TELECOM NEWS 3-2011

LinkedIn Groups
• Group: Telecom Channel Updates
• Subject: TELECOM NEWS

Level 3 Communications, Inc. today announced a strategic long-term agreement with leading Middle East telecommunications operator Saudi Telecom to enable international IP and content distribution services in Saudi Arabia and across the Middle East.
SOURCE: Stockhouse

Fibre-optic connectivity services provider AboveNet has completed its expansion in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris. It now offers a portfolio of metro and WAN services to enterprises and carriers across Europe.
SOURCE: TELECOMPAPER

XO Communications Launches Cloud-Based Communications Service for Enterprises
SOURCE: marketwire

Sprint Nextel will offer a handset next month from HTC that includes Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system.
SOURCE: Channel Partners

Intellifiber Networks, a subsidiary of PAETEC Holding Corp., says it has won a multi-million dollar contract to provide managed network services to one of the largest data centers in North America..
SOURCE: LIGHTWAVE

The House of Representatives passed an amendment to an annual spending bill that prohibits the Federal Communications Commission from using funds to implement controversial Internet rules the agency adopted in December but have not yet gone into effect.
SOURCE: Channel Partners

The Telecom Channel Updates group has added more than 5,000 members in the last 10 months.

Losses to continue to pile up at Clearwire, the Kirkland, Wash.-based company that is building a nationwide, fourth-generation wireless network.
SOURCE: Channel Partners

Cox Communications this week is kicking off an advertising campaign in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Okla., for its mobile phone and data services, as the MSO gears up to launch wireless in the market in the first half of 2011.
SOURCE: MultiChannel News

Broadview Networks plans to roll out its cloud computing services at the end of February. The suite, which includes infrastructure as a service and software as a service, will be available for sale through the company's agents. SOURCE: Channel Partners

Level 3 Communications, Inc. announced that it has extended its network infrastructure in Georgia with the construction of a full network point of presence and fiber node at Global Net Access, LLC's (GNAX) AtlantaNAP Data Center.
SOURCE: Business Wire

Broadview Networks announced that OfficeSuite, its hosted Internet Protocol (IP) phone solution, has surpassed 50,000 VoIP stations in service.
SOURCE: TMCnet.com

LightSquared, a company that has raised $2 billion to build a wireless broadband network that incorporates satellite technology, is in talks with a major U.S. mobile operator to help speed up the development of its infrastructure at a lower cost, according to a new report.
SOURCE: Channel Partners

Comcast has been testing upstream channel bonding for some time, and has seen upstream speeds as high as 75 Mbps in the labs. According to a Comcast engineer, upstream channel bonding should be production ready by the end of March, meaning you should see faster upstream speeds this year:
SOURCE: BroadBand

Verizon Business on Friday announced that it has met Cisco's prerequisites to sell, implement and support the Cisco Unified Computing System in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands.
SOURCE: Channel Partners

Integra Telecom Inc. released a new online data storage product intended to help growing businesses accommodate for increasing data storage needs.
SOURCE: internet.com

Accelerating Time-to-Value

Accelerating Time-to-Value for IT Enabled Solutions (Part I)

CEOs are placing additional pressure on CIOs to deliver IT-enabled business
solutions in shorter periods of time that have an immediate impact on the
bottom-line. Not surprisingly, both business and IT leaders have a role in
meeting this challenge. From an IT perspective, traditional methods of
scoping, developing and delivering IT solutions need to be reconsidered.
From a business perspective, the idea of throwing projects "over-the-wall"
to IT doesn't work either. Both business and IT need to rethink their
respective roles as new IT-enabled capabilities are envisioned, developed
and deployed. This blog describes the first five of ten best practices that
you might find helpful as you work with your business colleagues to quickly
deliver IT-enabled capabilities. These have less to do with technology and
more to do with how business and IT work together. You'll have to wait for
part II of this blog to read about the remaining five best practices.

1. Pursue a Worthwhile Goal
In order to motivate a group to go fast, the goal has to be compelling. In
most businesses, the executive team, including the CIO, is required to
develop a business strategy that contains a set of initiatives that are
worthwhile, compelling and enable the company to compete effectively in the
marketplace. Many of these strategic initiatives involve some level of
information technology as a critical enabler. However, the complaint among
many business leaders is that these IT investments don't deliver the
requisite business value. To achieve this business value requires a close
partnership between business and IT, each stepping up to their respective
responsibilities. When all parties have a stake in a project's outcome and
are held accountable for results, they are more inclined to endorse and
sustain the effort versus abandon it. See my previous blog, "The business
value of IT."

2. Cut Through the Bureaucracy and Roadblocks
Does your company require IT projects to pass through a gauntlet of
unnecessary reviews, checkpoints, executive presentations and the like? Do
these reviews balance the need to identify and mitigate risk with a
discussion on how to accelerate project deployment and improve the
probability of success? Or have these reviews become more of a formality and
a way to spread accountability? A careful examination of barriers and
roadblocks that delay project completion should be pursued. Those that
aren't aligned with the objective of accelerating deployment and ensuring a
successful outcome should be eliminated.

3. Experience Matters - Use the "A" Team
Most experienced leaders know that a handful of very talented staff can do
the work of a much larger group of average individuals. This requirement is
true for both business and IT professionals assigned to the project. This
may mean pulling some of a company's strongest leaders out of day-to-day
operations for a short period of time. Go with "A" players that have a
demonstrated track record of successful project delivery versus "C" players
that just happen to be available. If a company doesn't have the requisite
number of "A" players to manage the execution of all strategic initiatives,
it can either engage outside resources to supplement internal staff or cut
back on the number of initiatives it is pursuing at any given time.

4. Set Aggressive Time Goals
When it comes to reducing time-to-value for IT-enabled projects, one is
reminded of the old adage - "nothing good happens after midnight." An
IT-enabled project that takes longer than six months will quickly reach the
point of diminishing return where nothing good can occur. In fact, three
months is an even better duration for an IT-enabled project. Application
development techniques like Agile programming can work within even much
shorter time periods - typically less than one month. Yes, it is possible to
deliver substantive, IT-enabled capabilities within a month. This doesn't
mean that businesses should limit their ambitions in terms of the degree of
change that is needed to remain competitive. It just means that they should
time-fence the execution of the change in six month increments or less.
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5. Provide Meaningful Incentives
Although the goal in and of itself can motivate high levels of performance,
other incentives can be quite effective as well. These incentives can
include performance bonuses, project participation for skill development,
public recognition, promotions and many others. In any case, incentives need
to be meaningful, performance (as opposed to effort) based and not perceived
as a token. It is also extremely important that business and IT participants
on the project share similar incentives. It is critical that annual
performance objectives for project participants also include successful
milestone completion and, as appropriate, realization of the project's
objectives (e.g. cost reduction, revenue growth, improved customer service)
as a key accountability. Finally, incentives need to be timely (e.g. upon
achievement of a significant project milestone) and not delayed until the
normal end-of-year cycle.

Recent column by Rick Davidson

Seth's Blog: Making meetings more expensive

Making meetings more expensive
...might actually make them cost less.

What would happen if your organization hired a meeting fairy?

The fairies' job would be to ensure that meetings were short, efficient and effective. He would focus on:

• Getting precisely the right people invited, but no others.

• Making the meeting start right on time.

• Scheduling meetings so that they don't end when Outlook says they should, but so that they end when they need to.

• Ensuring that every meeting has a clearly defined purpose, and accomplishes that purpose, then ends.

• Welcoming guests appropriately. If you are hosting someone, the fairy makes sure the guest has adequate directions, a place to productively wait before the meeting starts, access to the internet, something to drink, biographies of who else will be in the room and a clear understanding of the goals of the meeting.

• Managing the flow of information, including agendas and Powerpoints. This includes eliminating the last minute running around looking for a VGA cable or a monitor that works. The fairy would make sure that everyone left with a copy of whatever they needed.

• Issuing a follow up memo to everyone who attended the meeting, clearly delineating who came and what was decided.

If you do all this, every time you call a meeting it's going to cost more to organize. Which means you'll call fewer meetings, those meetings will be shorter and more efficient. And in the long run, you'll waste less time and get more done.