Today we have another “Telecom Attorney Tip” from Ben Bronston of telecomlawyer.net. We hope to have a new tip every couple of weeks to help our agents out. If you have a specific question for Ben email me at rob@channelupdate.com
“The answer is you shouldn’t if you don’t have to. If you have signed an agent agreement with a carrier, the chances are you are going to invest a large amount of intellectual capital (and possibly financial capital) into the relationship. A termination for convenience clause permits the carrier to terminate for any reason or no reason at all, thereby making your investment worthless. If you are unsuccessful in getting the carrier to delete the clause, then it should at least be reciprocal (i.e. you should have the right to terminate for convenience also). In any event, commissions should continue to be paid on an evergreen basis in perpetuity after termination for convenience.”
- Ben
You can see Ben’s site here – Rob
Image Credit - Judge using his gavel IXQUICK Flickr
Working in the channel it is common to come across end-users who need more bandwidth, but are tied by budget constraints from spending the cash needed to purchase a T1 circuit. The options are to stay at a connection speed that does not work for them or overreach and buy a product that they cannot afford. Luckily, there is a new product to fill this void for your end-user.
Bandwidth aggregation allows a customer to bond two separate connections together (such as a DSL and a cable connection) to achieve higher bandwidth. I see this playing a large role for agents in the channel over the coming years. Giving the end-user an option to bond separate bandwidth types also offers redundancy. If you are bonding a DSL and cable connection and the DSL fails, you will still be able to use the bandwidth offered by your cable connection until your DSL line comes back up. This feature is a true value add for consumers.
As of now I only know of one vendor who is offering this solution. Sharedband’s product can bond multiple connections together including wireless, T1, DSL, cable, and FiOS. They also have just started a channel program which is still small enough to be flexible and accomadate the needs of agents who want to be involved. This combination of a unique and practical product with a new channel is a winning combination. Learn more about Sharedband and bandwidth aggregation below – Rob
Sharedband and bandwidth aggregation.
“Sharedband Technologies, LLC, headquartered in Seattle, Washington, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sharedband Limited a UK Corporation. Sharedband has patented technology which is designed to significantly improve the performance and resilience of a customer’s existing Internet lines by bonding them together at the IP layer for a single, faster connection. It works with all types of broadband and any Internet Service Provider with the addition of our firmware residing on a low cost router.
With our customer base rapidly expanding, Sharedband has installed servers in multiple data centers with the ability to provide our bonding solution to customers anywhere in the United States. We currently have customers bonding DSL with Cable; DSL or Cable with 3G; Cable with FIOS; Wireless with fixed wire and wireless; T1 with T1; and even bonded T1′s with bonded T1′s. The service is easy to install and runs over Sharedband’s own infrastructure, requiring zero change to the ISP’s network. Sharedband’s managed service enables high-bandwidth applications such as hosted applications/cloud computing, video conferencing, and off-site data backup. Using Sharedband for VoIP ensures quality voice calls are never dropped.
To simplify our pricing, we have packaged our service into two plan options: [click to continue…]
