Next Generation Communications Blog

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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10 Lessons from Volleyball

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Emerging Threats Combats a Million Plus Pieces of New Malware a Week

There are 250,000 plus new pieces of malware being produced each day equating to one piece per person in the US in...

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NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability

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SysAid's Lifshitz: The Cloud Will Dominate ITSM Market

Cloud computing has really become a household word with mainstream media outlets running stories on television about the growth in the space...

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Avaya Takes Networking Lead in SPB

At Interop Las Vegas 2013 Avaya was demonstrating their real-world Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) solutions and while interoperating with Spirent, HP and...

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Alianza Wants to Host Your Software Telco

The software telco(r)evolution representing the move from hardware to software is perhaps the biggest trend in the world of carrier telecom this...

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Wireless Growth News

A newly released report from Informa Telecoms & Media indicates that 2007-2008 witnessed significant growth in the prepaid mobile services market.   At the end of last year, there were nearly 2.33 billion prepaid subscriptions worldwide, of which two percent of subscriptions accounted for prepaid WCDMA accesses.   According to the research, by 2013 there will be approximately 3.93 billion prepaid subscriptions, generating concomitant revenues of over $382 billion.   The consultancy predicts that from 2007-2013, growth might slow down to a global compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of just over nine percent; Still, the prepaid market will account for over eighty percent of new mobile subscriptions.   It's expected that the key drivers of future growth of the prepaid mobile services market will be very-low-income customers in developing markets.     In other next-generation wireless news, Alcatel-Lucent today announced a €22 million deal with South African mobile operator Vodacom SA to upgrade its existing 3G network.   The goal is to boost the capacity and coverage of Vodacom's network so that the wireless carrier can offer its customers a wide range of advanced next-generation mobile broadband services.   The 3G wireless network will be based on Alcatel-Lucent UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) and HSDPA/HSUPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access/High Speed Uplink Packet Access) technologies.    

Scots Want Next-Gen Communications Networks

A recent survey of the online population in Scotland found that 84% want high-speed downloads and 87% would like TV and films on demand. The survey was commissioned by Mott MacDonald, a management and engineering consultancy.   The challenge facing these would-be wired Scots is that fewer than 0.01% of households in the UK have a fiber network to the home which would allow access to the type of broadband necessary to deliver these services.   According to the report on Public Technology.net, the survey:   "...highlighted that Scots want access to online services such as video calls (63%), remote healthcare (61%), and high speed broadband to access virtual learning tools (71%)."   Tom Allen, director of the Information, Communications & Media division at Mott MacDonald, said: "The Scottish online population has told us they want broadband that simply delivers."    

Is ALU Pursuing Openreach?

Newly minted Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen is rumored to be negotiating with former employer BT (Verwaayen, who was appointed Al-Lu CEO last month, ran the carrier until April of this year) on taking over operational responsibility for BT's Openreach.   Openreach is a division of BT that was established as a result of an agreement BT and regulator Ofcom to give rival operators equal access to BT's local network.   As Openreach proudly proclaims on its Web site: "We are the proud guardians of the nation's local access network, sometimes referred to as the 'first mile.'"   The Register was first with this story and has it that BT is negotiating the outsourcing of its network access arm.   According to a report on TelecomTV, Alcatel Lucent already has an outsourcing contract with BT Global Services that is worth about ... [$350 million per year] ... "and a not-so-secret weapon in the form of Ben Verwaayen."   If Verwaayen could secure a multi-billion dollar deal so soon after taking the helm of Alcatel-Lucent it would certainly be a nice achievement this quickly into his tenure.  

Is Business Ready for the Millenials?

A brand-new survey from the respected Economist Intelligence Unit in combination with Genesys predicts finds that most companies are struggling to adapt their businesses to serve customers who are part of the Millennial Generation. The Millenials are generally thought to be those consumers born between 1982 and 2001 (7-26 years of age today).   Millenials actually outnumber baby-boomers today, and this generation will continue to grow in influence as younger members of the group reach adulthood over the next decade or so.   According to the report, three key findings emerged from the study: ·         Investment strategies are shifting to favor Millenials: Companies are debating heavily whether to invest more in catering to aging baby boomers versus next-generation consumers, with 42% saying they should tilt toward younger customers, while 39% would shift toward baby boomers and generation X. ·         The time to act is now: Most companies (54%) have not yet set their strategies or marketing for Millennials even though they overwhelmingly agree that such steps are needed, with 75% saying Millennials will impact their organization as consumers in the next three years.  ·         It's an Enterprise 2.0 world: Most companies have a sophisticated understanding of what it would take to adapt, but are not ready to change their customer engagement model by leveraging social networking, peer marketing, better online support, text messaging, and blogging.     The report underscores the need for businesses to invest in new methods of customer communication and to tailor their approaches to match specific customer preferences.   To download a copy of the report, click here.

Testing for Optimal DSL Performance

Earlier this week, at Broadband World Forum Europe in Brussels, Alcatel-Lucent announced that its 5530 Network Analyzer (NA) has evolved to become a single integrated testing solution for DSL-based broadband access networks.   The solution features a customer care interface designed to assist service provider staff to provide immediate support when facing end-user issues, and a Dynamic Line Management (DLM) feature automatically sets DSL lines to work at optimal levels, thus delivering increased stability and service quality.   Driven by increasing triple play demand from end users, DSL lines need to offer higher performance to meet the needs of customers.   The 5530 gives operators greater insight into the loop quality of their DSL lines, giving them greater visibility into potential problems which can be avoided, anticipated or resolved much more quickly.   For more, check out the official announcement from Alcatel-Lucent.

ALU: Leaders in Gartner's Magic Quadrant

Alcatel-Lucent has been placed in the leaders' quadrant of the recently published Gartner "Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony."   The Gartner Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period, depicting Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that particular marketplace.   The latest Gartner report -- which for the first time, evaluates corporate telephony vendors from a global rather than regional perspective -- recognizes that the market is evolving "from one of proprietary hardware to one of standards-based software" that provides companies the opportunity to "use IP telephony to deliver business benefits across the organization, while consolidating technologies around a common technology or solution provider, or selection of providers and their partners."  
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