Serving the underserved

Over the course of my 23 years of covering the telecom market, I have probably written some variation of the words “the underserved small- to medium-sized business market” hundreds of times. Over the past several years, I've also had an unusual personal insight into this market through my husband, who is a field support technician for a company that provides IT services to SMBs all around Chicagoland.

Via that daily insight, I've come to realize just what makes smaller businesses so darn hard to serve. For one thing, the variety of locations is staggering. Medical clinics, law offices, not-for-profit associations, landscaping firms, the local YMCA — not the mention the home offices of many individuals who run these smaller operations — are all part of the daily grind.

With each customer comes a specific set of circumstances. An old accounting application that can't be upgraded to run on new servers, an office too remote to get anything but dial-up, backup programs that mysteriously stop working, LANs improperly set up — the list goes on and on. And that's before the kind of employee behavior that plagues all corporate IT networks (think iTunes and video downloads) is factored in.

One of the things that keeps my husband employed is that none of these companies can afford to keep an IT person full time, and few if any have the time or expertise to run their more complicated computer and telecom networks themselves. One of the things that constantly frustrates my husband and his colleagues is trying to get the necessary tech support from hardware vendors, software companies and, yes, telecom service providers.

According to the many press releases that flow through this office, this is now changing. SMBs are the new darlings of the market — the objects of affection for new entrants such as cable companies, as well as for the CLECs that have targeted them for some time and the incumbents that are renewing their efforts.

In an area such as Chicago, SMBs do have a choice of service providers — I have that on good authority from the guy who sits across the dinner table from me every night. And that's a big improvement from the way things were a few years back. But there are still many places where no such choices exist, leading me to think I'll be writing about underserved SMBs again in the future.

On a totally separate note, we are in the final stages of planning our upcoming event, Telephony LIVE, to be held Sept. 30-Oct. 1 in Chicago. If you are interested in proposing any speakers, be sure to do so quickly. Go to telephonyonline.com/tellive08-speaker-reg and follow the instructions.