Would you be happy to have your fingerprints taken or get a facial scan to access phone services? Or would you consider it intrusive?
My colleague Elizabeth Thorne and I have been working on busting–or confirming–WAN pricing myths that we’ve heard in the wild. Last time I took on MPLS and DIA price convergence.
I’m going to stick with DIA for this post, too.
Specifically, I want to know if Tier 1 IP providers charge more for DIA service than others. This is a myth I’ve actually argued in favor of in the past. It is certainly true that some carriers can provide a higher level of service, i.e. traffic that takes the fewest hops between destinations, and maybe even traffic that never touches another provider’s network. This might warrant higher prices.
Welcome back to the third installment of our mythbusting series, where we break down legends in telecom pricing and see if they hold water. (Don’t miss our investigations on tall tales in local access budgeting and MPLS/DIA pricing lore.)
Apr 21, 2020
WAN Pricing Mythbusters: Is MPLS Priced Like DIA?
In case you missed my previous post, we here at TeleGeography love busting telecom myths. But we haven’t turned our analytical tools toward common WAN pricing myths—until now!
In this second installment, I’m going to investigate whether MPLS IP VPN and dedicated internet access (DIA) prices have become one and the same.
We have a years-long tradition of Mythbusting here at TeleGeography. But it occurred to me that we’ve never tackled any of the WAN pricing myths floating around out there. That’s why I decided to do a series addressing some of the things I hear from WAN-sourcing and WAN-selling professionals.
Let’s see if these WAN pricing myths stack up against the data.
First up: is it true that, particularly for traditional MPLS networks, local access can account for upwards of 50% of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of WAN components?
Predicting the future is hard, especially when it comes to complex markets with disruptive variables that are difficult/impossible to model. In his excellent book Thinking Fast and Slow, Nobel winner Daniel Kahneman provides stark examples of how bad humans can be at doing just that.
In this excerpt, Kahneman details how he tracked the performance records of 25 professional wealth managers across eight years. He found that “[t]he results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.”
Mar 24, 2020
How BT Intends to Dismantle Its Global Empire
In December 2019, UK telecom giant BT Group agreed to sell BT Espana to investment fund Portobello Capital. This was the first part of its plan to dismantle and sell off its sprawling BT Global Services unit. This month, BT agreed to offload its Latin American businesses to CIH Telecommunications Americas, marking the second confirmed transaction.
Today we examine BT’s motivations and take a closer look at other businesses that are likely to be sold off.
Let's talk about telecom expense management, better known as TEM.
TEMs are designed to make untangling telecom investments a little easier. For larger organizations with bigger telecom bills, this can be huge for streamlining costs and saving dollars.
But why bring up TEMs? Why do we think WAN managers might be interested?
Mar 2, 2020
Finns Lead the Way in Mobile Data Usage
Mobile data usage continues to boom worldwide.
Here’s just one example. Following Super Bowl LIV in Miami, AT&T reported that users in the stadium consumed 10.2TB of mobile data during the game. This is enough to stream high-definition video for almost two months straight.
There's been a lot of press about delayed approval for the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) cable, which is due to connect Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Philippines to the United States.
You can understand why this cable has gotten extra attention. Backers include Google, Facebook, and Pacific Light Data Communication (PLDC), which is owned by Chinese ISP Dr. Peng Telecom & Media Group.
While the whole system is awaiting approval from U.S. authorities, Google and Facebook have requested that the FCC allow activation of the Taiwan and Philippines portions of the cable.
