Beacon
August 2021
The broadband industry faces a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If we make the right choices, we can create a broad industry ecosystem and coalition of solution partners focused on the subscriber experience that accelerates innovation and helps all broadband service providers (BSPs) grow their value—before the trillion-dollar giants seize the subscriber relationship and keep all the value for themselves.
To do that, we must create premise and cloud solutions that adhere to industry standards and are subscriber-experience aware.
Standards are critical because they ensure a BSP’s foundational software platform and hardware systems are truly subscriber experience aware and multi-vendor interoperable. This means you can seamlessly integrate new hardware and software into your network and rapidly grow the value of your investments with faster speeds, exciting new cloud-based services, and accelerated subscriber turnup—knowing that those investments are capable of generating rich subscriber insights and belong to a larger ecosystem.
Five Points That Illustrate Our Dedication to Industry Standards
Not everyone shares such an unflinching commitment to industry standards. In fact, if you hear talk of “open source software,” I encourage you to check the fine print. Free, open source software is not the same thing as “open standards.” Open source software can lead to closed ecosystems that work exclusively with a single implementation of the open source software available from a single proprietary supplier. Anyone who has worked with Android knows this all too well. Calix has embraced industry standards across our portfolio because only standards build open ecosystems. Here’s the evidence.
At Calix, we don’t believe in gated, limited ecosystems, nor do we believe that something must be proprietary to be innovative. We want to accelerate innovation for all and grow the ecosystem. You can see evidence of that in the offerings and enhancments we launched this quarter for the Revenue EDGE and Intelligent Access EDGE. From our integration with Facebook and Calix Marketing Cloud, to a mobile-friendly Calix Support Cloud experience, to market-leading line cards—we are making it easy for you to adopt innovative offerings by ensuring all our offerings are standards-compliant.
We proudly support industry standards like TR-369, Wi-Fi Data Elements, and Wi-Fi EasyMesh—all of which create open ecosystems. We’ll continue to work with our customers to foster collaboration and encourage innovation so you can simplify your business, excite your subscribers, and grow your value.
Consumers and companies alike are tired of adopting technology only to find themselves trapped inside a closed ecosystem. This is why open standards are so important in any industry—because open standards enable interoperability among different devices, systems, and solutions. Such interoperability has helped the broadband industry thrive—allowing devices such as Apple’s iPhone to work with just about any gateway or router.
However, you should know there’s a very real difference between open standards and open-source software. Although some companies use these terms interchangeably, open-source software is all too often a cover for a closed ecosystem.
Don’t Get Trapped in a Closed Ecosystem
Make sure you know the difference, because there is a big difference! Championing a non-standard client that happens to use open-source software is misleading—as it does not allow broadband service providers (BSPs) to develop either the server or controller. Rather, this outdated and proprietary approach creates a bad case of vendor lock-in, trapping BSPs and their subscribers in a static and closed ecosystem. An example of this is a cloud-based solution that only works with the equipment provided by a specific vendor.
In addition, choosing non-standard technology can lead to far higher prices down the road. Consider the city of San Francisco, which chose to run non-standard trains in its Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system. Today, replacements can cost twice the standard trains—and repairs can cost even more. When you choose non-standard technology in any industry, the future costs can add up.
By contrast, open standards yield innovation and a thriving ecosystem. It creates healthy competition, which forces industry players of all sizes to offer customers differentiated value. For BSPs, open standards are the path to exciting subscribers while creating new revenue opportunities.
Calix Ensures Interoperability With Multiple Third-Party Vendors
At Calix, we have actively supported the implementation of open standards such as TR-069 and its evolution to the eagerly anticipated TR-369. Open standards like these enable us to offer BSPs and their subscribers a rich cloud-based ecosystem across multiple devices. In fact, our commitment to open standards enables Calix Support Cloud to work with more than 80 third-party customer premises equipment (CPE)! We are looking forward to TR-369 and actively supporting its development—as the protocol will enable us to expand our partner ecosystem by ensuring interoperability with numerous third-party vendors.
Do you know any BSPs eager to waste their money on equipment that doesn’t play nice with others and traps people in an ecosystem they don’t want to be in? I don’t, and neither should you.
Read about our latest quarterly enhancements to Calix Support Cloud, “Calix Launches Mobile Support Cloud for Field Technicians To Align a Service Provider’s Extended Care Team, Deliver the Ultimate Experience, and Reduce Truck Rolls by up to 60%.”
Calix remains committed to helping you meet your business needs—even as pandemic-related disruptions to global supply chains persist. In fact, over the course of the last year, we have reduced or eliminated supply chain delays for the vast majority of the solutions in our portfolio. We have also invested millions of dollars in inventory and new capabilities to enhance our supply chain and expedite orders where possible via air transportation.
In addition, the Calix Field Operations team has invested significantly to create a new Customer Operations team, which we’ve recently grown by close to 50 percent. You can consider Customer Operations to be your primary contact for all order-related needs.
The Calix Response to Supply Chain Constraints
We recently launched a coordinated communications plan to inform customers whose orders have been impacted by delays in delivery times. This includes a proactive outreach program where your dedicated Customer Operations representatives will communicate details on products with extended lead times. We will continue to work closer than ever with our customers on advanced ordering and improved customer forecasts. Here are some specific steps we’ve taken.
Let Us Know Your Needs
With our current extended lead times, an accurate and long-term forecast will help ensure both Calix and our customers are successful. I encourage you to engage with your customer support and sales team to identify your long-term needs. Advance planning will better enable us to meet your needs.
Questions? Please reach out to calixcustomerops@calix.com or contact your dedicated rep.
Executive Vice President of Commercial Operations and Chief Marketing Officer, Calix
This year we’re headed to Las Vegas on October 16-19 for ConneXions, our premier in-person user conference. Attendees will hear insights from industry innovators, thought leaders, and Calix experts. And, of course, we’ll share the latest solutions and best practices that winning broadband service providers (BSPs) are leveraging to transform their business models and grow their value in multiple ways.
Gain Insight Based on Your Role in the Broadband Industry
We are designing the ConneXions experience for the leaders in your organization who catalyze the innovations that simplify your business, excite your subscribers, and grow your value in the communities you serve. With that in mind, we will showcase four leadership experiences specifically around general management, marketing, customer support, and network engineering/operations. Each of these in-person experiences will consist of keynotes, panels, roundtable discussions and one-on-one networking with industry thought leaders and visionary peers.
To expand on the value of ConneXions, we will also offer a Learning Experience starting on Tuesday November 16 (available to Leadership Experience registrants at no extra cost). Attendees will experience in-depth content, rich technical education, training, and badging—as well as engaging entertainment.
Our Health and Safety Guidelines
Amid the ongoing pandemic, your health and safety at ConneXions is our highest priority. Our events team will continue to monitor all local and statewide regulations regarding COVID-19 protocols, as well as protocols set forth by the five-star Wynn Las Vegas hotel, where the event will be held. Precautions will include the use of face masks, hand-sanitizer stations, easy access to medical professionals and COVID-19 testing, touchless registration and badging, and more.
As always, we will give you a chance to relax and enjoy yourself. Join us at the golf shotgun tournament, and don’t miss the performance of comedian Gerry Dee. We anticipate a highly valuable event that will be safe, educational, and a lot of fun. I look forward to seeing you there.
Space at ConneXions in Las Vegas is limited, so register now to reserve your spot. Questions? Please email connexions@calix.com.
How can you get more for your marketing dollars—even with a small team? One Calix customer, CityWest, based in British Columbia, is getting awesome marketing results—all thanks to the seamless integration between Calix Marketing Cloud and leading email marketing platform Mailchimp. CityWest has harnessed the power of these unified platforms to cost-effectively generate audience segments, manage email lists, create focused messaging, run omnichannel campaigns—and absolutely crush the industry benchmarks for engagement, with open rates more than 262 percent higher than the industry average.
Here are three ways the winning combination of Marketing Cloud and Mailchimp is helping CityWest take marketing to the next level.
Learn about all things marketing—including how you can leverage Mailchimp—sign up for updates about Calix Marketing Academy, which is launching soon.
How will you meet the increasing bandwidth and capacity needs of your subscribers? Follow the lead of ETEX Communications—they're working with Calix to easily deliver 10G symmetrical services that support a new generation of high-bandwidth applications for their subscribers, all while dramatically lowering OPEX.
The Calix Network Innovation Platform Delivers Everything You Need
How is this possible for ETEX and other Calix customers? They’re benefitting from the software inherent within our Network Innovation Platform (AXOS) to deliver the ultimate subscriber experience. This software—contained in both the operating system and the design of the platform architecture—enables you integrate services faster. It also allows you to turn up and diagnose service issues so you can ensure an “Always On” service experience to subscribers. Calix’s Network Innovation Platform brings these software attributes to your broadband network and, in turn, helps simplify your operations and accelerate the automation of your back-office system integration and service provisioning capabilities.
Meanwhile, the Intelligent Access EDGE solution also runs on the same software inherent in AXOS. This enables BSPs to maintain all their subscriber facing services and manage their network with one common service model, while reducing network operational expenses by as much as 80 percent. Calix customers that have deployed the Intelligent Access EDGE solution have realized the following.
ETEX Communications Is Quickly and Easily Meeting Their Network Capacity Demands
Like most broadband providers today, ETEX Communications wanted to deliver more bandwidth to subscribers. They invested in a next-generation network, powered by AXOS, to deliver high-speed symmetrical broadband to schools across northeast Texas. Now they’re deploying the solution we launched with our 21.3 release: two new line card innovations for the E7 Intelligent Modular System. These will enable faster and more cost effective 100G deployments in temperature-hardened environments (which should come in handy in northeast Texas). The XG801 supports high density XGS-PON or GPON deployments and has two 100G transport uplinks that enable BSPs to rapidly and remotely deploy 10G services—from central offices to remote cabinet installations. The CE201 delivers 100G transport in temperature-hardened environments—aggregating access network traffic over multiple network topologies, including rings and point-to-point connections.
If you want to deliver an “always on” experience and fulfill the needs of bandwidth-hungry subscribers, follow the lead of ETEX and look into the power of the Network Innovation platform—which we’re continually enhancing with software upgrades and new hardware solutions like our newest E7 line cards. We’ll help you simplify the operation of your network so you can keep subscribers happy and excited for decades to come.
To learn more about how Calix is enabling BSPs to excite subscribers with blazing fast speeds, watch the “10G Fiber Networks for the Future: Top Considerations From the Experts” webinar.
Upgrading to a FTTH network can help you grow the value of your community and excite subscribers with blazing speeds that support even the most bandwidth-hungry applications. Just ask Taylor Telecom, a broadband service provider in major growth mode that is actively expanding its coverage—with the help of Calix—into competitive markets throughout West Texas.
Taylor Telecom approached Calix Professional Services recently with multiple challenges including a need for:
Taylor Telecom Achieves Massive Growth in New Markets With Help From Calix Services
To overcome these challenges, Taylor Telecom teamed with Calix and successfully expanded its network with revamped service offerings by leveraging the entire Calix portfolio (Revenue EDGE, Intelligent Access EDGE, Calix Professional Services, and Customer Success Services). With the help of a trusted partner like Calix, Taylor Telecom is now accelerating its execution of an impressive edge-out strategy to serve new and existing residences and businesses with high-speed Internet and other value-added services in EDGE Suites. “Partnering with Calix Services is like having more staff without having staff on hand,” said Amanda Hofer, controller with Taylor Telecom, “They helped us achieve our aggressive expansion plans.”
The lucrative partnership with Calix continues to provide extremely impressive dividends for both Taylor Telecom and its subscribers. Specifically, Taylor Telecom has seen an amazing 2,757 percent increase in symmetrical 1Gbps broadband services, a dramatic 567 percent increase in 600Mbps services, and a massive 62 percent jump in new Internet subscribers.
To learn more about how Calix is helping Taylor Telecom continue its incredible growth trajectory, watch the replay of our recent webinar, “Expanding Broadband Into New Markets with a Subscriber Focused Approach.”
Director, Digital Programs, Education, and Community, Calix
In 2015, we founded Calix Academy to enable broadband service providers to deliver the ultimate subscriber experience. In 2021, we are once again expanding the educational value we offer to you by inaugurating Calix University.
Advance Your Career and Optimize Your Teams
Calix University will combine the existing Calix Solutions Academy as well as the soon-to-launch Broadband Academy and Broadband Marketing Academy under a single digital roof. This is our strategic investment designed to offer you the kind of educational services that will help you advance your career and optimize your teams. In fact, the Calix University structure, with its list of role-based and skill-focused academies, offers industry-specific courses so students can personalize their learning according to their area of interest. This role-based approach to broadband education is unique in the industry. Marketers, for example, can learn from the courses in Broadband Marketing Academy, while general managers can attend Broadband Academy to learn everything they need to know about how to build a successful broadband business.
Personalize and Manage Your Broadband Learning Experience
Calix University offers an intuitive and personalized learning portal that serves up content and recommends courses based on individual job roles and interests. Soon, managers will also be able to oversee the progress of their respective teams—and dynamically adjust individual learning paths, courses, and certifications. In addition, Calix University will offer BSPs an optional gamified learning environment—adding a fun and friendly competitive edge with badges and Calix Champion points that mark training and certification milestones.
As subsidies and funding continue to surge from both government and private equity sources, this is an especially exciting time to be part of the growing broadband industry. Calix University’s carefully curated catalog of job-centric courses, certifications, and testing options is continously expanding—as it evolves to meet the myriad needs and expectations of cross-functional BSP teams operating in a dynamic and competitive environment.
To learn more about exciting subscribers and advancing your career, tour the new Calix University.
Here are the five most recent blog posts from Calix experts and industry guests. Follow us and check out other insightful articles here.
Visit the Calix Virtual Engagements page for a full schedule of sessions (login required).
Visit the Calix Virtual Engagements page for registration links (login required).
EXOS
AXOS
Other Software
* Mature status means the software release is the latest production version recommended for use.
** Early Adoption status means the software release is with select customers for field evaluation to provide feedback. This program requires Calix pre-approval. If interested in joining an Early Adopter group, please go to the Software Center (link below), browse to the desired software, and click the "Request Software" link to submit a request.
Release Notes for R21.3
Calix Cloud
Calix Support Cloud (Experience Management Edition) R21.3
Calix Support Cloud (Device Management Edition) R21.3
EXOS
AXOS
