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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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Thanks

November 25, 2008

It's the last full day of work for many of you. Here are some tips to get through Thanksgiving:

Stop watching / reading the news. It's going to be more of the same news for a while and listening to it and reading it are not going to help you. It will only increase your anxiety.

Posted in economy, off topic

Tagged: thanks : Related Tags: think, going

The Pain of The Switch

November 24, 2008

Interesting report from Strategy Analytics: More folks would switch their triple play provider if they didn't have to waste a day or two waiting for the install. With that kind of stat, will any of the duopoly companies fix their install process?

People often claim to be satisfied with what they already have. 76% of broadband subscribers in the US suggest they are very or somewhat satisfied with their broadband service. But when they are asked if they would be willing to switch, three in every four say they would do so, depending on the price and performance of an alternative service.

Can't be too satisfied if you would switch.

And really the perception varies greatly.

Posted in broadband, cableco, duopoly, telco, telecommunications

Tagged: customer service : Related Tags: switch, satisfied, broadband, install

Comments

Internet Will be Full by 2012

November 24, 2008

"Nemertes Research continued to throw cold water on the future of the Internet last week, releasing a study projecting that demand for bandwidth on the Web would exceed its capacity by 2012." [PCWorld.com]

I just don't see how that can be. With 40G pipes starting to emerge. With Content Delivery Networks (CDN's) popping up every where. The CDN's make most traffic local. The CDN's are getting closer to the edge. Does that report mean that the backhaul traffic will overflow? Or the CDN network will exceed capacity?

Posted in bandwidth, linkedin, politics

Tagged: internet, net neutrality : Related Tags: exceed capacity, internet, traffic, people, going, capacity

Qwest Referral Changes in 2009

November 24, 2008

QWEST REFERRAL DESK - Effective January 1, 2009 there will be significant changes to the Referral Desk Program. Qwest will no longer be paying up fronts for any sales. Also Agents can sign up new customers to Qwest and only re-term their own existing customers. Lastly there has been a slight modification to commissions when teaming with Direct Reps. We know these changes can dramatically effect how you sell Qwest. Qwest is making these changes so that they can remain fiscally responsible.

Posted in agents

Tagged: agents, compensation, qwest : Related Tags: qwest referral, qwest, changes, referral

AIS is San Diego Collocation

November 23, 2008

Back in September, American Internet Services announced a CEO change at the Grand Opening of their Tier 4 data center in San Diego. Alessandra Carrasco was promoting from EVP and COO will assume the role of Chief Executive Officer. I interviewed her in October.

ME: What verticals are you chasing?

Posted in data center

Tagged: collocation, data center : Related Tags: center provider, center, growth, diego, switch, customer

Comments

Are You The Next Sue Crawford?

November 23, 2008

If you can't get a position at the FCC, perhaps you can put your talents to use at the other governmental telecom agency, which is looking for a few intelligient people like Sue Crawford help shape the broadband policy of the US:

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is seeking nominations of individuals to represent the business community, public interest groups, and other appropriate groups interested in serving on the NTIA Online Safety and Technology Working Group (OSTWG) for a single fifteen (15) month term to commence in January 2009. At the conclusion of the working group's term, the OSTWG will provide a report to the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator and to Congress on ways to promote and to preserve a safe environment for children using the Internet.

DATES: Nominations must be postmarked or electronically transmitted on or before December 12, 2008.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: On October 10, 2008, the President signed into law the ''Broadband Data Improvement Act'' (the Act), Pub. L.

Posted in FCC, Internet, broadband, organizations, politics, telecommunications

Tagged: crawford, NTIA, OSTWG : Related Tags: working group, crawford, ostwg, information

Doing Extra Business

November 21, 2008

Most people that know me know I am a Follower of Seth Godin. No one else that I read regularly makes me re-think how I view business and the world more often as Godin. IN his post, How to make money from the Internet, he writes:

Connect organizations spending money with ways to save money.
During the last recession, plenty of entrepreneurs scored by selling businesses on doing a phone bill audit.

Posted in Internet, agents

Tagged: agent, audit, telecommunications, TEM : Related Tags: money, telecom

Is the $100 Triple Play viable?

November 21, 2008

So on Linkedin, Neal Lachman, asked if the $100 Triple Play was Viable in today's economic molasses. Neal writes:

Bundling voice, video, data services for a higher ARPU was an obvious, great move when broadband services and advanced digital services were first introducded...... However, the market is moving more towards a lower ARPU for the triple play services. This is especially going to play a big role in future operations. The time of high ARPUs is going, and soon it will be history.

Posted in Internet, Marketing, bandwidth, broadband, cableco, duopoly, economy, linkedin, telco, telecommunications, video, wi-fi, wireless

Tagged: arpu, broadband, duopoly, mso, triple play : Related Tags: least profitable, profitable service, triple, services, network, lower

DISH Get's DRM

November 19, 2008

So DISH Network keeps upgrading my DVR software without my asking. Tonight, I go to record a pay-per-view movie and the dialog box says, "You only have 24 hours to watch this movie before we remove it from your DVR." Well, that stinks. We used to buy them and watch them at our leisure - usually within a week.

DISH has increased prices across the board. They will lose AT&T as a distribution arm in February of 2009.

Posted in privacy, satellite

Tagged: dbs, dish, dvr. drm : Related Tags: movie

Typical Situation

November 19, 2008

Typical Sales Situation: So I meet a prospective buyer. We exchange cards. A couple weeks later, he has a circuit need to be quoted. We have a conversation. It gets complicated.

Posted in agents, sales and selling, telco

Tagged: agents, bidding, price war : Related Tags: carrier, agent, price, buyer, sales

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