You’re OK, how am I? What do you want from your Telecommunications Service Provider?

In October, James Enck, in a post following up on a presentation he gave at Telco 2.0 entitled “10 things I hate about you” (it was meant to wake up the traditional telco’s to some of the concerns of the investment community), quoted a response from what appears to be a somewhat disillusioned, cynical supplier to the carriers of this world. As I’m a busdev guy pondering the merits between skunkworks mode and rigorous development processes, one phrase had me thinking about my own performance:

There is no money in services (any 18 year-old in the Valley is a better new business development manager than any of the telcos have);

In a recent post he pointed me to the blog of Ian Hay, Strategic Advisor at Orange in the UK, who has produced a “10 things I want from you” summary of a survey he conducted among his contacts to find out what they wanted from their telco. His results are interesting and I’ll quote from his post here:

1. Improve the Basics (16)
2. Transparent pricing (11)
3. Embrace internet and don’t compete or lock out (8)
4. Business and Personal(7)
5. Open Handset (6)
6. Flat rate Data (4)
7. Open development environment (4)
8. Open Source Technology (2)
9. Open Data (2)
10. PC integration (1)

Which pretty much backs up what Kevin Jacobson, our voice business unit manager, and I discussed the other day.  In line with Storm’s Keep It Simple Stupid approach to product and pricing as well as the “no bullsh*t” stance (which came from a submission to a local industry mailing list I lurk on where someone described us as a “no BS ISP”), one needs to ensure you focus on getting the basics of a product right before adding bells and whistles.

Ian has me thinking and I’m considering crafting a survey of my own w.r.t. what 3 things would you want from your VoIP SP / ISP / VANS, what would they be? I’ll leave it an open question and battle with the collation rather then forcing it into multiple-choice.

If you feel like commenting before I pester you, feel free! ;)

that's me for now.