Staying Connected

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission announced a jaw droppingly high USF contribution factor—24.4%.  In simple terms, for every $10 million a business spends on telecom services, an enterprise will also be laying out an additional $2.4 million in USF assessments.  Even worse, this number will likely go higher unless a fundamental change is made to the way USF is funded, and that’s not likely to happen unless businesses raise their voices, and raise them very loudly.

In this ten minute podcast, Joe Schmidt of TechCaliber Consulting and Andrew Brown, Managing Partner of Levine, Blaszak, Block & Boothby discuss why the contribution factor increased by 30% this last quarter and why it’s likely to continuing increasing in the years to come.  Most importantly, they walk through what enterprise customers must do to prevent USF assessments from wreaking havoc on their budgets for network services.

The proposed merger between Sprint and T-Mobile was announced over a year ago and the deal is still pending.  The merger is being closely reviewed in Washington because one camp believes fewer mobile carriers would be bad for consumers, while another camp sees a stronger third wireless carrier as important to the United States’ global competitiveness with China in 5G.

Listen to this six minute podcast as LB3’s Sara Crifasi and Kevin DiLallo discuss the Sprint and T-Mobile merger with TC2’s Joe Schmidt and explain why the deal may … or may not … receive Washington’s approval and what it could mean for enterprises.

For nearly 20 years the lawyers of LB3 and consultants of TC2 have been running conferences to share our knowledge of the telecom and information communications technology market.  In 2019 we’ve already delivered our conference in Atlanta and will soon be presenting our London conference followed by Minneapolis and then New York.

Listen to this eight minute podcast as TC2’s Mark Sheard, Larry York, and Joe Schmidt provide background to the conference series and give insights into some of the conference topics, including a look at today’s market, trends taking place, and the most effective strategies for driving continuous cost improvement.

Lately we’ve witnessed a torrent of revelations about the collection and sharing of user information by technology companies, and with so much information being shared it seems like a new data privacy scandal erupts almost daily. As an enterprise, you need to be aware of what’s happening because it could have a major impact on your business.  

Listen to this 10 minute podcast as LB3’s Sara Crifasi and Kevin DiLallo discuss with TC2’s Joe Schmidt the types of data that vendors are collecting, how the vendors are using that data, and the internal and externally-directed actions you need to take to protect your company.

Like Europe’s GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) is California’s effort to enact stronger regulation of how enterprises handle personal information (PI).  For all intents and purposes, the CCPA applies to all for-profit enterprises who do business in California, while adopting a very broad definition of what qualifies as PI.

Listen to this 15 minute podcast as LB3’s Kevin DiLallo and Patrick Whittle discuss with TC2’s Joe Schmidt the purpose of CCPA, an enterprise’s obligations under CCPA, how the new regulation affects enterprise service provider agreements, and the penalties you could incur for non-compliance.

Communications infrastructure refers to the underlying public and private property that is needed to create a communications network … things like cell towers, land on which to build towers, rooftops, and even local rights-of-way. Knowing how to navigate the legal and regulatory environment could help enterprises realize faster – and hopefully less expensive – deployments to their facilities.

Listen to this 12 minute podcast as LB3’s Jeff Sheldon and TC2’s Joe Schmidt discuss how users are promoting development of communications infrastructure and what the FCC is doing to prevent state and local governments from inhibiting its deployment.

If you’ve ever been tasked with buying access for a site where fiber or copper is scarce, you probably have turned to alternative wireless local access solutions. These solutions used to be limited to expensive line-of-site microwave or high latency satellite. But today, there are a number of solutions available or coming soon that will deliver landline-like bandwidth and performance.

Listen to this ten minute podcast as TC2’s Brent Knight and David Lee discuss with Joe Schmidt how Software Defined Radio, 4G LTE and 5G cellular, and Low Earth Orbit satellites are expanding the available access options for enterprises.

TC2 Project Directors Tony Mangino and Joe Schmidt recently chaired a panel discussion on SIP Trunking at Enterprise Connect, a long-running annual conference where industry experts lead discussions on the latest systems, software, services and applications for enterprise communications and collaboration.  

The panelists included SIP Trunking product managers from AT&T, Comcast, Tata, and Verizon and all shared their SIP Trunking roadmaps.

Listen to this 5 minute podcast to hear about some of the newest features and services available with SIP Trunking.

Telecom projects have timelines and budgets and involve many company stakeholders.  One of these stakeholders is Legal, the resource an enterprise turns to that knows the laws that may affect your contract and the parties’ obligations.  Legal plays a critical role in analyzing and advising on contractual risk allocation between a company and its vendor and assists in properly documenting the business agreements reached.

Listen to this ten minute podcast as Deb Boehling, a partner at LB3, and Pat Gilpatrick, a Project Director at TC2, discuss with TC2’s Joe Schmidt the importance of including a legal resource on your telecom projects and the timing of when to bring them in.

Here's the final podcast from our series where LB3's Laura McDonald and Kevin DiLallo discuss with TC2's Joe Schmidt the Ten Things to Watch in 2019. This episode covers three of the most important topics for enterprises - 5G wireless, the Internet of Things, and SD-WAN.