With all the buzz about Twitter as a customer service tool and many well known companies diving in, you might be asking yourself, should your company use Twitter to connect with your customers. There are a number of things to consider as you answer this question but the most important (by far) is “are your customers using Twitter?”

If they are not, that will affect how you use Twitter. You can’t connect to people who are not there.

Mashable estimates about 12% of the US population will be using Twitter by the end of 2009 with 18% by 2010.

Consider where you do business. Some states have many more people using Twitter. For example, here is a ranking of the top 10 states in the USA based on their Twitter users

1. California
2. Texas
3. New York
4. Flordia
5. Illinois

With all of this in mind, what Telecom Carriers are using twitter at all, and who is using it as a traditional one way push marketing tool.

Carrier Support Twitter Accounts
@askintelletrace            Intelletrace Inc.
@verizonsupport           Verizon Business
@sprintcare                    Sprint
@talktoqwest                  Qwest Communications

Carriers with Marketing ONLY or unknown usage.
@lvlt                                Level3 – Unused Many Followers no tweets
@attnews                       AT&T – Marketing
@xolearning                  XO – Marketing
@Globalcrossing          Global Crossing - Marketing
@integra_cares            Integra Telecom – Many Followers no tweets
@grandecom                 Grande Communications – Marketing
@abovenet                    Abovenet Communications – Many Followers no tweets

No Twitter Accouts Found at all
Yipes
Electric Lightwave
Cogent Communications
Time Warner Telecom
360 Networks

Do the carriers with no twitter presence even know they are being talked about?  Are the Carriers with only a marketing presence doing a traditional PUSH method or are they actually using it as a tool? For the few Carriers Intelletrace, Verizon Business, Sprint, and Qwest Communications, my Congrats for being a telecommunications leader in support.

A great example is a post recently sent out here.  Are you following yet?  It describes an outage with Level3 and Verizon Business.

I have focused on terrestrial telecommunication carriers.  If you want your information to be added to this post, I will be happy to do it at any time.  Just Tweet me @dzerbe or Post a comment to this blog.

I am on the fence on this one.  Being a parent I see the benefit of me subscribing to a service or service provider that filters its content so I don’t need to or know how to.  Products that come to mind are Cyber Sitter, Net Nanny or equivalent..  On the other hand, I believe in education.  I need to teach my children about the internet.  There may be situations I need access to information out there that may be blocked for my children not for me. 

Is it possible to get both? I think yes. I don’t think service providers should block content without letting me know in advance.  This is so I can decide if their service is good for me.  If they are going to offer this service, let people know, or offer two types of services.  Let the free market decide.  I don’t have a problem with them prioritizing traffic, or de-prioritizing traffic as the case might be.  I dont mind them requiring you to relay your outbound mail through their server.  I think those help the net in general and it is the obligation of the provider to protect them self.

Intelletrace Offers Dedicated (unshared no aggregation) direct internet access to the internet.  This is how I believe it should be done, this is what we advertise.  This is what we do. 

Why this blog?  this is a post from the Washington Post regarding the following article.

FCC looks at ways to assert authority over Web access

As a recent court hearing and industry opposition have cast doubt on its power over Web service providers.
The FCC, which regulates public access to telephone and television services, has been working to claim the same role for the Internet. The stakes are high, as the Obama administration pushes an agenda of open broadband access for all and big corporations work to protect their enormous investments in a new and powerful medium.
“This is a pivotal moment,” said Ben Scott, director of policy at the public interest group Free Press. The government wants to treat broadband Internet as a national infrastructure, he said, like phone lines or the broadcast spectrum. But federal regulators are grappling with older policies that do not clearly protect consumers’ access to the Web, their privacy or prices of service.
The issue may have reached a turning point last week when a federal appeals court questioned the limits of the FCC’s authority in a 2008 case involving Comcast. The agency had ordered the Internet and cable giant to stop blocking subscribers’ access to the online file-sharing service BitTorrent. But in an oral hearing last Friday, three judges grilled an FCC lawyer over whether the agency had acted outside the scope of its authority.
The appeals court is still hearing the case, but analysts predict that the FCC will lose and that the ruling could throw all of its efforts to oversee Internet access into question. A loss could undermine the legality of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s push for policies that would prohibit service providers from restricting customers’ access to legal Web content — the concept known as net neutrality — and throw into doubt the agency’s ability to oversee pricing and competition among Internet service providers.

This is a Follow-up blog from a prior post in June of 09

The indirect channel for communications network services has evolved somewhat differently than those for voice and data telephony gear. Those channels have a relatively straightforward structure with the vendor working directly with a dealer/reseller or using a distributor to supply product to its indirect sales partners. In the carrier world, there is a more complex structure (see graphic, Communications Services Supply Chain). Understanding the different players will help an agent understand his role in the supply chain

Carriers

Carriers, also called network service providers, are regulated companies that provide wide area network (WAN) communications services. WAN services are those beyond the customer LAN. (Think telephone and Internet services.) Carriers fall into a few primary categories:

Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) provide local telephone service. The largest of these are the former regional Bell operating companies (or RBOCs), which include Verizon Communications Inc., Qwest Communications International and AT&T Inc. There are other independent operating companies, such as CenturyTel and a number of rural telephone companies.

Interexchange Carriers (IXCs) provide domestic U.S. long-distance services. In the past, this was a company like AT&T, Verizon Business, Sprint or Intelletrace. Today, almost all interexchange carriers also provide local service.

Wireless Carriers provide mobile wireless services, e.g., cellular wireless service. Today, the leading U.S. wireless carriers are Verizon Wireless, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile.

Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) are LECs that are competitive to the RBOC or incumbent LECs. These companies are facilities-based (e.g., they own switching facilities). They may own some fiber/copper, but often lease ILEC facilities for local termination. Examples include O1 Communications, TelePacific Communications and many of the cable TV providers, such as Comcast.

International Carriers provide connectivity from the United States to other countries. Some of these are based in the United States, e.g., Global Crossing, Sprint, Level 3, AT&T, and others are non-U.S. operators, e.g., China Telecom America, that have set up points of presence in large U.S. hubs like New York City, Miami or Los Angeles.

Wholesaler or wholesale carrier is a term you might run across that refers to a provider that sells services at wholesale to other carriers or resellers. There are some providers that do this exclusively, but most do it to varying degrees alongside their retail business. Usually, agents do not buy directly from wholesalers because that would make them a reseller (see below), but there are exceptions. Intelletrace operates part of its business as a Wholesaler to other Carriers and Resellers.

Service Providers

There are a number of companies that offer voice and data communications services that are only loosely regulated.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer access to the Internet through dial-up or dedicated connections. There are some pure-play ISPs, like America Online and Earthlink, but most telcos and cable TV companies also are ISPs. Internet access services can be wireline (e.g., DSL, cable modem, T1, Ethernet) or wireless.

VoIP Service Providers also called Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs) deliver voice over the Internet (e.g., Skype or Vonage) or over private IP networks. VoIP providers may also deliver PBX-replacement services, or hosted IP telephony. They are subject to CALEA, USF and E911 regulations. Most carriers and cable companies also provide VoIP services as do many resellers, since the cost of entry is relatively low.

Resellers

A word about resellers: In the carrier world, reseller is used differently than in the hardware/software world. Resellers of gear and software buy at a discount and mark up the product and bill the customer. Value-added resellers (VARs) add value by wrapping professional services around the product. In both cases the vendor branding remains intact. Compare that to these reseller models:

Facilities-based Resellers provide the services of a telephone carrier by combining their own switches with lines leased from an incumbent carrier. These services are purchased wholesale and billed as part of a total service. If they provide local, long-distance or international voice services, they must be certified as a regulated telephone company. Early competitive long-distance companies and most CLECs are facilities-based resellers.

Switchless Resellers also provide the services of a telephony carrier but without facilities. They rebrand, market and rebill those services. Again, the end user usually is not aware of the underlying network provider, although in some cases they understand that the service rides one or more of the facilities-based carrier/reseller networks. A primary value proposition for a switchless reseller is being able to provide local services nationwide. Examples of switchless resellers include TMC Communications, TNCI and Intelletrace.

Aggregators are similar to switchless resellers, but tend to refer to companies that aggregate broadband services from multiple providers to provide a national footprint. Examples include Covad, MegaPath and New Edge Networks.

Virtual Network Operators (VNOs) are switchless resellers by another name. This term is used more commonly in the wireless market, e.g., Mobile Virtual Network Operator.

Agents

As with the service providers, there are many types of indirect sales partners or agents.  Intelletrace offers these types of services but is not an agent.  Billing comes directly from Intelletrace.

Independent Agents are individuals or companies that have a direct agreement with a service provider and do not serve as a master agent for other indirect sales partners. In some circles, they are known as Independent Marketing Representatives.

Brokers have contracts with many vendors, carriers and/or master agents and sell through all other levels. Brokers also are middlemen in carrier-to-carrier deals as well as carrier-to-business transactions.

Master Agents are companies that have negotiated agreements with suppliers to sell a large volume of services and to manage a network of subagents beneath them. Master agents are similar to distributors in the hardware/software industry.

Subagents usually are individuals, but may also be companies, who sell telecom services through a master agent. They are supported and paid by the master agent.

Referral Agents, also known as affiliated agents, usually are individuals, but also may be companies, who refer business to a service provider, master agent or agent in exchange for a one-time bounty. Referral agents often are in a related field, e.g., PBX dealers that don’t want to become full agents, or a complementary one, e.g., premises security companies.

Consultants are individuals or companies who recommend telecom services to their clients. In some cases, they are part of an agent program in order to get help with quoting and provisioning even while taking a 0 percent commission.

IP is the workhorse of the Telecom industry.  For those of you not sure with the short hand term of IP, it stands for Internet Protocol. 

Today this is the core communications method that all internet and most home devices communicate over.  In my house I have a number of devices, from the obvious to the not so obvious.  Computers, IPhone, Xbox, Wii, Home Theatre AMP, DVD Library, Blueray Player, Home Automation, Home Alarm, Satellite TV, Pool and Hottub, and video surveillance. Then last but not least My VOIP Phone.  This is just to mention a few.  I am glad that I have Fiber to The Home (FTH) to support my needs. 

I see carrier’s traditional TDM networks being retired in time to accommodate this new trend.  This clearly will not happen all in 2010 but it will be an evolution in infrastructure. 

“Efficiencies and efficiencies of scale are the primary thing providers are looking for. Even when we’re doing some things like TDM-to-IP legacy service migration for them, the faster we can get it to IP the happier they are. They want to push that to the edge as fast as they can,” said Jay Wilson, Adtran’s senior vice president and general manager of its carrier division. “From a carrier perspective, the biggest thing is efficiencies, not necessarily just efficiencies of scale but efficiencies of bandwidth and ease of provisioning, improved visibility.”

I see IP convergence of the three basic services. Data, Voice, and Video over IP.  I don’t see the next big hurtle being the adoption of this change but a change to IP that is almost mandatory to continue this explosion in growth.  I am referring to the long awaited adoption of IPv6, Internet Protocol Version 6 is the next generation protocol for the Internet.

For all of these reasons you are now going to need to identify a carrier that truly understands data.  There are a few out there that do. In fact their business model focuses on data only.  These are the providers of the future.  One of theses such providers is Intelletrace.

For the home user it is telephone service over the internet. One of the most popular examples is Vonage. This type of service you connect an appliance to your home internet connection then you plug in your phone and away you go. The type of service I would like to talk about is SIP Trunk. A SIP trunk is similar to VOIP at home.

Generally the service I am referring to is for business and has multiple trunks. Generally there is no appliance by the SIP provider. The SIP session terminates at the business PBX. The business would use this type of service as their primary connection to the public switched telephone network in place of analog trunks or a PRI.

There are three basic types of SIP Providers.
1. The first type is the best in my opinion, but the most expensive. This type of provider will provide you a dedicated DSL or T1 connecting into their MPLS or direct connection. No other traffic will traverse this link except the Voice Traffic. This is ideal because they have full control of the data going across this connection. Read the rest of this entry »