Telecom as a culture has been about saving the customer money. From before Sprint’s pin dropped in 1987, the long distance companies were playing take-away from Ma Bell with “savings”. From $1 a minute all the way down to a dime (even to Canada). Then lower, until now we fight over hundredths of a penny as well as billing increments. (The robo-dialers use a rebiller that offers 6 second increments. The business model would collapse with 30 second increments.)
It has been about Replacement Services that cost less.
It has hardly ever been about better service or innovation, really.
T1 being replaced by DSL was about cost, not service delivery. It became about “Good enough” for the cost. Not the value. The price.
Now we are in the era of SD-WAN, which is the new replacement for MPLS. Since many did not truly grasp the MPLS benefits, we now offer SD-WAN service that is just a hidden MPLS network. Funny! Oh, and for less money, of course.
Why can’t we sell UCaaS? Because it doesn’t fit into this model. It CAN replace a PBX or a key system, but so could Centrex. This was supposed to be so much more than POTS replacement. (That’s what SIP trunks and CPaaS are for).
UCaaS and CCaaS are about customer experience. The promise of cloud is that it will improve business processes. It can’t do that when it is “just” replacing the current phone system.
The reason that seat prices on UCaaS have been stagnant is that as a replacement for an on-premise PBX and a PRI, the seat prices have to be low – or the business will end up paying more per month than they do now. That isn’t the slogan of buying telecom. Our slogan is something similar for less. Integrated T1 anyone? How about a bucket of 20K minutes?