Comms Dealer

Small cell developer and manufacturer ip.access has been selected to supply Jersey Telecom with 3G small cells for the island's first residential, business and public access deployment.

The full commercial roll-out of the service has already started after an initial deployment earlier this year.

ip.access SVP Sales and Operations Rob Jones said: "Indoor coverage in Jersey presents many challenges for mobile operators including the increased usage of metal components in building insulation. By deploying our indoor small cells in homes and business premises we are helping to turn not-spots into hot-spots and deliver the always-on connectivity demanded by the smartphone generation."

Tim Knights, Head of Mobile Networks, Jersey Telecom, added: "The small cells we have deployed so far have been well received by our customers. We've been able to both increase our indoor coverage and also off-load some capacity from the macro network to improve overall network performance and quality."

The small cells on the island are being supported by the ip.access nanoConverge gateway solution which enables operators to manage 2G, 3G and 4G small cells from a converged Gateway.

Abbey Telecom ramped up its fundraising campaign for Derian House Children's Hospice by taking part in a dragon boat race at Preston Marina. The crew of paddlers, which included Fylde MP Mark Menzies, finished in tenth place and raised over £2,200 for the charity.

"We've dedicated ourselves to promoting and participating in Derian House events this summer with a series of videos," said Abbey Telecom MD Tony Raynor. "But we were determined to put up a good show for the dragon boat racing day and managed to recruit over 25 paddlers for fundraising and competing.

"The team put in a stirring sprint finish in our final heat and we were within a whisker of making the final. It was a great day for everyone involved and we hope that it's given the charity a real boost."

Congratulations to Pinnacle Telecom, Redcare 5G and Freedom Communications who picked up the Gold, Silver and Bronze prizes respectively in BNP Paribas' inaugural Revolution sales team incentive scheme designed to drive the uptake of financing solutions in the channel.

The prizes included supercar driving, helicopter rides over London and a city break with West End theatre tickets.

"Since the June launch we've enrolled over 40 partners on the incentive, comprising 200 or so sales people," explained Suhale Vorajee, Head of Marketing at BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions.

"It's a simple, accessible scheme and we think that's one of the reasons it's so appealing. One finance transaction equals one entry. If your name is drawn then the entire sales team benefits."

The incentive originally planned to run until the end of August but has been extended by one month, now finishing in September.

"We took this decision to reflect the sales cycle we experience in the ICT market, which averages out at about four months," added Vorajee. "So we've extended the incentive period to give subscribed partners the best possible chance of securing one of the prizes."

Pure Storage, the flash enterprise array vendor, has announced the formation of a new international partner advisory board, the Pure Storage Partner Advisory Council (PAC). The company also unveiled changes to its Pure Storage Partner Programme (P3), including new partner tiers, expanded benefits, training tools and support features.

In its first full year of channel operations, the company signed more than 100 partners worldwide and achieved over 125% consecutive quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) channel growth.

"Today's businesses are increasingly deploying new technologies such as cloud solutions and virtualisation which are putting a strain on their existing storage infrastructures. They are looking for cost-effective storage solutions that will meet their need for quick access and enable them to process more transactions and accelerate their applications and services," said Dan Hayden-Hammond, Sales Director, Viadex.

Pure Storage first announced its plan to be 100% channel focused when it launched in August 2011. The company has expanded its international footprint, securing strategic partnerships with resellers across the EMEA and APAC regions, including Softcat in the United Kingdom and Antemeta in France.

"Flash storage is gaining acceptance as a mainstream medium now, and not just for performance gain. The channel needs to be prepared for this and should look to identify those storage vendors who can demonstrate a definite capability to support such workloads in a highly performant manner, at a cost-effective price point," said Clive Longbottom, Founder and Service Director, Quocirca.

A study into the financial health of UK's largest 1020 Telecommunication Services companies has revealed as many as 288 need an urgent survival plan, either from an injection of capital, a radical cost reduction scheme or financial restructuring if they're to continue to trade.

That's according to Plimsoll's latest research into the overall financial performance of each of the UK's main telecommunication services companies and scored each on their financial health. Each company has been given a rating of either strong, good mediocre, caution or danger.

David Pattison, Plimsoll's Senior Analyst, said: "We tested this method of analysis on a study of 351 previously failed companies, including all the latest retail failures, and this showed 320 had a caution or danger rating up to two years prior to their demise.

"This proves our method of analysis can identify the key characteristics of a failing company. If failures are predictable, and if enough warning can be given, the management has time to get a survival plan in place to save the company.

"It is clear from this study the Telecommunication Services market is going through a period of great change and the market is highly competitive. These 288 companies rated as danger are clearly operating under financial pressure and many risk being forced out of the market."

PC shipments in EMEA continued to contract in the second quarter of 2013 according to research by IDC Europe.

The industry watcher attributes the decline to high levels of inventory and slow consumer demand constrained new purchasing by channel partners and enterprises remained under economic pressure, leading to a 22.2% decrease in overall PC shipments compared to the same quarter last year.

EMEA PC shipments reached 19.6 million units in the second quarter of 2013, with portable PC shipments at 12.4 million, declining by 26%, and desktops at 7.2 million, down 14.6%.

"The second quarter continued to be impacted by large inventory in several countries. April and May were weak as expected as most vendors, retailers, and distributors focused on stock reduction, and while June was supported by starting replenishment ahead of the back to school and product transitions, the volume of new orders remained constrained as caution prevailed in particular in retail," said Chrystelle Labesque, research manager, EMEA Personal Computing.

"The PC market is going through a major transition with evolving form factors and a larger product portfolio, but the expansion of the overall client device market continues to drive increasing consumer spending and will also support key opportunities for the industry in the commercial space."

Following a recession-induced drop in 2009, the global telecom/datacom equipment and software market grew 19% in 2010, 7% in 2011, and held steady in 2012 at $172bn.

Market research firm Infonetics Research has released excerpts from its annual Telecom and Datacom Network Equipment and Software report, which provides a big picture of the health of the overall market.

"Even though there's tremendous uncertainty about the health of the global economy and prospects for economic growth in the short term, the telecom and datacom equipment and software market is on track to grow annually through 2017, driven by major network transformations," reports Jeff Wilson, principal analyst at Infonetics Research. 

Going forward, Infonetics projects the telecom and datacom equipment and software market to grow at a 4.9% CAGR from 2013 to 2017, when it is forecast to hit $218bn worldwide. During those 5 years, Infonetics expects service providers and enterprises to spend a cumulative $1 trillion on telecom and datacom equipment and software

The top four telecom/datacom equipment vendors in order by overall worldwide revenue market share are Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent. Cisco maintains its commanding lead in the enterprise segment, while Ericsson is top in the larger service provider segment

Companies tracked include Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Brocade, Ciena, Cisco, Ericsson, Fujitsu, HP, Huawei, Juniper, Motorola, NEC, Nokia Siemens Networks, Samsung, Siemens, ZTE.

Vodafone UK has given resellers a taste of its channel growth plans at its first ever partner conference for mobile, fixed line and data services partners. Partner delegates at the Manchester summit were given details of the company's £900m investment in its UK network, the new Vodafone Sales Academy training programme and a channel promotion designed to attract more customers seeking fixed and mobile solutions from one source.

In the UK, the world's second largest mobile telecommunications business has traditionally focused on its large community of mobile resellers. Now, following the acquisition of fixed line giant Cable & Wireless Worldwide and the rollout of its 4G service scheduled for late summer, Vodafone is positioning itself as a total communications provider capable of helping fixed, mobile and IT services partners secure larger wallet shares from predominantly SME and mid-market business customers.

Nick Birtwistle, Sales Director for SME and Partners at Vodafone UK (pictured above), speaking exclusively to Comms Dealer before the launch of the new Vodafone Partner Programme, said all types of resellers now have the opportunity to simplify and expand their business offerings under Vodafone's broad wing. "The message is clear and simple. We are now a total communications company and resellers bringing their fixed and mobile revenues to Vodafone can expect a world class partner programme and a set of initiatives they would not be able to realise themselves."

Rob Mukherjee, Head of Vodafone Partner Services at Vodafone UK, said: "There is nobody else that can play the hand that Vodafone can now play. New partners that come and join us will be also able to play that hand and make the most of the new Vodafone post the acquisition of Cable & Wireless Worldwide."

Mukherjee confirmed that the Cable & Wireless Worldwide brand was now fully extinguished and all channel activities would be carried out under the Vodafone banner. He said partners can look forward to a revamped online partner portal to improve customer order processing, a large bank of Vodafone marketing collateral, customer case studies to support sales efforts and more face-to-face support from a partner development team numbering 30 executives operating across the UK.

"Partner enablement is all about being easy to do business. We have already invested in on-line support for order placement but what we are talking about here is enabling partners to ultimately manage their whole customer lifecycle on line. We are very passionate about the Vodafone Sales Academy which will help partners develop their people to make the most of the new total comms world. We have already received great feedback on the training programmes we have delivered to the market to date so we will be taking that a step further in the coming months."

Birtwistle said the key aim of the Vodafone Partner Programme was to help resellers differentiate their offerings and become stickier with business customers by offering a complete communications portfolio.

"Having spoken to customers we know things that are really important to them, such as better operator agility, delivering better connected employees and better engagement with their customers. The portfolio we have got now enables our partners to deliver things that really matter to businesses.

"We have said we will launch 4G services by later summer. We are incredibly excited about this because it will really enable our partners to differentiate in this area as well, so it will be worth the wait."

Hats off to Alex Taylor and Francesco Dore, the first graduates to be appointed full-time following the completion of a one year apprenticeship at Union Street Technologies.

The graduates have been recruited into the firm's customer support team and following their appointments Union Street has taken on three more apprentices as part of the government apprenticeship scheme.

Paula Wright, Operations Director, commented: "We felt that it was important to do our bit to invest in, train and mould future generations of telecoms professionals, and to provide entrants to the industry with the opportunity to prove themselves and develop their skills under our tutelage.

"By investing time into training and mentoring we are able to harness and cultivate the raw talents of some highly capable individuals, and the continued development of their skills reaps untold benefits for our business."

Pictured (l-r): Alex Taylor, Francesco Dore and Paula Wright

Jabra has released details on new cashback promotions for Q3, providing authorised partners with a new sales campaign to support growth of their headset business to new and existing customers

The promotion offers customers money back when they purchase selected Jabra devices, and the incentive can be used by all authorised partners registered to the Jabra WIN Partner Programme.

The scheme also allows partners to promote the money off incentive without having to facilitate any of the back-end administration, as this is all undertaken by Jabra.

A toolbox of marketing materials to support the Q3 Cashbacks have been created and can be utilised by partners to co-brand and promote the scheme to their customer base.

Andrew Doyle, Managing Director, UK & Ireland Business Solutions said: "Due to the popularity of the Jabra Cashback incentive launch in May we have decided to continue with this promotion to provide our partners with an easy way to gain, ensuring  that Jabra customers receive more value for money on several of our devices."