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New York stock exchange has its first female leader in 226-year history

Stacey Cunningham, who began her career as a summer intern on the New York stock exchange 24 years ago, will become the first woman to head the 226-year-old financial market on Friday, an appointment that raises hopes that the glass ceiling may have finally cracked on Wall Street.

But has it? Cunningham takes up the position as the financial services sector is struggling to show it has moved beyond the cliches of Wall Street’s sexist culture.

Stock markets drop after Trump signals dissatisfaction with China negotiations

Little epitomized Wall Street better than the pre-digitized NYSE – at the time the now 43-year-old Cunningham joined she was one of just three dozen women among more than 1,000 men.

When she first arrived, Cunningham recalled last year, the women’s restroom on the seventh floor was inside an old phone booth. Men, she said, had a “palatial” bathroom next door with couches and a full-time attendant.

But while Cunningham has her work cut continuing to modernize NYSE’s trading operations and induce more companies to list publicly, Wall Street itself is eager to show it is on the path to gender parity.

In a symbolic gesture, city authorities led by New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, moved the Fearless Girl, a statue commissioned to stare down the 7,000lb Charging Bull of Wall Street, to a spot outside the exchange.

The Fearless Girl statue stares down the Charging Bull.

In interviews, Cunningham has acknowledged the women who came before her, among them , a Wall Street legend as the first woman to join the exchange as a trader in 1967.

“I was a woman trader on the floor, and I never thought about it – I never thought for a moment whether or not that could happen, and whether or not that was an opportunity available to me,” Cunningham in March.

“And it’s because Muriel paved the way. I think it’s just really important to recognize that any time a woman pushes the boundaries and redefines the boundaries, she’s redefining them for everyone else that follows her.”

But to some ways of thinking, celebrating Cunningham is itself a testament to how few women achieve top leadership positions on Wall Street.

Two weeks ago, the Campbell Soup CEO, Denise Morrison, abruptly stepped down, triggering hand-wringing that her departure left just 23 women as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, a drop from 32 in 2016.

Morrison followed a number of other high-profile women out of the door, including Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard, Irene Rosenfeld of Mondēlez, Sheri McCoy of Avon and Margo Georgiadis at Mattel.

On the plus side, there is still Mary Barra at General Motors, Marillyn Hewson at Lockheed Martin, Ginni Rometty at IBM and Indra Nooyi at Pepsi.

But according to Kathryn Kolbert, founder and outgoing director of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College, the fact that we still count arrivals and departures of female executives is testament to how much remains to be done.

“If you look at the pace of change it’ll take another 100 years to get to parity.”

According to figures Kolbert compiled two years ago, women hold just 16% of board seats and 14% of executive officer positions on the Fortune 500 list. A quarter of those firms had no women at all in executive leadership positions.

The figures are improved for the financial industry, which boasts 29% women in senior leadership positions but precious few at the top level.

“Yet we know that having women at high levels of leadership not only improves the bottom line but makes a company much more creative, innovative and responsive to its clients, yet I don’t see a significant change in the numbers of women at high levels of leadership at financial services companies,” Kolbert said.

“You cannot have gender parity until you have critical mass, and you do not have critical mass until you get to 30%,” says Nathalie Molina Niño, CEO of Brava Investments and the author of Leapfrog: The New Revolution for Women Entrepreneurs. “It’s only then that you really start to see culture change. Having one woman on a board really makes no difference at all.”

In Kolbert’s view, improving gender equality is a question of will.

“It’s not hard to do. We know that when a senior member of a Fortune company wants change, it happens and it happens quickly. I have long believed companies not only need to see the advantage, but need the will to make the change.”

That corresponds with the thinking of Elissa Ellis Sangster, executive director of the Forté Foundation, a group that helps guide women in business. Sangster told the Guardian she too found it “frustrating” that we’re still celebrating when women are named to top positions.

“You’d think by now the pipeline would be 50-50 and we’d see enough women in one-level-down positions who are ready and able to helm some of these top companies.”

Please see full article here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-stock-exchange-to-have-first-female-leader-in-226-year-history-1526955129?redirect=amp

Don’t Count Dish Out Yet

It’s hard to keep up with – or care about – the on-again, off-again status of the T-Mobile-Sprint merger. As a rule, isn’t it best when our carriers are invisible?

For now, the T-Mobile-Sprint merger is on (read related No Jitter post). U.S. regulators approved the $26.5 billion combination, with a key stipulation – creation of a new fourth cellular provider. The need for a fourth carrier is questionable, as wireless expert Michael Finneran pointed out in his No Jitter post on the news. But, for whatever reason, the regulators insisted. The question of the need was lost after the focus shifted to the nominee: Dish Networks.

As currently agreed, the new T-Mobile will allow Dish to acquire Sprint’s prepaid brand Boost. However, Boost is a brand and not a network, so T-Mobile also agreed to provide Dish with wholesale service on the newly combined T-Mobile/Sprint network for the next seven years. There’s a series of other transactions between the three companies, but in the end, Dish becomes an mobile virtual network operator near term and a 5G mobile network operator long term.

It seems like a longshot. Dish has no experience in cellular service, no cellular network, and its planned acquisition of the Boost service only gives it nine million (prepaid) subscribers. In comparison, Verizon has about 120 million subscribers, while AT&T has about 90 million subscribers, as will the combined T-Mobile-Sprint.

Most of the cellular experts believe that Dish will either fail or not even try. Either way, the result will be three U.S. 5G carriers. Regulators were concerned enough to have T-Mobile agree to a no-fourth-competitor penalty of up to $2.2 billion if/when Dish fails.

Having casually followed the satellite company since the ‘90s, I’m not so quick to write-off Dish. I’ve outlined several reasons why Dish could emerge as a successful cellular provider below.

Founder-power

Charlie Ergen, Dish founder and executive chairman, is a fighter, survivor, and self-made billionaire. When selling giant satellite dishes at a Denver retail store, he understood the disruptive potential of the next wave of tech. The dish antennas were going to get much smaller, and picture quality was going to improve. He created satellite communications solutions provider EchoStar in 1980, which then created and eventually spun out the Dish brand in 2008. He has nearly lost these companies several times yet survives. He bets big and somehow wins despite failed mergers, failed satellites, and other failures.

Ergen used the new digital technology to disrupt the cable television industry. He had regular fights with competitors and suppliers. Most of these battles took place behind the scenes, but some were visible. For example, it wasn’t uncommon for Dish to black out channels during content negotiations. Ergen even survived a very public failed deal with media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Here’s a story that shows how Dish survives. The company introduced the Dish Hopper in 2012 — a commercial-skipping, whole-home DVR and satellite receiver. In 2002, ReplayTV introduced a commercial-skipping DVR and then filed for bankruptcy in 2003 after the networks filed lawsuits. The major networks also sued Dish for skipping commercials, yet the Hopper and Dish continue. The Hopper even won the Best of Show at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, following a controversy where CNET’s parent company CBS initially pulled the device for consideration due to on-going litigation with the company — Dish won the award and CNET lost its contract with CES.

Source: https://www.nojitter.com/mobility/don%E2%80%99t-count-dish-out-yet?_mc=NL_NJ_EDT_NJ_weekly_20190813&cid=NL_NJ_EDT_NJ_weekly_20190813&elq_mid=92401&elq_cid=2875177

CenturyLink CEO: Fiber wins over 5G, wireless and hybrid fiber coax

Century Link is defining itself as the go-to provider of fiber-based services for business customers, according to CenturyLink CEO Jeff Storey.

Speaking on the company’s second quarter earnings call Wednesday afternoon, Storey, the former CEO of Level 3, said that CenturyLink would continue to micro-target new fiber builds in additional neighborhoods and cities. CenturyLink sees fiber as the winning hand for its future success, which was evidenced in its recent announcement to deploy 4.7 million miles of new fiber from Corning across the company’s intercity networks in the U.S. and Europe.

“We know that when we have a building on-net, our fiber-based services provide a better, more reliable and higher margin solution than competing infrastructure,” Storey said on the earnings conference call. “Fiber beats twisted pair copper, hybrid fiber coax, and it beats wireless. Whether it’s 5G or not, fiber wins. It’s highly flexible and increasing speeds, it is secure and really is the basis for all the other competing technologies.”

“We just do one thing differently. We take fiber all the way to the customer, and customers always want fiber when they can get it. You can expect us to continue investing to expand the reach of our access fiber network.”

To highlight the pace of CenturyLink’s fiber frenzy, Storey said CenturyLink added 5,000 new fiber-fed buildings in the second quarter, compared to 4,500 in the first quarter. By contrast, Level 3 used to add around 500 fiber buildings per quarter.

While fiber trenching can be expensive and disruptive, CenturyLink can tap into the fiber conduit it has collected over the years from acquisitions such as Level 3, Qwest, Broadwing and WilTel.

Storey said that fiber was well suited to meet the demands of emerging opportunities driven by artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data applications.

“Fiber-based solutions are better able to satisfy what we see as four key market trends,” Storey said. “The need for highly scalable capacity, now ranging into multi gigabits per second; the need for connecting and increasing number of widely distributed locations; the need for the network itself to protect the privacy and security of our customers; and finally, the need to move bandwidth intensive computing resources closer and closer to the edge to reduce latency and unnecessary backhaul of traffic.”

Storey said that CenturyLink recognizes that access and long-haul transport are only parts of the overall fiber equation.

“There’s increasing demand for computing capabilities at the edge of the network, and we believe we’re uniquely positioned to capitalize on this market opportunity,” he said.

According to CEO, CenturyLink’s dark fiber business, which will benefit from the fiber expansion, is providing connectivity to hyperscale cloud providers and enterprises.

The company’s top dog also mentioned CenturyLink’s win of a $24 million contract with the U.S. Census Bureau to provide secure cloud connectivity for next year’s census, which was announced on Thursday.

“CenturyLink will help to collect the census digitally by providing the bureau with managed trusted internet protocol services or MTIPS at speeds of 40 gigabits and higher,” he said.

CenturyLink’s second quarter numbers

In the quarter that ended June 30, CenturyLink had net income of $371 million, which was a 21% increase over last year’s $292 million. CenturyLink’s total revenue was $5.58 billion, while diluted earnings per share came in at 35 cents compared to $5.90 billion and 27 cents per share in the same quarter a year ago.

Revenue declined 1.2% both year over year and sequentially in CenturyLink’s enterprise segment. The enterprise segment had revenue of $1.50 billion during the second quarter, compared to $1.52 billion in the same quarter a year ago. CenturyLink expects its enterprise revenue will rebound in the second half of this year.

“If you think about our enterprise segment, our sales in fourth quarter, and January and February, were impacted by the government shutdown, but we saw good sales in March and we saw good sales in the second quarter of this year,” said CenturyLink CFO Neel Dev on the conference call.

While most of the larger cable companies are adding broadband customers, CenturyLink had a net loss of 56,000 broadband subscribers. CenturyLink lost 78,000 subscribers who were taking speeds of below 20 Mbps, but added 22,000 customers for speeds of 20 Mbps and above. Dev said the growth of broadband subscribers for speeds of 100 Mbps and above had increased 100% on a year over year basis.

“Broadband revenue for the second quarter 2019 grew 1.8% year over year, which compares to growth of 1.4% last quarter, driven by our efforts to increase penetration in our competitive assets and investing in fiber,” Dev said. “Voice revenue on a year over year basis declined 13% this quarter compared to 12% last quarter. The decline in other revenue continues to be driven by our decision to de-emphasize our Prism video product.”

During the earnings call, Storey said CenturyLink’s internal teams continued to review the possibility of CenturyLink selling off its consumer business, but that the review is a lengthy process.

Source: https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/centurylink-ceo-fiber-wins-over-5g-wireless-and-hybrid-coax

Intel sold its smartphone modem business to Apple, but it says it will still be a big player in 5G

Intel sold its smartphone modem business to Apple, but the chipmaker’s CEO said Wednesday that his company will still be a big player in the 5G space.

5G refers to next generation of mobile networking that promises super-fast data speeds with the ability to support new technologies like driverless cars. Apple bought the majority of Intel’s modem business for $1 billion, including technology related to the development of the 5G modems required for devices to connect to the new networks.

However, Intel still has the option to develop 5G chips for non-smartphone products.

Apple made the move in order to develop its own, in-house 5G modems rather than rely on Qualcomm, a company with which the iPhone maker has had a long history.

But according to Intel CEO Bob Swan, the move is also a positive because now the company can focus on 5G in other areas.

Speaking with CNBC, Swan explained that 5G modems were not an area that would differentiate growth for the industry; and with only one customer (Apple) retaining the business, it would not provide attractive returns.

“So we doubled down on 5G networks where we think there’s real opportunity and last week we announced the sale of the 5G smartphone modem to Apple. But we also retained access to the technologies in the event that we need a 5G modem for non-smartphone applications, like a PC or an automobile,” Swan said.

Meanwhile, mobile networks will also be a big area for Intel going forward. The U.S. chip giant traditionally hasn’t focused on the telecommunications sector, but now there’s a shift in its attention to what the CEO calls the “cloudification of the network.” That refers to the increasing amount of software being used in mobile networks that runs in the cloud.

Traditional mobile networks rely on huge amounts of expensive hardware, but an increased use of cloud-based software could reduce the need for some of the physical gear, making networks cheaper to build and faster to upgrade.

Last month, Intel announced a partnership with Rakuten, a Japanese tech conglomerate, to create what it calls “the world’s first end-to-end cloud-native mobile network.”

That’s an area Swan said he sees as a big growth area for Intel due to the world’s “insatiable demand for data.”

What is 5G?

Intel, he said, believes that the future will see more and more processing moving “from the cloud or from the data centers into the networks.”

“That is what we have been investing in and we see that as significant opportunities,” Swan told CNBC.

Intel has been looking to diversify its business beyond just processors for PCs to new always-connected areas such as driverless cars and so-called internet of things devices. The push into the world of telecommunications is part of that.

Swan said that, while the revenue split between what he calls PC-centric and data-centric products is around 50-50, that will change in the future to favor the company’s data-centric chips.

“The technologies and the architectures that we’re building for this data center of the world will become a bigger and bigger part of the company,” Swan said.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/01/intel-future-in-5g-networks-after-apple-buys-modem-business.html

How 5G could democratize the telecom industry

A new, digital revolution might be about to hit us. Autonomous cars are driving our way, cities and companies are rapidly ramping up the use of sensors—also called the Internet of Things (IoT) – and virtual and augmented reality are making rapid strides.

But in order to build all of this we’ll need the fifth generation of mobile internet—5G. This generation of wireless networks will offer a range of improvements compared to today’s 4G, including a potential tenfold decrease in latency (signal delay), a tenfold increase in the data speeds experienced by users and ultra-reliable coverage.
By 2020, all EU countries should have some 5G services with uninterrupted coverage in urban areas and along main transport paths available by 2025.

But 5G won’t only allow you to seamlessly watch Netflix on your phone; it will be the platform upon which a new generation of disruptive technology is built. For example, a self-driving car will need to make quick decisions on the road. This can only happen with fast internet and low latency.

And 5G might also shake up the mobile phone industry’s infrastructure. Today, wireless mobile infrastructure is divided. Operators build their own antennas and base stations. While operators do share infrastructure at times, most areas in Europe possess three to four base stations within a radius of a few hundred meters. That’s hardly efficient.

A new model of ownership called neutral hosting makes mobile infrastructure shared, increase efficiency and lowering barriers to entry. Researchers across Europe are pushing the concept forward.

Municipalities
One such project is 5GCity, led out of Barcelona, Spain, which is building systems for municipalities and local governments to own and operate 5G infrastructure.

“Network sharing among different operators has been here for some time now,” said Dr. Shuaib Siddiqui, director of software networks at Fundació i2CAT, a Barcelona research foundation, and deputy coordinator of 5GCity. “But today we have to go beyond the conventional ways in which network sharing has been done. And 5G technology paves the way for new actors who simply own infrastructure and lease it to the operators.”
Two core aspects of 5G technology would specifically push neutral hosting forward. These are small cells and network slicing.

The amount of cell towers will need to increase dramatically for 5G. “Current base stations cover very big geographical areas,” said Dr. Siddiqui. “But in 5G the idea is that you have smaller but denser cell infrastructure, which means you need to deploy a lot more base stations, also called “small cells”. But if every operator needs to install that many base-stations around a city, it’s going to get ugly really soon.” He adds that it can also be difficult to get permits for building this type of infrastructure.

“Network slicing” is a technique that will be key to 5G networks and will allow segmentation of the network into several slices, each with different characteristics. For example, a 5G network might have one slice for smartphone use, which has high data speeds; one for IoT sensors, which might not have high data speeds but would allow low energy usage; and one for self-driving cars, which would have both high data speeds and low latency so that the car can make quick maneuvers.

Slicing networks wouldn’t only work for different use cases, but might also make sharing infrastructure easier by giving each operator their own slice of the network.

Medieval
One case in which 5GCity is testing this concept is the historical Italian city of Lucca. During the summer Lucca hosts a festival, meaning a lot of people gather in the downtown area and there’s high demand for connectivity during a short period of time.

“It’s a small town and its downtown is medieval, which means it’s quite hard to dig things up and hang up new base stations,” explained Dr. Siddiqui. “Using neutral hosting, the municipality deployed new infrastructure, and with our platform they can slice it into different layers. Operators can then lease one of those slices during moments of high-usage, like during summer festivals.
And that network has brought an added advantage to Lucca. The municipality is also developing a system where it keeps one slice for itself and uses it to build a system of smart cameras that automatically recognize overflowing garbage cans, so the municipality can promptly send crews to clean up the bins.

Wary
However, while the technology is advancing, operators are often still wary of neutral hosting. They like to own their infrastructure, so transferring it to third parties goes against the grain, and it’s uncertain whether neutral hosts like municipalities would invest sufficient capital in infrastructure.

However, some experts believe that neutral hosting would save money for the operators by lowering site costs while achieving the same level of coverage. What’s more, neutral hosting could also shake up the industry if it is implemented on a large scale. Virtual mobile operators, which don’t own any infrastructure but still offer their own mobile subscriptions, could become a more competitive possibility, and power over infrastructure could move from network operators to large owners of real estate, like municipalities, prompting operators to change how they do business.

Nevertheless, for Dr. Siddiqui, neutral hosting won’t be taking over our networks anytime soon. In the face of operator hesitancy, the concept might mainly be limited to niche cases. “It’s not a done solution,” he said. “But if we want to realize 5G in all its potential, neutral hosting will need to have its presence.

Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-06-5g-democratise-telecoms-industry.html

The internet is a fragile place, and no one is making it better

How could a small Internet service provider (ISP) in Pennsylvania cause millions of websites worldwide to go offline? That’s what happened on June 24, 2019 when users across the World were left unable to access a large fraction of the web. The root cause was an outage suffered by Cloudflare, one of the Internet’s leading content hosts upon which the affected websites relied.

Cloudflare traced the problem to a regional ISP in Pennsylvania that accidentally advertised to the rest of the Internet that the best available routes to Cloudflare were through their small network. This caused a massive volume of global traffic to the ISP, which overwhelmed their limited capacity and so halted Cloudfare’s access to the rest of the Internet. As Cloudflare remarked, it was the Internet equivalent of routing an entire freeway through a neighborhood street.

This incident has highlighted the shocking vulnerability of the Internet. In 2017 alone, there were about 14,000 of these kinds of incidents. Given it is mission-critical for much of the World’s economic and social life, shouldn’t the worldwide web be designed to withstand not only minor hiccups but also major catastrophes? Shouldn’t there be safeguards so that small issues don’t turn into big problems? Governing bodies such as the EU Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) have long warned of the risk of such cascading incidents in causing systemic internet failure. Yet the Internet remains quite fragile.

Like a road network, the Internet has its own highways and intersections that consist of cables and routers. The navigation system that manages the flow of data around the network is called the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). When you visit a website, BGP determines the path through which the site’s data will be transmitted to your device.

The problem is that BGP was designed only to be a temporary fix, a “good enough” solution when the internet was rapidly growing 25 years ago. Back then it was good enough to help the net sustain its explosive expansion and it quickly became part of every backbone router that managed the flow of data down the Internet’s principal pathways. But it wasn’t built with security in mind, and mechanisms to ensure that the paths BGP sent data down were valid has never been added. As a result, routing errors go undetected until they cause congestion and outages.

Even worse, anyone who can access a backbone router (and doing so is trivial for someone with the right knowledge and budget) can construct bogus routes to hijack legitimate data traffic, disrupt services and eavesdrop on communications. This means the modern Internet operates using an insecure protocol that is exploited on a daily basis to compromise communications from governments, financial institutions, weapons manufacturers and cryptocurrencies, often as part of politically-motivated cyber-warfare.

These issues have been known since 1998 when a group of hackers demonstrated to the U.S. Congress how easy it was to compromise Internet communications. Yet little has changed. Deploying the necessary cryptographic solutions turned out to be as hard as changing the engines of an airplane in mid-flight.

In an actual aviation issue, such as the recent issues with Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft, regulators have the authority to ground an entire fleet until it is fixed. But the Internet has no centralized authority. Different parts of the infrastructure are owned and operated by different entities, including corporations, governments and universities.

Many paths to choose from. Credit: Greg Mahlknecht/Openstreetmap, CC BY-SA

The tussle between these different players means they don’t have incentives to make their own part of the Internet more secure. An organization would have to bear the significant deployment costs and operational risks that come with a switch to a new technology, but it wouldn’t reap any benefits unless a critical mass of other networks did the same.

The most pragmatic solution would be to develop security protocols that don’t need global coordination. But attempts to do this have also been impeded by the decentralized ownership of the Internet. Operators have limited knowledge of what happens beyond their networks because of companies’ desires to keep their business operations secret.

As a result, today nobody has a complete view of our society’s most critical communications infrastructure. This hinders efforts to model the Internet’s behavior under stress, making it harder to design and evaluate trustworthy solutions.

Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-07-internet-surprisingly-fragile-thousands-year.html

Group Seeks to Stop Network Overbuilds via Rule Changes

“E-Rate”, which is the Schools and Libraries Fund of the Federal Universal Service Program, is a program that promotes digital learning by giving discounts to schools and libraries so that they have affordable access to high-speed broadband and telecommunications.

The E-Rate annual budget is about $4.06 billion and the program rarely stirs much controversy. However, Andrew Regitsky of CCMIHub.com reports that a group of Texas ILECs brought controversy this past May, 2019, when they filed a Petition for Rulemaking with the FCC. These rural Texas ILECs want the FCC to change E-Rates rules. They claim that, without changes, fiber networks will be overbuilt.

The petitioning party was the Central Texas Telephone Cooperative, Inc., Peoples Telephone Cooperative, Inc., and Totelcom Communications, LLC. They identify themselves collectively as the “Texas Carriers”. Their petition seeks an amendment to Part 54 of the FCC rules so that schools and libraries cannot overbuild fiber networks from E-Rate funds through the competitive bid process.

The Texas Carriers claim that a rural school or library could build more networks than necessary since they draw from multiple funding sources. The Texas Carriers see this as a potentially wasteful and redundant. They point out that overbuilding may limit available funds for other networks in other areas where new systems are of great need. As would be expected, other rural carriers supported the filing as did USTelecom which is the ILEC association.

USTelecom provided support, stating that “overbuilding is not only wasteful and an inefficient use of governmental program funds, but it also reduces the pool of funds available to rural schools and libraries that actually need fiber broadband connection.” However, the association also made the point that the Petition ignores the issues of competitive providers who are many times overbuilt with E-rate funding. Overbuilding changes cost structures for network investors and keeps the funds away from areas with deficient levels of service.

Regitsky points out that there is some inherent logic to the Petition, but that the CLEC association, known as “INCOMPAS”, thinks otherwise, and takes the position that the changes would only provide advantages to “incumbent carriers”, that is, ILECs.

INCOMPAS offers a number of arguments against the Petition. The group states that the Petition should be rejected on procedural grounds because it lacks the factual detail necessary for rulemaking. Furthermore, the Petition is unnecessary because the E-Rate program is best served by continuing to give actual competitive providers access to the bidding process. Most importantly, INCOMPAS are against the proposed change to E-Rate rules that would require E-Rate applicants to post projects on a website to be followed by a process of notifications and negotiation of fiber lease agreements with the incumbents. The group states that this would favor incumbents and would allow them to profit from E-rate without incurring expenses or making efforts to take place in such tenders.

The FCC will face the challenge of determining if overbuilding is a serious problem as the Texas Carriers have suggested, and, if it is indeed a problem: What changes would be appropriate so that schools and libraries utilize the most cost-effective networks?

For more on the subject and to read Registky’s conclusion, visit here

How to Lower Your Current Telecom Bill

Telecom is a vital service in today’s business world. The many communication services provided by Telecom carriers allow us fast and easy access to information, collaboration, and clients across the Globe. Today, the world of Telecom has grown to be something much more advanced and complex than the simple hardwired phone lines that were our main source of connecting not so long ago; but with all of the advances in Telecom, it still has its downside; the EXPENSE. For most businesses, Telecom has become a major expense, and the Telecom billing systems are difficult to decipher.

If your business is looking to cut expenses – and what business isn’t? – then the Telecom bill is a great place to start. About 80% of all Telecom invoices contain errors, so chances are, simply eliminating any billing errors will reduce your Telecom spending. How can you go about lowering your Telecom bill? Here are 4 steps to help you get started:

Review Your Telecom Service Contract

A careful reading of your service contract will help you gain a firm understanding of what services you currently have. It will help you understand your pricing, as well as the renewal status of your current contract. Knowing what you are paying for is the vital first step.

Do Some Research With Other Telecom Providers

Once you determine the services that you already have and the prices you are paying, shop these telecommunications services with several providers to determine what discounts or promotions they are willing to offer. A comparison will let you know if you are overpaying, or if there are better options.

Consider Consolidation and Updating Technology

In many cases, consolidating services to one vendor will provide you with better pricing options. In addition, technology updates may be a better fit for your business needs. Antiquated services often lead to inefficiencies and over-charges.

Stay Proactive with Your Telecom Provider

Once you take the time to review, research, and consolidate your Telecom to get the best service plan and pricing, keep in mind that this job is never done! Technology and Telecom change at a rapid pace, and you need to stay persistent and consistent in your efforts. Scheduling periodic Telecom reviews will ensure that your plan continues to be the best service plan for the best price.

For a busy company that does not have an employee whose job description includes Telecom review, these steps can be both difficult and time consuming. Consider handing this task over to the experts, and allowing TRAK to perform a Telecom audit on your behalf. You will find that when you hire TRAK, they will help you lower your Telecom expenses and the contingency-based billing is painless. It will also allow you to spend your valuable time running your business. Contact TRAK today for more information about how we can help you lower your Telecom bill.

The Hidden Benefits of a Telecom Audit

The benefits of a telecom audit are endless, and while many businesses understand that audits can save them money, they may not truly grasp the significance of those hidden savings and how they can be repurposed to serve other business needs. So what are some of the ways that audit results can help businesses? We’ll explore them below.

Repurpose Saved Money
Performing an audit in your business will likely result in surprise savings and leave you feeling some sense of shock at seeing how much you had been overspending. But did you know that the hidden benefits of an audit are far more than just finding some savings? Businesses who perform audits can use the money in various ways, including:

Offset budgets
Increase bandwidth
Network expansion
Technology purchase
Technology upgrades
Increase staff

Equipment refresh and/or upgrade
One of the ways businesses can benefit greatly from an audit is by using the extra money for budget shortfalls. If your company is falling behind on its budget or is over the budget, you have the option to repurpose the money found in an audit to help finance projects or equipment you couldn’t afford in the past. More recently, businesses have begun to expand or improve their service delivery or network quality with the savings discovered in an audit.

Additional Benefits of a Telecom Audit
While it can be safe to assume that audits are simply financial benefits, audits can also come with non-financial benefits that include:

• Cleanup of invoicing: Frees up internal staff from having to track down line items.
• Bill consolidation: Results in less work for the A/P department as well as the IT department.
• What’s more, choosing the right partner to perform an audit can help your business get the support it needs when it comes to your existing vendors and contracts. The right telecom advisor will ensure that your business has the right clauses in its agreement so issues such as incurring additional costs in case of early termination can be avoided. With the help of an expert, businesses can ensure the playing field is leveled and that everything works in their favor, not the vendors’.
• Creating an extensive inventory of every service billed for more efficient on-going management

At TRAK, we are not affiliated with any carriers and our recommendations are 100% unbiased. We are a woman owned, privately held firm that integrates our expert staff with your internal resources to deliver savings and provide you with a clean inventory of your services. As a boutique firm, we adapt easily and our turn-around time rivals that of larger providers.

If you’d like to take the next step, click here and know more about our services here

Source: https://profitadvisorygroup.com/the-hidden-benefits-of-an-audit/

TAGS: audit, cost savings, telecom audit

Hackers hit Global Telecom companies in an espionage campaign, cyber research firm says

Researchers from a cybersecurity company said Tuesday that hackers have broken into the systems of more than a dozen Global telecom companies and taken large amounts of personal and corporate data while identifying links to previous Chinese cyber-espionage campaigns.

Investigators at U.S.-Israeli cybersecurity firm Cybereason said the attackers compromised companies in more than 30 countries and aimed to gather information on individuals in government, law-enforcement, and politics.

The hackers also used tools linked to other attacks attributed to Beijing by the United States and its Western allies, said Lior Div, Chief Executive of Cybereason.

“For this level of sophistication it’s not a criminal group. It is a government that has capabilities that can do this kind of attack,” he told Reuters.

A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry said he was not aware of the report, but added “we would never allow anyone to engage in such activities on Chinese soil or using Chinese infrastructure.”

Cybereason declined to name the companies affected or the countries they operate in, but people familiar with Chinese hacking operations said Beijing was increasingly targeting telcos in Western Europe.

Western countries have moved to call out Beijing for its actions in cyberspace, warning that Chinese hackers have compromised companies and government agencies around the World to steal valuable commercial secrets and personal data for espionage purposes.

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Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/25/hackers-hit-global-telecom-companies-in-an-espionage-campaign-cyber-research-firm-says.html

Womens Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) Society of Community Technology Consultants International