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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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So Many Conferencing Options

May 29, 2012

Just Google web conferencing to see 18 million results. This list of web conferencing is extensive but far from complete. Conferencing is starting to look like the VoIP space -- a bunch of people jumping in to get a piece of the action. Join.me, StartMeeting.com, Freeconference.com, Yuuguu.com, G+ Hangout, skype and so many more in the no cost variety.

Posted in conferencing, tele-presence, video

Tagged: conferencing, video conferencing : Related Tags: video conferencing, conferencing, video

Fiber and Data Centers

May 28, 2012

For fiber today, it is all about 3 things: exclusive route, low-latency and data center access.

We see a number of fiber operators talking about low latency routes now, something that AboveNet was already capitalizing on - that and its unique (non CO-based) network design.

"Zayo Group announces it is enhancing its low latency service between Seattle and Chicago." In addition, Zayo added 60 miles in Richmond that will connect to a data center campus. Data centers need fiber.

Posted in colocation, data center, fiber

Tagged: data center, fiber, florida : Related Tags: cloud services, latency routes, lightower fiber, number fiber, fiber networks, fiber

No Traction in Hosted PBX Market

May 25, 2012

According to Insight Research, independent hosted PBX providers should be able to take some small business market share from the Duopoly over the next five years.

The small business market size is more than 40 millions lines, says Robert Rosenberg, INSIGHT Research president. That will mean even more hosted PBX seats since lines and seats are not 1 for 1. "Our study suggests that thus far, small businesses haven't quite latched on to this new technology so the revenue today is only in the range of one-half billion dollars, but by 2015 hosted services will be nearly a $1.2 billion market and the adoption rate of the hosted services by small businesses will accelerate," Rosenberg concluded.

Posted in PBX, hosted uc, smb, voip, wireless, wireline

Tagged: duopoly, hosted pbx, numbers, smb, voip : Related Tags: insight research, hosted services, business market, revenue, hosted, market

A Lesson in Value Proposition

May 23, 2012

This came across my twitter stream this week:

"Must-read for founders: A VC explains how to build a killer value proposition" on VentureBeat by Michael Skok, a Venture Capitalist at North Bridge Venture Partners. His slideshare page contains a couple of really good decks of information about Go-To-Market and Value Prop - two things that I help companies address in this industry.

That's his Go-to-Market diagram.

Posted in Marketing, PBX, agents, hosted uc, sales and selling, voip

Tagged: agents, hosted pbx, marketing, sales, sellecom, value, vc : Related Tags: value proposition, customer service, special sauce, value, product, proposition

Combatting Mobile Data

May 23, 2012

How do you offer your broadband customers mobile access? There are a couple of options. One is MVNO, reselling cellular data cards to your customers. This is a very expensive option.

Posted in cableco, cellular, wi-fi, wireless

Tagged: att, cableco, cellular, mso, vzw, wi-fi, wireless : Related Tags: speed internet, cablecos starting, access included, hotspots, cablecos, access

No Special Sauce

May 21, 2012

There is no special sauce.

Everyone has the same technology (or will 5 minutes after you market yours).

It was never about the technology.

It has always been about the Customer Experience!

(What do you think churn is all about? They don't like you and will leave for a few dollars off. It's the CX - the customer experience - that retains them.)

That means you have to stop talking about the technology now.

Posted in Marketing, technology

Tagged: customer service, marketing, strategy, technology : Related Tags: special sauce, customer experience, technology

Cellular Mayhem

May 18, 2012

Just looking at the news makes me think that the cellular industry is having a week of mayhem. Besides the mess I wrote about earlier this week, "US wholesale player LightSquared has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid efforts to resolve regulatory issues that have prevented it from launching its satellite service," according to Telecoms. "The carrier has been planning to build a ground-based LTE network, supported by satellites, but the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) blocked the project, stating that the proposed mobile broadband network will impact GPS services and that there is no practical way to mitigate the potential interference." That about spells it all out.

Posted in FCC, cableco, cellular, mergers, mobile, spectrum, wimax, wireless

Tagged: att, cableco, cellular, duopoly, fcc, spectrum, sprint, vzw, wireless : Related Tags: unlicensed spectrum, spectrum wispa, spectrum, network, mobile, sprint

A Day in My Brain

May 18, 2012

I was in NYC (Tribeca) this week to spend the day at a Q&A session with Seth Godin. He is a marketing guru and author of a lot of best selling business books. Like these:

Here are some of the gems that I liked.

"A "brand" is the promise of an experience." [Boy, could I riff on that one!] Brand IS the experience.

Posted in Marketing, PR, conferences, startup

Tagged: books, marketing, powerpoint : Related Tags: thirsty people, direct marketing, google apple, people, thirsty, marketing

A Game of Risk

May 17, 2012

Everyone blames the FCC. AT&T blames the FCC for all of its woes after the FCC (and the DOJ) said no to its merger with T-Mobile. Boo-hoo. It was a risk.

Posted in FCC, cableco, cellular, mergers

Tagged: att, BK, cableco, cellular, FCC, vzw : Related Tags: competitive landscape, mobile, another, merger, competition

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