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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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Tagged Alcatel-Lucent, big data, customer care, KPIs, network monitoring, procativecare | Responses

10 Lessons from Volleyball

By Peter on Monday, May 20

I've played volleyball for over 25 years. I have traveled around the US to watch the pros live - both indoor...

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Tagged hiring, strategy, volleyball

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

By Rich Tehrani on Friday, May 17

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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Tagged emerging threats, interop, malware, security

NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability

By Rich Tehrani on Friday, May 17

One of the goals of ETSI NFV is to allow new entrants to provide solutions to carriers based on software instead of...

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Tagged bss, carrier, ericsson, huawei, interoperability, nfv, nokia siemens networks, nsn, oss, sdn, software telco

SysAid's Lifshitz: The Cloud Will Dominate ITSM Market

By Rich Tehrani on Thursday, May 16

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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Tagged help desk, itsm, mdm, sysaid

Avaya Takes Networking Lead in SPB

By Rich Tehrani on Wednesday, May 15

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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Tagged alcatel-lucent, avaya, hp, interop, lucent, mpls, networking, spb, spirent, zeus kerravala

Alianza Wants to Host Your Software Telco

By Rich Tehrani on Tuesday, May 14

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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Tagged acme packet, alianza, etsi, hosted ims, nfv, oracle, software telco, software telco congress, virtualization

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Top 5 Ways to Improve Agent Training

January 23, 2009

Agents are paddling like a duck in a pond to stay afloat. Always have been, but moreso now. Many companies are wondering how to get Agents to sell their services. (I get this daily). Here's some thoughts:

Agents spends all day just running their business and keeping customers happy.

Posted in VAR, agents, channel, sales and selling

Tagged: agents, channel partners, sales, var : Related Tags: figure service, agent training, clear concise, improve agent, agents, agent

Agents Need to Morph into a VAR

January 22, 2009

It is getting tough out there, as the news keeps repeating as nauseum.
Businesses are laying off and closing. If you can maneuver in this environment, then opportunity awaits. No I haven't been drinking. Let's examine things.

Layoffs means companies have to be more efficient and more productive with less.

Posted in TEM, agents, saas, unified communications

Tagged: agents, managed services, unified messaging, var : Related Tags: hosted email, means companies, managed services, layoffs means, technology needs, hosted

Comments

Broadband Stimulus Bill details

January 20, 2009

More Broadband Stimulus Bill (and here at TMC) info from Stephen Ronan on the CyberTelecom listserv. (probably in response to the volume of comments from Tom Keatings blog!)

Can anyone provide a pointer to the bill at issue?

The summary of the principal broadband provisions below:

1) $2.825 billion for loans, loan guarantees and grants to be administered by the USDA's Rural Utilities Service Distance Learning, Tele-medicine and Broadband Program.

Posted in broadband, economy, politics, telecommunications

Tagged: broadband, economy, law : Related Tags: broadband service, deployment grants, wireless broadband, broadband deployment, broadband stimulus, broadband

VoIP and the Economy

January 20, 2009

VoIP originally was sold as the answer to the next wave of cost savings for consumers and especially for small business. Business phone lines have always cost more than residential lines because, in theory, businesses use the phone line more often. (I guess, if you have 2 teenagers then that equals 1 small business).

Now that businesses are looking for ways to cut costs, analysts are predicting a rise in VoIP sales. Maybe.

Posted in PBX, agents, economy, sip trunking, telecommunications, unified communications, voip

Tagged: cellular, hosted pbx, sip phone, sip trunk, voip : Related Tags: makes sense, business, phone

Voice Traffic Today

January 19, 2009

Ten to fifteen years ago, LEC-based networks carried more than 90 percent of voice traffic. Today, that number has dropped to about 40 percent -- and it continues to fall quickly. A similar trend, in smaller numbers, finds users moving to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). And, according to Frost & Sullivan, U.S. mobile phone penetration will practically double in the period spanning 2002 - 2012, from 45.7% to 87.4%. As wireless continues its momentum to become the pervasive technology for communications, Level 3 Communications® is prepared to deliver.

Posted in telco

Tagged: level3, voice traffic : Related Tags: voice traffic, traffic today, voice

TelePresence with WBS Connect

January 19, 2009

At the IT Expo West, WBS Connect had a great booth that was a Tele-presence suite - fully tricked out. I interviewed Scott Charter, managing partner of WBS Connect, at the show, but after reading IP Business magazine's write-up, I thought that mine would look like a rip-off.

The key component of the WBS TelePresence offering is that WBS is working on being vendor agnostic or the translator. Right now, Tangberg talks to Tandberg and Cisco to Cisco, but how does Tangberg talk to Cisco's rooms? Using H.264-SVC and WBS Connect as the translator. It's a great way to put all that transit to work.

Posted in conferencing, tele-presence, video

Tagged: tele-presence, video conferencing, wbs connect : Related Tags: connect, cisco

A Very Online White House

January 19, 2009

If there was ever a demonstration of how a government could use Web 2.0 (user generated content), it has to be the Obama group. Here's 10 Online tools that the Obama Administration is using to connect to the People. I can see why he wants to keep his Blackberry.

Posted in Web 2.0, politics, social network

Tagged: obama, user-generated, web 2.0 : Related Tags:

Kushnick on the Broadband Plan

January 16, 2009

Bruce Kushnick of New Networks Institute released a response to the Deloitte & Touche report about New Jersey, Broadband Opportunity - Job Creation, Healthcare, Education.

The report states that Broadband is:

"essential for the State to achieve the level of employment and job creation in that state;
"advance the public agenda for excellence in education,
"improve quality of care and cost reduction in the health-care industry."

The report was written in 1991! Dubbed "Opportunity New Jersey" (a Verizon state), the Deloitte Report details how rewiring the state of New Jersey with fiber optics would be an economic boom and help health-care, employment and education.

Posted in broadband, communications, politics

Tagged: broadband, politics, rboc : Related Tags: financial incentives, networks institute, phone companies, broadband, state, billions

Broadband Stimulus Bill

January 16, 2009

There has been a deep discussion that started on Tom Keating's blog about the Broadband Bail-out plan (known in various circles as a Bell hand-out, Stimulus package, Information Highway Infrastructure Development Funding).

Attorney Jim Baller has more on the House Stimulus Bill:

$2.825B for USDA RUS, mostly for rural open access broadband grants, 50% to be awarded no later than Sept. 30, 2009;
$2.825B to NTIA, including $1B for Wireless Deployment Grants and $1.825B for Broadband Deployment Grants for the deployment of basic broadband service or advanced broadband service;
$350M to fund state broadband tracking initiatives; NTIA to develop and maintain broadband inventory map of U.S.;
$1.85B for wireline to be split 75% for advanced broadband in underserved areas and 25% for basic broadband in unserved areas
$1B for wireless to be split 75% for advanced broadband in underserved areas and 25% for basic wireless in unserved areas

definitions

"Advanced broadband service"=45Mbps/15Mbps;
"advanced wireless broadband service" = 3Mbps/1Mbps;
"basic broadband service" = 5Mbps/1Mbps
FCC to define "unserved" and "underserved"
Recipients must provide "open access" (except for providers of basic wireless broadband);
bill also lists numerous preferences (text of bill)(House Report)

Coverage and reactions:

Posted in broadband, communications, economy, politics

Tagged: broadband, economy, politics : Related Tags: broadband service, advanced broadband, basic broadband, broadband stimulus, split advanced, broadband

Comments

Charter and Nortel

January 15, 2009

Yesterday Nortel filed bankruptcy. I'm guessing it was a pre-packaged deal because of the way it went down. Seeking Alpha implies that the BK was due to a lack of urgency to turn the company around. Three CEO's that just didn't catch up to Cisco.

Then this morning DSL Reports is discussing how Charter is preparing to file for BK as well.

At Christmas, we saw Level3 escape the BK plunge, when the stock hit a low of $0.57 before jumping back up to $1.60 after the S&P release. Now hoovering at $1.

Posted in cableco, economy

Tagged: BK, cableco, economy : Related Tags:

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