Indie Telco Local Content Workshop Information
Quick Jump Menu to this Issue’s Articles November 3rd, 2004 Overview Heads California, Tails Carolina: A Real Interesting Approach to Streaming: Don’t Like the News? Go Out and Make Your Own!:
Heads California, Tails Carolina
by Ken Pyle ([email protected]), Viodi, LLC
November 3, 2004 Issue
NeoNova had a nice mixture of partner companies and NeoNova staff presenting on various topics of interest to telcos that are also ISPs. One of those speakers was Michael Camp, General Manager of Hosted Services for Tekelec (this group is a result of Tekelec’s purchase of VocalData). Camp was a driver of Nortel’s efforts to create all sorts of neat PBX features, many of which people did not use. He pointed out that the reason many of us never went beyond what he called the “276” club (2 for retrieve messages, 7 for delete, 6 for next) was the difficulty in using a telephone key pad to select and customize PBX options.
On of the big advantages of IP telephony is it allows individuals to self-provision services through the use of a web portal interface. He talked to the importance of serving businesses services to an independent telco’s business plans. He suggested that the easy configuration of voice services and visual scanning of voice mails is becoming a must-have or table stakes these days for companies providing business telephone services. He believes it is critical for independent telcos to have solutions for businesses, both those at traditional business locations as well as solutions for the Small Office Home Office (SOHO) segment.
He suggested that if IOC’s don’t take control over the advanced residential services, then someone else will. He gave an example of a father-son duo that created a new VoIP business PBX offering for businesses in their hometown of Tupelo, MS. Their business is impacting the incumbent LEC. They have grown to 1,200 customers. Some of those customers are taking their service as a second phone line offering at their home, so they can easily extend their business lines to their home.
Providing SOHO services as a bundle represents a potential new revenue source for rural ILECs, as many people are moving to the hinterlands, but still working in a large corporate environment. It was also suggested that storage services is another revenue source as a back-up for small businesses data. This can be mission critical for companies such as lawyers, doctors and other small businesses. Independent telcos could probably charge a premium for these services, as they can leverage the trust in their established brand and provide the hand-holding that is still so necessary in order for people to exploit fully the capabilities of the technology.
What I didn’t realize is that NeoNova also provides VoIP services in partnership with independent telcos and in competition with companies, such as ANPI and Spirit Telecom. Their model is a bit different, as they work from the outset putting themselves out of business to some extent. That is, as the telco becomes more sophisticated the telco can take over more of the operations.
The other difference is that their architecture is distributed, such that their equipment is distributed among the IOCs it serves. This conserves bandwidth as opposed to a approach where the soft-switch is remotely located somewhere else in the United States. NeoNova’s focus is on integration of services, popularly called bundling, to maintain pricing levels, in the face of the commodization of local and long distance POTS.
Warren Lee provided a couple of examples of potential VoIP service packages, including:
- A teen line targeted at, well, teenagers. Features included such as 4 to 6 way conferencing, online portal, voicemail option, caller id, call waiting. The advantage with this approach is that teens are very peer driven so they it will have a bit of a viral marketing. This could be marketed as a gift for parents to give their kids. It could even drive DSL upgrades. Another side benefit to a teen line is that the teenagers could be unofficial trainers of the technology to their parents.
- IP Centrex – Great for conferencing, interesting, meet me and ad hoc telephone conferencing.
In addition to telephony, one of their integration partners, Myrio, showed their product integrated with the NeoNova back-office, so that a telco’s personnel only has to learn one user interface. Myrio also showed how it is possible for a customer to update their account via a web browser or the television. This was a feature that Starz called “auto-provisioning” and suggested was on their priority list in terms of things they wanted to see at the Interactive Television Alliance in September. Myrio also showed the obligatory pizza on demand application, which allows different toppings to be ordered, etc.
NeoNova did a great job of tying together so many different subjects. The attendees seemed to be very pleased at the organization of this event.
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