"Bandwidth Advisors" - www.bandwidthadvisors.com

Fri Mar 25 18:23:08 UTC 2005

Tim,

I hope you're joking. "Extortion" means something pretty specific, legally.
There is absolutely no extortion going on here. The appropriate term is
"agency". Its a pretty widely used concept in the business world.

In terms of the integrity of Bandwidth Advisors or any other consultant -
its caveat emptor. The party buy such services is responsible for asking
about how the money flows and about vendor neutrality policies. The
consulting Terms and Conditions should clearly state who the consultant is
acting as an agent FOR - the carrier or the customer. This is just like Real
Estate - the Seller's Agent may seem very nice and even help you out, but
they work for the seller, not the buyer.

Selling IP transit or other telecommunications services is a business. One
of the great problems I've seen in the last ten or so years is that people
tend to forget this and take things way too personally or emotionally.

- Dan

On 3/24/05 7:29 PM, "Tim Pozar" <pozar at lns.com> wrote:

> Hannigan, Martin wrote:
>> They're brokers. There's really nothing wrong with what they
>> are doing, although they may not have explained it to you too
>> well.
> 
> I guess not.
> 
>> What they do is become an agent, or reseller, for a company and
>> they get a residual on anyone they refer. So if you are a corp IT
>> guy and you have no clue as to who's out there and what the prices
>> are, these kinds of services "can" be useful. Almost everyone will
>> give someone a residual for a referral, but you have to ask. :-)
> 
> Brokers are one thing.  Consultants or "advisors" are another thing.  I
> don't see anything on their web site that labels them as "brokers".  I
> do see under their FAQ...
> 
> Q. How does Bandwidth Advisors get paid?
> 
> A. Bandwidth Advisors receives a small residual payment from the
>   Telcos once the Client begins paying for the service.
> 
> Nice to see it there.
> 
> I know a bunch of consultants out there (me being one, Bill Woodcock,
> etc.) that do not take money from vendors they recommend.  How can a
> client of a consultant really know they have the best deal when the
> "consultant" will not investigate all of the options out there?
> 
> For those that don't know... I am now the COO of UnitedLayer.  It sounds
> like, since I am not going to pay the "extortion" fee to Bandwidth
> Advisors, that their consultants won't know about our pricing and
> services.  Even if I did pay the fee, that means that their clients
> can't get the best deal as I need to raise my fees to client to cover
> the "small residual payment" going to "Bandwidth Advisors".
> 
> Tim

-- 
Daniel Golding
Network and Telecommunications Strategies
Burton Group