It is natural to expect that partners will devote their working day to selling solutions to new customers, responding to existing customers and working on service issues such as repair escalations, billing, etc. But beware of quiet accounts that don’t ask for updated solutions, particularly customers that have access-only solutions and not stickier services including UCaaS, SD-WAN and network security. Network access is typically sold first to establish the end customer relationship for the partner and for communications providers (CPs) like NHC, which resell all types of access in North America under one project team, invoice end user portal and service organization. A positive customer “experience” sets the stage to sell more strategic overlay and managed solutions. Many partners have network access only customers. That’s okay. If the experience was good, then the services aged like fine wine over the years. Rates remained the same. Customers happily paid CPs like NHC, partners received their monthly residuals and everyone focused on upselling customers who requested it and new sales. Then, telephony changed. Local exchange carriers (LECs) wanted to move away from TDM (time division multiplexing) and focus on GPON, wireless LTE and fiber access. LECs invested $200 billion in 5G alone with a massive buildout of fiber to support it. Cable broadband providers increased bandwidth to compete against DIA (dedicated internet access) and 5G and greatly expanded fiber DIA solutions. Uncle Sam continues to kick in billions of dollars for broadband in rural and low-income urban areas. This means there are solutions that are faster, cheaper and more reliable for us and our competitors to sell. And this has led to five areas of network access opportunity: POTS Migration: More than 50 million business POTS (plain old telephone service) lines have been disconnected or migrated to other solutions. Maybe 30 million remain. LECs continue to raise rates and decommission switches and service areas, as well as otherwise discourage ongoing use of TDM POTS. NHC has alternative solutions such as new Voice By Glen Nelson CHANNEL MANAGEMENT MUST TAKE CARE OF THEIR OR SOMEONE ELSE WILL PARTNERS CUSTOMERS, 44 CHANNELVISION | JULY - AUGUST 2023
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