Moving Walkway

I spend a fair amount on telecom at home. If I look at last month, I have two Verizon phone lines (one with unlimited calling, and one with very bare bones service that I use mostly for calling 800 numbers). The first is about $65, the second $35. Note that the city of Alexandria has a $10 PER LINE tax, so $20 of the $100 goes to the city (I hope this money goes to a good cause).

I also have a business quality DSL line (384kbps) that was through UUNet, then MCI, now Verizon (all merger related). Very reliable, but pricey at $180.

Then I have a cable modem which I got 3+ years ago “to try it and see how much faster it was.” Of course, I never wanted just 384Kbps again for my web surfing. So there is another $45.

My cell phone is covered by work directly, so I don’t see that, but my wife’s has steadily risen in minutes to a point of about $65 a month (Verizon).

I’ve also tried a bunch of VoIP providers over the past 4 years:

• Vonage - worked ok, but I didn’t love the quality [note: this was 4 years ago]
• Lingo - worked better. I eventually gave this setup to my dad who needed a temporary phone. Of course, 2 years later he still has it.
• AOL TotalTalk - I knew some people involved with this at AOL and wanted it to work. After 6 months they could never get e911 provisioned, so I never really used it. Then AOL killed the whole thing. I did get ALL of my money back, so no hard feelings.
• SunRocket - I know a few people working here and since TotalTalk wasn’t working for me, I thought I would give it a try. I like it. Quality is OK to good depending on which net path it takes (DSL or cable).

So I want to spend less money and/or get better service. So I’m making some changes:

1. Get to two phone lines total. One with Verizon (home line). One with SunRocket (aux line). I just got my second Verizon number ported to SunRocket. It works, and Verizon automatically cancelled the second line (which was nice and easy).
2. Switch business level DSL from Verizon to Covad. This will save $20 and double the speed (768 Kbps). I’ve tried this in the past but Verizon didn’t have the local physical wire capacity in the CO or my neighborhood) to do provision their half. Cross my fingers, so far it looks like it will work this time and I should have it up in a couple of weeks.
3. Keep cable modem for now (I still like the speed). Maybe when Alexandria goes wireless or Verizon pulls fiber to my street I’ll switch, but for now the cable company gets my money

The whole “commit to VoIP” thing has taken me a while (4 years?). I hope I don’t regret it now that I don’t have a backup setup (second Verizon POTS line). SunRocket seems to work much better over my cable modem. When I (accidentally) configure it to use the DSL line, it turns into a bad cell phone (quality wise). It makes sense since that line can get some congestion given its speed. I’ll play around a little when the new Covad line gets turned on.

But I’m going to be saving $55 a month and have a better setup (I think).

I found this article useful in spelling out three ways to look at IT adding value. Each one is geared towards a different goal. In the past, I’ve looked at companies and asked “how do the view IT and IT spending/investment?” In many cases it was clearly one of the three identified here: cut costs at all costs (scale), meet the business’ near term requirements (speed), or shoot for the moon/change the world investment (innovation).

What this article in the Fall 2006 issue of McKinsey on IT points out is that every company should have a mix of these, and depending on the high order goals of the organization, they should balance the budget differently (shifting weight between the three).

You can get the whole article here:

The McKinsey Quarterly: Managing IT for scale, speed, and innovation: Centralizing IT with other functions in a shared-services unit reduces costs and improves productivity but can distance business units from technology capabilities they need.
To promote speed and innovation, companies must govern IT as they govern their businesses: with different rules and metrics for different parts of the organization.
Basic IT services should be integrated with other back-office operations and managed for efficiency at scale; IT services that help businesses develop new products should be integrated with those businesses.
Most companies should invest IT resources in research that could deliver novel products and other innovations to open new markets.