As more states, counties, and municipalities ban or limit cell phone use while driving, beware the effect on equipment costs.  When California enacted legislation in 2008 the number of bluetooth headsets increased substantially.  This can be a challenge in an enterprise, where users may tolerate a wiped down phone, but usually will not re-use a headset that has been deep in someone else’s ear canal.  There are multiple options for managing those costs.  If you buy through your cell phone provider, it will show up as equipment cost.

Recently, a friend of mine who works at big blue told me on the quiet that AT&T had a major reduction in force – like 10%. I checked it out with a few other sources within AT&T in different cities and it appears to be true. In the first few days of November, as the word goes, managers were calling employees to let them know if they made it or not. Apparently, several weeks before when AT&T was sharing its earnings internally, the word was that there would be big cuts coming before the end of the year. Well…

Interestingly, both Sprint and Verizon have been steadily releasing their numbers in drips and drabs over the last few months. Perhaps the media has lost its appetite for this kind of news. Anyone left out in the cold who can confirm this?

By the way, my condolences to anyone who got shook out of the trees.

If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, Bob posted an article in the resources section on “beating up on the vendor’  found here.  As you might expect, a lot of Telecom Expense Management companies have weighed in on this subject.  I’ve heard several TEM vendors tell of their expertise in this area.  Bob makes some good points on how this can be counterproductive if you do not use this strategy wisely. Read more…

When Private Equity group Silver Lake purchased a large portion of Skype Technologies earlier this week, a ripple went through the technology community.  Could this be a sign of further cash infusions into the technology sector which has been struggling, as a whole, since the dotcom bubble burst almost 10 years ago.? It is said that necessity is the mother of invention, but it is capital that makes that innovation a finished, enterprise class product.  During what I like to call “The Golden Age” of IT, just before Y2K, there seemed to be no end to the ideas that were being developed.  Some of these ideas were good and some were bad – real bad. Read more…