Wednesday, March 14, 2012

CLEC Strategy 2012

If you are a nationwide CLEC or ITSP, your new strategy going forward is this:

The ILEC's are kicking are ass on Special Access. (See L3's FCC docket)

Cable will own all SMB services under $500.

We have fiber but we don't want to sell transport.

We want multi-location MPLS. CLEC's originally had a slight advantage with LNP, calling area, and cross-LEC services. Let me explain.

LNP: If your business was moving across the LATA or at least off the Central Office you were serviced from, you lost your number. CLEC's stepped in to let you keep that number. The same today.

Calling area: CLEC's typically gave you a larger local calling area. LATA-wide dialing was the usual deal. For small business, today, they are used to unlimited dialing through a VoIP provider (billed per handset) or on the cellphone plan. The per-minute and long distance billing is really only a medium, government and enterprise deal.

Cross-LEC services: cable companies have regions like ILEC's do. CLEC's can provide one-bill service across LEC's and across cableco regions. With the MVNO services that some CLEC's have, they are saying, hey, we can provide all that on one bill. It's not the lead offer, but it is in the tool kit.

So it is MPLS, Managed Security services and Cloud (including Hosted VoIP). And it is not BYOB Cloud either. It's so picky that they might as well throw in the towel and call it a day.

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