As much as people hate to admit it, Ron Popeil is a genius!  He knows how to sell anything to anyone and make good money while doing it.  Most “home shopping” concepts are just people following in Ronco’s wake.

Now, we have the genius of Ron Popeil for telecommunications with “Magic Jack”. Carol Wilson has an excellent analysis piece on how/if Magic Jack makes any money.

Now the part that I like about this Magic Jack story/concept is the fact that it is the opposite of the iPhone commercials and most telecommunications ad campaigns.  It is not about how complex telecom is or can be.  Magic Jack explains/pitches VoIP in “AOL”-esqe language and wraps the whole thing with those wonderful “home shopping” graphics.

Personally, it kills me that VoIP is finding new converts because someone finally “Ronco”-ed the concept, but I am glad that “we” found someone would could do it…. :)

Change takes a long time in telecom…

Last January, I posted a blog on how Time Warner Cable was looking at their customers’ network traffic in new ways.  Recently, it was announced that Time Warner Cable was in fact looking to adjust their “unlimited” plans with “caps” for high usage.

Not quite the “utility-based” pricing that I believe that many telecoms would like to implement ( … whether they can is another matter … ).  However, it does show how the data that is sitting in many Revenue Assurance organizations can used for more than checking on revenue leakage.

Revenue assurance organizations can be “sooo” much more to their organizations than just “checkbook balancers”.  They have the data and knowledge about the business of a telecom to:

• Find trends like the imbalance of traffic by customer similar to those at Time Warner Cable
• Identify the new business opportunity, or at the least provide the data to support the business case
• Implement the controls that make those new business opportunities a reality

I love it when people say that something is going away… Here are some good examples:

• Mainframes
• Voice traffic
• Manual transmissions

In each of those cases, that particular “technology” sticks around for another 20–30 years just chugging along since they are good value, reliable concepts that really have no reason to go away.

I found an article from Kendrick Struthers-Watson on adoption rates relating to Mobile IM vs SMS traffic.  It talks about how people are more likely to use Mobile IM services if they knew more about them.

While I am not willing to put a stake through the heart of telecom’s latest cash cow in SMS, I am going to point out that this is a continuing trend of IP based services replacing traditional services and the all important “unlimited data plan” having some adverse impacts on the bottom line for most telecoms.

Don’t fear these IP services or put a premature headstone over traditional services.  But rather make plans for the cash cows and the IP services to exist together for different bundling plans.

I know it is a little late to complain about the extension on DTV change over… But this is getting insane.  Most of the issues “resolved” by the delay stem from the fact that the government itself cannot get its act together and have nothing to do with technology or user adoption.

Just last week, I saw a “stack” of DTV converters at an undisclosed consumer electronics retailer ( … ok, ok… Best Buy… ) ready to go out the door.  Too bad the “DTV voucher” program was under funded and less than well run…

Perhaps that government should spend a little more time on these types of “day to day” governing issues rather than performing their Kabuki theater with the leaders industry and the Fed Chairman….

How about something light for a Friday the 13th….

Scott Leibs has a good piece on the use of visualization this month.

I particularly liked the results that we achieved using some simple graphs instead of pages and pages of spreadsheets.  And even more remarkable was the fact that this piece was in a finance publication.

For telecom business intelligence organizations, the take away is that often it is more important to use good visuals for your audience rather than tons of supporting data.  Often times this can be a challenge, but if the finance guys can advocate it, I’m sure that the telecom guys will find a good use for the concept.