Rodent Regatta

Late yesterday afternoon I went to an open house at the offices of one of the local exchange carriers (LEC) that makes are market here in Memphis. The office is in one of the upscale and technology-friendly office complexes built in the last four or five years. The open house was incredibly nice. The food was good. There was an obvious sense by many people there that a corner had been turned and things were on the rebound.

The reason for the open house was several-fold. First, following the meltdown, this particular LEC has hired some new people, expanded their office and has a new aggressiveness planned for the Memphis marketing efforts. Second, it was a sort of celebration. They didn’t have to file for bankruptcy during the plummet in order to be around today. I agree that there’s accomplishment in that fact. Third, they want to get the Memphis business community networking again and they want to be part of it.

Now for an observation or two about the downside…

Traditional telecommunications for the business user that spend between $2000 and $5000 a month in all forms of datacom and telecom is a commodity. Bread is a commodity. Sure, there’s some differentiation based upon who you deal with, but once a line is lit, it works or it doesn’t. Most users – particularly of the size mentioned – want to light the lines then forget them.

Too much of the conversation I heard last night was about ”how much better” this LEC is than others that might pursue a customer. Rather than focusing on how strong their team is, they kept trying to come back to some aspect of differentiation between their switches, their lines, their relationships with other carriers, etc. It just doesn’t make any difference.

They need to point to Sam or Sally and say, ”he or she is why we’re different! We’ve broken the code on how to identify your needs up front, turn your lines on quickly, keep them running at better than five nines of reliability and help you expand when you need to. But, everybody can do that. What they cannot do is put Sam or Sally in front you.”

The focus should have been on the team and the talent. It should have been about why I want my loaf of bread to come from Sam or Sally and not from the 7-11 or the Massive Mart.

The other thing that struck me, and Memphis is famous for this in some other industries as well, everybody there has been with three or four (or more) telecoms in the last five to six years. Few industries can rival telecom in the way that the same people move around between a baker’s dozen of companies all the time. At three different times in three completely different groups of people, I heard this line, ”We’re so glad to have him/her. S/he has worked for me two times before now.”

Here’s the more striking observation. One of the truly new network players was there. I got to spend some time talking to their CEO. He’s offering ethernet over a fully redundant fiber ring at fractions of the pricing that any traditional telecom can offer it. Critical mass for his company may be just around the corner – particularly if some private/public ownership issues can be resolved quickly. As he chatted, it was obvious in the eyes of some of the traditional telecom sales people that they had no idea what he was talking about.

The Rise of the Stupid Network is happening and far too many still don’t get it!