I heard an interesting comment today, which I find troubling and could be a cause for concern for another recession in a few years. Not only in Telecommunications, but in all industries, merger and acquisitions are at a high volume. What I am concerned is, that companies are making their buying decisions on current customer base, assets, and unique products or services. Not whether the management team is running the company smartly, providing customer value, and most importantly, MAKING MONEY! The investment banker I spoke with simply said, a company being profitable does not add value to what a company is worth in an acquisition.  I have read many articles on Warren Buffet, and his rules when buying companies, was a good management team and profitable.  How soon we forget the Dot Com Bust…

As the companies on Wall Street continue to buy market share, and are not gowing organically, there will be a time when they must start paying down their debt and they will no longer be able to add the value to their customer base, because they cannot afford to any longer. I still can not believe bandwidth continually decreases, yet the cost of running a network is getting more expensive.  Sure the equipment has come down, but it still requires people to maintain a network.  Also, the bandwidth needs are at an all time high, so the carriers must continue to build out their network to keep up with customer demand.   It will be very interesting to see what happens over the new few years.

“Thanks once again for the quick turn around. Sometimes cheap turns out to be expensive. I should have gone with u from the start.” 

I recently received this email from a long time client of Intelletrace.  A perfect quote to use on why clients continually come back to and choose Intelletrace as their preferred telecom vendor.  Yes, not all the time Inetelletrace is going to be the least expensive solution on paper, but when you add all the time our team saves companies and ensuring our customers get the correct solution the first time around, Intelletrace potentially saves our clients 30% to 40%.  Most of the time, our clients never factor in the most expensive part, TIME.

Here is my top 5:

1.  Lost productivity because of slower bandwidth speeds.

2. Wasted time spent on the phone, leaving voice mails, sending out emails, for updates on new installations, and not getting any responses.

3. Ordering incompatible equipment for your wide area network or worse, not realizing you had to order new equipment and you do not have the budget for it.

4.  Time wasted trying to find the correct person to contact or phone number to call for support or billing issues.

5.  Spending 6 months fighting a credit for incorrect billing or a Service Level credit, then waiting another 6 months to get the credit.

 I am sure it happens in your business too.  I would love to hear your top 5.

A quote I recently heard, fits perfect into telecommunications, “Please Agree with Me Now, it will save time.”  Intelletrace is always working on our relationships with our vendors.  Often times, we have to push them to get very competitive pricing.  Although this process takes time, and sometimes months, eventually Intelletrace secures what is needed for our clients.  I am amazed sometimes, how some Carriers are just out of touch with the marketplace and how they are willing to walk away from revenue, when the facilities and capacity is already in place.  We take the pain out of this process for our clients.

Often times, “Please Agree with Me Now, it will save time”, even applies to Intelletrace working with end users.  Intelletrace provides a competitive quote up front and explains who the best vendors are for the applications.  Clients still want to see if they can get better pricing on their own.  Often times when this is the case, the vendor is not able to deliver, and the client comes back to Intelletrace.  Not only did the client lose time in getting their services installed, they usually end up paying an expedite fee.  Time and money is lost. 

I would love to hear examples how  “Please Agree with Me Now, it will save time.”, applies to your business.

In a recent article in the SF Chronicle, Cisco Systems is suggesting Internet traffic will triple by 2014. This suggests, more than 90% of the traffic will be video. It seems very easy to believe, as new media companies are focusing on delivery content, whether it is movies, gaming, or applications which are on the cloud.  Bandwidth is still getting cheaper and easier to get than ever before, however, the experience of  installation intervals of 60 to 120 days for some of these high speed services can be tough to swallow.  Once the service is installed, customers are seeing higher bandwidth speeds for equal or even less than what they were paying before for 1.5 megs (T1) or 3.0 megs (2xT1 bonded).  Remember, there will be growing pains, as the Carriers work on upgrading their infrastructure to meet market demands and integrate the new technology.  There will also be support issues, as the Support Centers are not fully experienced with support the new technology and how to resolve the issues.  I beleive it will be about 2 or 3 years away before they resovle the support issues.  A topic for another blog. 

Businesses continue to continue to put their business applications on the cloud, such as using Amazon, Salesforce, or other outsourced applications, instead of bringing them in house.  This places more demand on bandwidth needs.  Also, businesses who have multiple offices are moving to VoIP (Voice of the Internet), to bring down their costs for inter-office calling and give them more flexibility.  This is another bandwidth hog, that is growing at a rapid pace. 

At home, my kids are playing games, watching YouTube, and watching Television via On-Demand from Comcast.  All which are bandwidth hogs.  My once fast cable connection, is now moving at a snail’s pace.  I only see the residential problem getting worse, as the Service Providers concentrate more on businesses.   “Kids go outside and play”…. 

Here is the link to the SFgate.com article.  I hope you enjoy it…

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/05/BUK81GL5A7.DTL

Often times I hear a network service provider “is just a middleman. They have no control over the Carriers” and “Network service providers just get in the way and add another layer to the problem.”  This is one of the biggest myths of of a Network Service Provider.  Often times it is the exact opposite.  At Intelletrace, we are installing anywhere from 15 to 25 different services each month.  We are constantly speaking with our vendors, developing great relationships, and working with the actual people in the buildings to get services installed or back up and running.  A typical response from a Carrier is, “we see the network up, so it must be the customer equipment”.  Intelletrace will continue to troubleshoot until the services are completely running to our customer’s satisfaction.  Intelletrace will provide a high level engineer to the issue if necessary, who can further assist with escalation and troubleshooting with the Carrier.  Most of the time, our customer’s are frustrated with the lack of knowledge of the support staff of the Carrier, equally frustrated with the escalation process, and are amazed at the lack of attention they are getting from a Carrier. 

 We know companies are understaffed and lack the resources to have people pulled away to take care of issue, which their vendors should be dealing with.  This is where Intelletrace adds the most benefit and is not just a middleman.   Bottom line, Intelletrace will not stop until your business is up and running.