Staying Connected

On Sunday, August 30, there was a massive, half-day network outage that interrupted service across the US.  The latest news reports indicate that there was an astonishing 3.5% drop in global internet traffic during the down time incident which appears to have been caused by CenturyLink, one of the world’s largest Tier 1 ISPs.

In this 9 minute podcast Theresa Knutson, a director at TC2, David Lee, TC2’s Technical Director, and Andrew Brown, the Chairman of TC2 and the Managing Partner of LB3 discuss with TC2’s Joe Schmidt how this outage occurred.  You’ll also hear why companies operating in the new cloud-based world need to demand more from the “daisy chain” of multiple ISPs, cloud providers, carrier neutral facilities, and network operators.

Last month the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued an Order in the ongoing robocalling proceeding and, unfortunately, it could spell trouble for enterprise customers engaged in any form of customer outreach by phone.  While the FCC’s intention may have been good, it was short-sighted and failed to clearly define the process carriers should use to distinguish between blocking illegal calls while letting the legitimate calls go through. 

Listen to this 9 minute podcast as Sara Crifasi, a lawyer at LB3, and TC2’s Joe Schmidt discuss where the FCC came up short in the robocalling Order and why you, as an enterprise user, need to make your voice heard with the FCC.

In late April 2020 the FCC adopted sweeping new rules that will allow potentially hundreds of millions of new WiFi access points and other unlicensed devices to transmit on the same 6 GHz frequencies that are currently used by public safety agencies, energy companies, telecom carriers, and many other licensees for point-to-point communications.  This is a really big deal.  What will happen if those hundreds of millions of unlicensed devices somehow cause interference on the airwaves?

Listen to this 8 minute podcast as Jeff Sheldon, a Partner at LB3, discusses with TC2’s Joe Schmidt the impact this ruling has for users of these devices and airwaves.  Jeff also offers some recommended actions that you’ll want to take right now.

If you’re a new management or a new private equity investment team, what do you need to do to understand the company that you’ve inherited and how to derive savings?  This is often the big question that’s asked because savings are usually one of the main goals of mergers and acquisitions. 

On this 12 minute podcast, Laura McDonald, a Partner at LB3, and Pat Gilpatrick and Joe Schmidt, Directors at TC2, discuss how management can develop short and long term plans for achieving ICT cost savings and offer some specific opportunities that can significantly reduce ongoing operating costs.

Companies are always looking for ways to drive cost savings, and in today’s uncertain environment it’s more important than ever.  Invoices from network services providers are complex and that complexity leads to waste or spending money on things that you don’t use or shouldn’t be paying for in your network budget.   

In this 9 minute podcast, TC2 Directors Theresa Knutson and Joe Schmidt describe how a TC2 contract compliance and optimization (CCO) project works and the benefits an enterprise can realize.  You’ll hear how this “audit on steroids” goes deeper than just checking that contract rates are correctly invoiced and how it has the likely potential to return eight to ten times the cost of the engagement in savings.

Following up on an article they recently wrote, Jack Deal, one of TC2’s Managing Directors, and Mark Sheard, TC2’s UK Managing Director, discuss with TC2’s Joe Schmidt whether enterprises should still be using legacy time division multiplexing (TDM)-based networking and what the alternatives are if they decide to decommission the service.

In this 8 minute podcast you’ll hear why this is a service that may finally have come to end-of-life.  We also explain why the landscape for the continued use of TDM-based networking is becoming increasingly challenging and why developing a strategy to move away from TDM voice is more important than ever.

In this second episode of the two-part podcast series, Laura McDonald, a Partner at LB3, and Pat Gilpatrick, a Director at TC2, continue their discussion with TC2’s Joe Schmidt about what companies need to do to achieve maximum benefit from their ICT contracts when working through a merger.

In this 7 minute podcast, you’ll hear what steps you need to take once you’ve reviewed existing contracts, including gathering data, completing your financial analysis, and determining what commercial and legal provisions are most advantageous for the combined entity.  You’ll also hear how the remaining term of a contract can help (or hinder) your supplier negotiations.

One thing is certain for businesses - company mergers and acquisitions will always be a fact of life.  If you work for a company that is merging, what do you do when two ICT contracts exist for the same supplier or the same services?  What do you need to know, and more importantly, what do you need to do once the work trickles down to the IT team? 

In this 8 minute part one of a two-part podcast series, industry experts Laura McDonald, a Partner at LB3, and Pat Gilpatrick, a Director at TC2, join TC2’s Joe Schmidt and discuss the first steps to take in the M&A planning process to realize the maximum benefits from your ICT contracts.

The Universal Service Fund, or USF, is a government program that provides money to vendors so that they can provide subsidized connections to high cost or rural areas, schools and libraries, low income people, and rural health care centers that rely on telemedicine. Annual funding for the $10 billion program comes from carrier revenues that they, unsurprisingly, pass on to you the end user, by applying a surcharge to certain kinds of “assessed services.”

Listen to this 11 minute podcast as Andrew Brown, the Managing Partner of LB3 and the Chairman of TC2, along with TC2 Directors Theresa Knutson and Joe Schmidt, discuss why the USF system is broken and steps you might want to take now to keep this increasing cost in check.

Automation is everywhere and is quickly being adopted by service providers to streamline how they provision and support their technology and services. Enterprises need to be prepared as automation in IT service management is becoming an increasingly important component of managed network services deals.

Listen to this 10 minute podcast as TC2 Managing Director Ben Fox discusses with Joe Schmidt what automation of IT service management looks like for the enterprise, and steps to take in your next procurement that will improve your managed network services performance and lower your costs.