Tuesday, March 11, 2008

XO and the FCC at the Expo

I'm attending the Phone+ Channel Partners Expo (for telecom agents). Yesterday, one keynote was from CEO of XO, Carl Grivner. His main points centered on his belief that things are going to get better in telecom. Demand is up and will increase. (He did not say Exaflood thankfully). Video is the driving force. YouTube spends $1M per month on bandwidth now as people download 100M videos per day. That is 6 Petabytes of data. Then there is Apple also pushing music and video. (And don't forget Netflix)

Grivner thinks that it is possible Google will offer Voice for Free. "They just have a different business model than telecom."

His 2 keys to success were Customer Service and Passion & Energy. I think it is difficult to offer great customer care without having enthusiasm (energy and passion). It has to be top down, too.

Grivner thinks that consolidation will slow down now (lack of available credit).

Grivner also thinks that the FCC will be "stable" the rest of the year. He does note that the issues of copper replacement and forbearance do not bode well for CLEC's. And CLEC's should plan for that inevitability. (In other words, he sees UNE's going away in the next 2 years).

Next, Nancy Lubamersky of TelePacific spooke about the Regulatory landscape. Any talk about Regulation empties a room whether it is ISPCON or Channel Partners. I don't understand it. Regulations affect telecom more than competition. Nancy did note that the FCC has 10 times more lawyers than Engineers. She also notes that Uncertainty is Not Good for the market - it's too hard to raise capital to build out network.

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