It's All About the Applications

By Peter Radizeski, RAD-INFO

After flying back from Channel Partners, I hit Miami Beach for the Voice Peering Fabric Forum.

About 200 high-level execs from companies on the VPF attended. (For those that don’t know, the VPF is a network for VoIP minute exchange, ENUM and CLEC services in an ASP model, such as E-911, LNP and CNAM.)

There was definitely an international flavor with France Telecom, Telecom Italia Sparkle, pulse (Canada), BT, Brasil Telecom and Voxbone (Belgium). It was amazing to hear from Europe where it seems they have zoomed by the United States. In France and the United Kingdom, regulation has resulted in a very open market, causing FT and BT to re-examine their business – and , gasp, get innovative. FT lost 1.6 million customers last year to competitors. Triple play in France is $39.

Most talk is about mobility and VoIP on the cell phone (or similar device).New sources of revenue are needed. Most agreed it is about the Applications.

Seeing beyond just connectivity. Growth has been in fixed VoIP and cellular.

Who knew that SMS messaging would be huge? In the end, it is about the customer experience – and every customer’s experience is different.

Adding creativity

As AT&T moves closer to the complete rebranding of Cingular, the latters stores will be renamed the AT&T Experience. According to the Atlanta Biz Journal, “new AT&T Experience Stores will sell AT&T’s entire portfolio of wireless, broadband, video, home networking and wireline voice products.”

RBOC’s do like to make it tough for agents to eat. Granted the stores are aimed at residential sales, but they will likely attract SOHO and VSB (very small business) sales. These are quick transactional sales that some agents target. These stores also allow for easy DSL orders. The Web, the 800 numbers, the account teams, the call centers and now brick-and-mortar. You have to be pretty creative to be a telecom agent these days.

Peter Radizeski is president of

RAD-INFO

. He can be reached at

[email protected]

.