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| June 2009 |
 In This Issue
What our customers are saying: Spotlight on Cypress Communications
I wanted to thank you and the Advocate Networks team for your help and participation in our recent strategic sourcing project, which yielded outstanding results. Through an effective partnership with Advocate Networks, we were able to achieve an appreciable reduction in network costs. Advocate Networks applied a process of assessing our spend, benchmarking against best-in-class pricing and facilitating the management of an RFP process including six vendors. As a result of our engagement with your team, a new three-year contract with our leading vendor will greatly reduce our costs over the term of the agreement. It was instrumental to have the Advocate Networks team available to assist when needed, and we will not hesitate to recommend you highly to other telecommunications service providers. -Chris Flores, Vice President of Network Planning, Cypress Communications Cypress Communications is the leading managed-communications provider for more than 6,500 companies in 29 major metropolitan U.S. markets (www.cypresscom.net). Advocate Networks recently worked with Cypress to assess its telecommunications spend, benchmark against best-in-class pricing and achieve savings through strategic procurement. Wholesale Pricing: By Gerry Carson, Managing Consultant Telecommunications service providers are constantly struggling with getting the best prices they can, as this typically represents a significant portion of cost of goods sold. Providers purchase wholesale where they don’t have their own networks in place from AT&T, Verizon, XO, Global Crossing and other vendors. This presents a complex challenge for service providers, with variance by product, provider, geography and applicability of regulatory rules. Click here for more about reducing wholesale prices Subscriber-Level Analytics: By Tom McLean, Senior Consultant Product management professionals in the telecommunications industry can appreciate the complexity of developing, managing and evolving products to meet sophisticated, ever-changing subscriber needs and expectations. The critical question: is your company digging deep enough into the data via subscriber analytics to make sound business decisions? To be fully effective, product managers need to look beyond the “average-user profile” presented by most corporate reporting tools and delve deeper into the full range of subscriber behavior. At Advocate Networks, we call this Subscriber-Level Analytics. Simply said, Subscriber-Level Analytics empower product managers to make decisions and implement changes necessary to develop and maintain successful products. The Benefits of By Rob Stewart, Managing Consultant Advocate Networks routinely provides enterprise and service provider clients with assessments of their wireless voice and data spend. Just as routinely, we find that without effective, ongoing management of wireless devices, wireless spend creeps rapidly out of control. In many cases, wireless expenses rival those of Wide Area Network costs, which means that clients are effectively providing an expensive “overlay” network to their carefully designed WAN! |
Wireless Backhaul: By Gerry Carson, Managing Consultant Most of us take for granted the completion of a cell phone call, or the hundreds of emails fired from our blackberries each day. However, it takes many network elements to make these events occur. Wireless voice and data travel from cell tower to cell tower, and then follow a data connection from the tower to a central site, managed by the wireless provider. This last flow of traffic is called wireless backhaul, and the majority of it flows over small data pipes called DS1s. Many wireless carriers purchase DS1 data pipes from Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs) like AT&T and Verizon. DS1 and other special access rates are likely to increase starting in January of next year. Although alternatives to ILECs for wireless backhaul have not reached critical mass, multiple players have entered the space. Advocate Networks has numerous relationships that can help providers identify and move to alternative backhaul players. Advocate Networks can assess backhaul spend, benchmark prices, identify savings opportunities and proceed with strategic procurement to achieve the savings. More challenges of wireless backhaul Ongoing community service: Spotlight on Mountain Top Boys™ Home Advocate Networks was recently featured in the Mountain Top Boys™ Home monthly newsletter regarding its continued community service with the organization. The article, “The Heart of a Company Beats on the Mountain,” discusses the woodshop repair, landscaping and painting Advocate completed at the boys’ home in 2008. Mountain Top Boys’ Home is a foster home for young men aged 11 to 17. Its goal is to provide discipline, support and education to help these boys become productive members of society. Advocate Networks is excited to continue its service to Mountain Top in 2009!
Special thanks to Michael Padgett, electrician; John Norris, President of American Roofing Systems; and Barbara and Jerry Fogle, project managers. Click here to see “The Heart of a Company Beats on the Mountain.”
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To learn how Advocate Networks can reduce your communications expenses, please contact Scott Fogle at (678) 987-5990 or scott.fogle@advocatenetworks.com. Referrals are always appreciated (and rewarded)! Please contact Marina Harmon at marina.harmon@advocatenetworks.com for information about our referral program. |
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Dear Gerry,
July 21