David Byrd
Chief Marketing Officer for ANPI
Proactive Care Puts Operators One Step Ahead
By Thomas Fuerst, Senior Director, Multimedia Solutions MarketingAlcatel-Lucent
Monitoring and analyzing network data proactively saves operators time, money, and customers.
When a network service fails, it makes headlines, ticks off customers, and costs that network operator money. When a failure is headed off in advance, on the other hand, there might not be praise-laden headlines, but it's newsworthy nonetheless.
The traditional approach to customer care has typically been: a disgruntled customer calls customer service and complains of a service interruption or problem; the rep, learning of it for the first time, sends out a technician the next day, and eventually finds a resolution. Often, customers are left feeling put out, and the operator has spent significant time and money resolving the problem. Even worse is the customer who doesn’t call and just feels this is ‘typical’ of their network experience. That is a customer at risk of leaving.
Proactive care flips this dynamic on its head by using predictive analytics to identify potential outages or errors in the network and stop them before they occur. It consists of three main parts: one, constantly monitoring and measuring data on the network; two, real-time analysis of the data; and three, the most important, acting on that analysis to fix the problem.
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Full Story »Unified Policy Effort
February 14, 2013One thing I forgot to mention was the successful conclusion of the unification of NTCA (The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association) and OPASTCO (Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies) during the RTIME conference in Orlando. The unification of the two organizations will increase the policy influence of the rural service providers and telecom companies. Several long-standing association by-laws were changed, one of which provides non-cooperative Telco members full voting rights in the new entity. At the end of the month the unification will be declared complete and the new entity will be called NTCA, The Rural Broadband Association.
BroadSoft UC White Paper
February 11, 2013Last week BroadSoft released a study updating interest in Unified Communications (UC). The study claims to include some SMBs but does not indicate the percentage. This is important when discussing UC because the value proposition differs greatly between single location and multi-location businesses and size of business.
Research has shown that there are three key drivers specifically for small businesses and UC.
All IP, All the Time, Oracle?
February 8, 2013Yesterday, I did something I rarely do. I forgot to write the blog and for that I apologize. As ANPI approaches the launch of its first major new product for SMBs and enterprises, I got tied up in meetings and, well, forgot. I even have a couple of things worth sharing.
On with RTIME
February 4, 2013Last week I attended and spoke at IT Expo in Miami. This week I am attending my first national rural telecom event, Rural Telecom Industry Meeting and Expo (RTIME). What distinguishes this event is focus on the issues of rural America around telecommunications and the coming together of so many different telephone company CEOs, General Managers, Directors and management staff. Of course, since it is being held at the Disney location in Orlando, there is also a good size contingent of younger family members.
WebRTC, Unified Communications and VoIP Quality
January 31, 2013These were the three subjects that I discussed while at IT Expo in Miami to fairly well attended sessions. We shared our new ANPI logo for the first time as well and received great accolades. It has been a very busy show. In reverse order:
- VoIP Quality – the session was a direction for improving VoIP.
The Status of Local Telephone Competition
January 24, 2013The recent status report issued by the FCC this month is chalk full of statistics with little narrative but one can draw quite a few conclusions from the data. The easy conclusions are a) wireline connections continue to drop, b) wireless and VoIP connections continue to rise c) ILECs are still looking for a future strategy while the CLECs and wireless companies are executing a strategy. One principally based upon IP communications.
According to the report, In December 2011, there were 107 million end-user switched access lines, 37 million VoIP subscriptions, and 298 million mobile accounts for a grand total of 442 million retail local telephone service connections.
The State of Wireless and Wireline in America
January 21, 2013Last week I was in San Antonio attending the 2013 Wireless Symposium and WiExpo. In addition to ANPI having a booth for carriers to discuss our product offering, I also participated on a panel addressing mobile video. Since ANPI is not a network or infrastructure provider, my view of supporting video is to incorporate it as an application or service after addressing infrastructure requirements. In brief, video is viewed as an entertainment delivery technology rather than for training, content delivery and collaboration. Recognizing that video can serve the needs of businesses in improving productivity, providing on-demand training and education, building teams across geographical divides and reducing travel costs.
In the Year 2013 (Part III)
January 14, 2013Continuing with my ten most important matters for 2013:
7. 4G Service Area Expansion – with the advent of 4G, mobility has finally reached the business professional. While the wireless carriers tend to be less than specific about how many of the subscribers use 4G or the actual percentage of their networks covered by 4G, several have been very specific in identifying the amount of investment they will make to expand their service areas with AT&T leading the pack announcing they will $8 billion over 3 years.
In the Year 2013 (Part II)
January 10, 2013Again, my top ten things to monitor or be aware of this year are in no particular order. Each is important to the industry in addressing a required standard, regulatory issue or technology trend. So, let’s continue with item 4.
- Call Completion Issues – this is perhaps one of the more vexing issues we face as an industry and to some extent as a country because it is principally affecting only rural communities.
In the Year 2013
January 7, 2013Although it is common to look back on the previous year for highs and lows, I decided to look forward to the top 10 things to monitor in 2013. The order is not of any particular importance but the ten items are of concern or interest to most of us.
- Cloud Services – the growth of cloud services in support of hosted communications, IT infrastructures and application distribution continues unabated. Cloud services appeals to all sizes of businesses and has found useful purpose in the most intransigent businesses that once would have maintained all technology and services in house.
