Eric Palmatier

Author: eric

  • Disconnected: The Industry Moves On

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    This is part five – the conclusion – of this series. Your Call Is Important to Us There’s a phrase the telecom industry has used for decades. You’ve heard it while pacing a room.You’ve heard it in parking lots.You’ve heard it while staring at a phone that refuses to cooperate. “Your call is important to…

  • Disconnected: Surviving the Churn

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    This is part four of this series. What Survives After the People Are Gone At this point in the story, the conclusion feels obvious. Telecom reduced its workforce – not because it failed, but because it succeeded. Revenue decoupled from people. Systems replaced judgment. Automation replaced authority. Consolidation replaced careers. The industry learned how to…

  • Disconnected: All Circuits Are Busy

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    The Layoffs You Were Never Supposed to See This is part three of the Disconnected series. Up to this point, the story has been structural and economic.This is where it becomes measurable. Because the most important thing to understand about telecom layoffs is not who was laid off in 2025. It’s how many people were…

  • Disconnected: The Day Revenue and People Parted Ways

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    This is part two of a multi-part series. For most of its modern history, the telecom industry operated under a simple assumption: if you wanted to grow revenue, you needed more people. More customers meant more retail stores.More stores meant more sales reps.More subscribers meant more technicians, more call center agents, more managers. The same…

  • Disconnected: When Revenue Stopped Needing People

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    This is part one of a multi-part series of articles discussing how the telecom industry went from people being one of their greatest resources, to being one of their greatest liabilities. When I started in the telecom business in 2004, retail sales was not considered an entry point – it was a proving ground. We…

  • The Signal Bars Were Never About Signal

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    eric
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    I still remember when anything less than full bars was a crisis. I can’t tell you how many customers came to me angry that their phone only showed four bars. Four meant something was wrong. Four meant calls were about to drop. Four meant the network was failing them. What made it worse was that…