convention’s host hotels.  This video reflects the MTA Convention theme of the operators’ challenge of having to juggle competitiveness, convergence, and consolidation. 

The catalyst for bringing these organizations together was the departure of a large member company from MTA. This merger is fundamentally not about cost savings, but providing better service for the independent telco members. Mike Nowick, the current President of MTA, will be responsible for Membership Services for the new organization. And yes, the MTA convention will continue to be of significant national and regional importance. 

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Telecom is as about a basic a need these days as water and the air we breath.  Listen and watch this story of Gila River and how this Phoenix-area Tribal Community went from a 3rd World infrastructure to World Class in less than 20 years.  An inspiring story that needs to needs to be replicated another 500+ times.

This question was asked to IEEE ComSoc SCV members.

In the current issue of Barrons, Rich Pzena, principal of Pzena Investment Management states:

"The telecommunications industry is in turmoil right now because of the merger of Alcatel and Lucent. Competitors are using it as an excuse to try and gain share. Alcatel-Lucent [ALU] is not going to let them ruin the business. This is a great business. There are only a few suppliers, and not many customers. The customers have big installed bases and tend to continue buying on their chosen platforms. In comes a competitor and says, these guys are merging and you don’t know what is going to happen. I’ll give you my product for free if you switch to my platform, and then I’ll get recurring revenues. A number of those offers are being made, and the incumbent has to match them. You have a price war.

Barrons:  But how long can that last?

It can’t last long term. That’s not prudent. It would just lead to lower earnings and no market-share shifts. In the end the price war will abate and Alcatel-Lucent will be successful in reducing costs as per the merger plan."

All respondents agreed, except one member who stated:

"Alcatel was and is a politically driven company, with people at its helm who went through the same French management school as all their presidents and all CEOs of any of the big French companies. That is now overlaid on top of what used to be an admittedly dysfunctional Lucent, but it sure has not made it any better."

Another member commented that:

"I am seeing similar price war situations in segments of the semiconductor industry for years and also the logical expectation always is "It can’t last long. That’s not prudent" – unfortunately it does (last long) because somehow everybody seems to be able to secure funding for such a loss situation under the assumption "it can’t last much longer – and I can win it", hence it\n lasts. As for ALU, I think they will prevail for mentioned reasons but I have never seen prices come back after and cost reductions by synergies take effect slower so (everybodies) business plans are taking major hits."

Opinion:

This author agrees with the Barrons’ assessment of Telecom in Turmoil. Not only Alcatel-Lucent, but Ericsson, Motorola, and Nortel continue to announce disappointing results. We believe that Chinese telecom equipment manufacturers Huawei and ZTE are putting tremendous pressure on prices and squeezing profit margins for all players. It seems like Cisco is de-emphasizing the traditional service provider market, in favor of routers and telepresence/video conferencing gear.

Along these same lines, we kick off this year with some great advice from the granddaughter of the Queen of Etiquette, Emily Post.  In this brief video, Anna Post gives tips on the proper use of email, instant messaging, speaker phones, video conferencing and new technologies in general.  Feel free to pass this video along, as she has some common-sense ideas on the proper use of these relatively new communication methods.

(video source:  Logitech)