Your Telecom Inventory Is Three Years Out of Date. Your Carrier’s Isn’t.
Your Telecom Inventory Is Three Years Out of Date. Your Carrier’s Isn’t. By Bill Henrichs Founder & President, Bearstone LLC | Former Head of Telecommunications, Simon Property Group When I ran telecommunications for Simon Property Group, I came to treat one document as the foundation under every other one: the inventory. Not the contract. Not […]
The Cross-Connect You Ordered Removed in 2023 Is Still on This Month’s Invoice
The Cross-Connect You Ordered Removed in 2023 Is Still on This Month’s Invoice By Bill Henrichs Founder & President, Bearstone LLC | Former Head of Telecommunications, Simon Property Group Colocation should be the easiest spend in the telecom estate to govern. Nothing about it is abstract. A cabinet is a cabinet. A power circuit is […]
AI Bandwidth Commitments Are the New Migration Circuits
AI Bandwidth Commitments Are the New Migration Circuits By Bill Henrichs Founder & President, Bearstone LLC | Former Head of Telecommunications, Simon Property Group When I ran telecommunications at Simon Property Group, we provisioned a great deal of bandwidth we never fully used. Migration circuits were sized for peak load and never rightsized after the […]
The SD-WAN Hangover
A 2021 contract in a 2026 market. The deployment modernized. The billing didn’t. Your SD-WAN Deployment Was the Right Call in 2021 The Contract Is Still Billing Like It’s 2021. By Bill Henrichs Founder & President, Bearstone LLC | Former Head of Telecommunications, Simon Property Group When I ran telecommunications at Simon Property Group, the […]
Your Carrier Offered a Fiber Upgrade. Read the First Invoice Like a Contract.
THE UPGRADE WAS REAL. THE INVOICE WASN’T. A carrier-initiated upgrade is a billing event. Treat it like one. By Bill Henrichs Founder & President, Bearstone LLC | Former Head of Telecommunications, Simon Property Group When I ran telecommunications for Simon Property Group, I learned to be careful with good news that arrives by phone. A […]
Your Carrier Offered a Fiber Upgrade. Treat the First Invoice Like a New Contract.
Your Carrier Offered a Fiber Upgrade. Treat the First Invoice Like a New Contract. The call comes from your account team. Better fiber, better speed, better rate. You sign. The upgrade is real. Three weeks later, the first post-upgrade invoice arrives — and it includes line items that were not in the quote. Some are […]
Your SASE Architecture Is Live. Your MPLS Contracts Are Still Billing.
Your SASE Architecture Is Live. Your MPLS Contracts Are Still Billing. When I was Head of Telecommunications at Simon Property Group, we ran an MPLS network that touched every property in the portfolio. The architecture made sense for the time: predictable performance, contractual SLAs, a known vendor footprint. The invoices reflected that — and so […]
AI Bandwidth Commitments Are the New Migration Circuits
AI Bandwidth Commitments Are the New Migration Circuits Networking teams across enterprise IT are provisioning bandwidth right now — committing to carrier circuits, cloud interconnects, and data center cross-connects — for AI workloads that do not yet exist at production scale. The provisioning is happening before the workloads are deployed. The contracts are being signed […]
If You Closed a Store in 2023, You Might Still Be Paying for It
If You Closed a Store in 2023, You Might Still Be Paying for It You know exactly which locations you closed. Facilities knows. Real estate knows. HR processed the last transfers. The lease is terminated. The keys are returned. But the telecom circuits at that location? There’s a good chance they’re still active. The carrier […]
The Charter-Cox 90-Day Window Hasn’t Opened Yet. That’s Your Advantage.
The Charter-Cox 90-Day Window Hasn’t Opened Yet. That’s Your Advantage. When major carrier consolidations closed during my tenure as Head of Telecommunications at Simon Property Group, the pattern was always the same. The account team would call and say, “Nothing changes for you.” The portal login would update. The invoice format would shift slightly. And […]
