The Last Few Poison Apples of Mobile Telecom Overbilling Some things should be simple. Like a Disney movie. There’s a damsel in distress, some type of Prince to the rescue, an evildoer, and some inexplicably undersized helpers. This article, however, is (a) about telecom and (b) the product of my twisted mind and demented sense of humor. So. Clearly it won’t be simple. Now, I either have to cast myself as Prince Charming, which according to a recent survey has been rejected b

A War Story from the Telecom Front We now take a break from our regularly scheduled programming, mining the gory details of mobile telecom challenges to bring you war stories from the telecom front. This one is from back in the days before there were 82 Star Trek spinoffs and 107 different Star Wars movies, series, and matching pajamas. Now. Dear reader, please visualize yourself in a proverbial telecom chopper with the sounds of the whirring blades overhead. Music is blaring

The Pain and Suffering of International Roaming and Calling Let’s start with the question that everyone is quietly asking: What the heck is Rick going to say now, and is it appropriate for LinkedIn? Maybe Rick should be posting this on OnlyFans, perhaps if he were younger, thinner, and in better shape! To be honest, I have neither read the book nor seen the movie…50 Shades of Whatever. That said, after all these years of working with telecom carriers, I know quite a lot about

What 126 Minutes on the Phone with a Carrier Actually Looks Like There are certain pillars of American culture that stand the test of time. Moby Dick. The Great Gatsby. The Godfather. And of course, Beavis and Butthead. Heh heh heh. For those who missed the 1990s, possibly because you were too busy being born, Beavis and Butthead was an animated series on MTV about two teenage burnouts who demonstrated that the human brain could function at surprisingly low levels of intellig

The Rate Plan Mess The answer is about 22%. Now, figure out the question, multiple choice style: A. The estimated amount of body weight the author could lose if he stopped snacking. B. The percentage of readers who are upset that the author pulled a "Bait and Switch" from Star Wars references to Princess Bride references. C. The initial savings, on average, from Rate Plan Optimization alone across three of our clients. D. All of the Above. The correct answer is D, although it

I’ve spent years auditing corporate telecom invoices — and possibly watching too many Star Wars movies. In that time, I’ve asked myself one question more than any other: Sith Lord or Stormtrooper? Is there someone in a dark hood, cackling softly in a server room somewhere, deliberately engineering invoices so complex that no sane person could ever fully untangle them? Or is it just a Stormtrooper situation — constitutionally incapable of hitting a target, getting a rate plan