Forced migrations are common in IT, but you can avoid the worst by trading passivity for action ... plan and take charge. Trending in telecom today is speeding up the pace of migrations by replacing “incentives” with announcements that a service is going to be discontinued. However, customers still have a choice, they can move or they can go dark.

A forced service migration isn’t usually seen as a positive thing. What’s making them even worse is a new carrier tactic in which they insert provisions into contracts and service guides that make it impossible for a customer to migrate from a service that the carrier is planning to discontinue without either paying substantial termination fees or securing the carrier’s permission, which is conditioned on migrating to the carrier’s own substitute service at prices and terms that the carrier specifies.