Staying Connected

Last week there were two interesting stories in the news – Windstream filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and AT&T won the lawsuit the US Department of Justice brought against it attempting to block its acquisition of Time Warner. In our view, neither of these events is favorable for enterprise buyers of telecom services.

Listen to this 12 minute podcast as Deb Boehling, a Partner at LB3, and Keith Cook, a Project Director at TC2 discuss with TC2’s Joe Schmidt how these events may impact your telecom purchasing decisions and offer advice on what you need to do.

Here's the third 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 two key topics for enterprises - Telecom Expense Management Will Get a Makeover in 2019 & Vendor Management Will Get Harder as Vendors Reduce Support Staff.

There are many changes taking place at some of the top network service providers that are impacting the enterprise and forcing companies to take a close look at their service support needs.  Many organizations have seen their once reliable vendor support rapidly decline as service providers reduce support staff. 

In this 10 minute podcast TC2’s Theresa Knutson, Bryan Carriker, and Joe Schmidt discuss this changing dynamic and offer guidance on the steps you can take to maintain your account support. 

Here's the second 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 looks at the FCC's proposed new E911 rules, buying more broadband for the buck, and what will happen with Net Neutrality.

In this first episode of our four part podcast series where LB3's Laura McDonald and Kevin DiLallo discuss with TC2's Joe Schmidt the Ten Things to Watch in 2019, we cover GDPR and US Data Privacy.

2018 began with the not so great news that the upward trend of the USF contribution factor continued, and hit an all time high of 19.5% -  an enormous increase from the 3% when it was introduced in the late 1990’s.

This eye-popping number is going to impose a hefty fee on enterprise customers’ telecom bills in the coming quarter.   

Listen to this 10 minute podcast as LB3’s Andrew Brown and TC2's Theresa Knutson and Joe Schmidt discuss the current state of USF and the strategies enterprises can adopt to help control this menace cost.

There’s always a way to create competition and a healthy tension with suppliers that will result in big savings on your network services.  Last year, for example, many of our clients saw significant cost reductions when they migrated MPLS to an SD-WAN solution using broadband and internet connections and moved TDM voice to SIP trunking.  While savings are available if you put in the effort, to actually book those savings requires that the project not stop once the contracts are executed and the new services are ordered.  

Listen to this 10 minute podcast as TC2 Project Directors Theresa Knutson and Joe Schmidt discuss the additional steps you need to take to realize big network cost savings.

Did you ever look around at all of the various infrastructure on your sites that’s needed for service providers to deliver communications services?  There’s a lot of equipment and cabling needed to get that data from the device to the data center.  But whose responsibility is it to clean up the abandoned infrastructure when it reaches end of life and what are the risks to you if it’s left in place?

Listen to this 9 minute podcast as Kevin DiLallo, one of LB3’s senior partners, and TC2’s Joe Schmidt discuss the potential risks that abandoned infrastructure exposes you to and what you can do about it.

On the heels of Verizon’s recent workforce reduction announcement, they’ve revealed they’re also reorganizing their business units.  What is this new organization structure going to look like and how will it affect the enterprise customer?  Will combining wireless and wireline under the same business and leadership structure serve the enterprise better?

Listen to this 7 minute podcast as and TC2’s Ben Fox and LB3’s Andrew Brown discuss with Joe Schmidt what this reorganization might mean for you.  

Global demand for internet transport is skyrocketing due to changes in network edge technology, greater use of cloud services that don’t necessitate backhauling all traffic to your data center, and just generally greater adoption of the hybrid WAN.  What’s surprising is that the cost for broadband internet has increased marginally over the last few years but the amount of bandwidth delivered has increased nearly ten-fold.

Listen to this 12 minute podcast as TC2’s Keith Cook and Mark Sheard discuss with Joe Schmidt how enterprises can establish the right network transport mix to take advantage of this pricing phenomenon.