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Viodi View Newsletter - February 16th, 2005 Issue

Indie Telco Local Content Workshop Advertisement

Greetings from the Riverwalk

By Ken Pyle, Viodi, LLC

The NTCA Annual Meeting is unique in that it is truly a forum for both directors and managers to learn the things they need to know to run a modern day telecommunications company. As such, the agenda included a broad range of seminars covering topics such as marketing, the responsibilities of a director, Human Resource issues and technology.

Michael Brunner, CEO of NTCA, in his state of the association address suggested that these are uncertain times with many challenges ahead. He said that independent telcos, “need a clear policy that addresses the needs of rural America.” He suggested that independent telcos and NTCA need to continue to educate customers and politicians as to the importance of their networks to maintaining a competitive telecommunications’ infrastructure.

Marketing and branding is fundamentally about education. Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, gave a very entertaining and instructive talk on how he developed the character Garfield into a successful brand that has spawned movies, stuffed toys and over 100 books. He has built his business in rural Indiana and his company, Paws, Inc., employs 55 people who focus on spreading the Garfield brand. Garfield joined him on stage and provided one example of how an independent telco can use the Garfield brand to liven up their brand.

Vince Vittore of Telephony stressed that niche branding will be increasingly important in order to win customers. He cited Virgin Mobile’s success in defining a unique product wrapped in their brand to win over 3 million subscribers in a very short time. Leo Staurulakis, of John Staurulakis, Inc., emphasized that telcos need to shift their business model such that they can survive the loss in market share due to the increased competition. He suggested growing the business as well as increasing operating efficiencies will be imperative to adjust to these shifts.

Dan Moffat of New Edge Networks, predicted that the next five years will see the reinvention of telecom. He sees two possible scenarios for independent telcos; 1) Intercarrier Compensation is settled in a way that is favorable to independent telcos, the RBOCs spin off lines to the independent telcos and the independent telcos grow market share, or 2) intercarrier compensation is settled in a way that is detrimental to independent telcos, causing the demise of 50% of the existing independent telco operators.

Jack Pendleton of GVNW spoke to the Engineering challenges faced by independent telcos. He issued a warning that the cable industry is ahead of the telcos and will continue to move further ahead due to the success of Cable Labs in establishing standards. Regarding a standards-based industry, Phil Hunt, Chairman of Amperion, made a strong case for the use of Broadband Powerline [BPL] technologies. Hunt claimed BPL costs are 1/5 that of DSL or cable modems, which really changes the economics of broadband. He believes, and I agree, that BPL represents opportunities for independent telcos; more about that in a later issue.

Hunt made a passionate plea that the industry figure out how to bring broadband to everyone, everywhere. He pointed out that the spread of knowledge, unleashed by the Internet, will benefit us all as the next Einstein or Salk could be living in some remote village in some under-developed part of the world. Through a USAID grant and the collective experience of its members, NTCA is doing its part to realize Hunt’s vision by helping people form their own telecom cooperatives in developing countries, such as Albania, Ukraine and Nigeria.

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