Beacon

December 2021

Beacon

December 2021

Our Plan of Action

One Billion Dollars and Over a Decade of Innovation Are Helping You Crush Your Competition

 

Michael Weening

President and Chief Operating Officer, Calix

During my opening keynote at ConneXions 2021 in Las Vegas, I pointed out that 11 years and one billion dollars of investment in our cloud and software platforms is now paying off. Our increasing rate of innovation allows us to enable even the smallest broadband service provider to outperform the largest direct-to-consumer competitor by delivering an end-to-end experience they simply can’t match. From the access edge to the subscriber edge in the home and the small business, our goal is to help you excite your subscribers and win.

 

Get a Holistic View of the Subscriber Experience, From the Access Edge to the Subscriber Premises

At ConneXions, I unveiled the world’s only end-to-end solution strategy for broadband service providers. This new solution strategy ensures marketing, customer support, and network operations can tie together the access network and subscriber edge to transform the way they deliver services and run their functions. This is something that no direct-to-consumer competitor can achieve; because they don’t care about the network. Meanwhile, Calix is making it happen. We give you the ability to:

Last, as the recent Forbes article, “Calix and The Art of Great Marketing,” points out, you can always count on our team to deliver world-class content to ensure that your marketing looks as good as Apple or Google.

 

Looking Forward to Advancing Your Success in 2022

Calix has an incredible 2022 ahead thanks to you, our customers. Your partnership allows us to make these investments and enable your success. From the team at Calix, thank you for the opportunity to be your partner. Wishing you an incredible end to the year!

 

As always, if you have any comments, questions or concerns, please reach out to me at michael.weening@calix.com and connect with me on LinkedIn.

Watch video highlights from ConneXions 2021.  

 

 

ConneXions Recap

ConneXions 2021 Success Stories: Even the Smallest Broadband Providers Are Seeing Big Wins

 

Matt Collins

Executive Vice President of Commercial Operations and Chief Marketing Officer, Calix 

Calix ConneXions 2021 was an incredible success. More than 1,500 of you joined us in person for collaboration, innovation, and learning. And another 2,000 of you attended virtually. Thank you to all the teams who trusted us with their safety and filled this event with stories of success and best practices.  

We heard many exciting examples of great innovation. Increasingly, even our smallest broadband service provider (BSP) customers are embracing Calix offerings, best practices, and services to excite subscribers, differentiate against the competition, and grow their value. Here are just a few examples.

 

  • Atlantic Broadband (ABB)—the eighth-largest cable operator in the U.S.—is deploying the network of the future. The Massachusetts-based BSP is one of the first large cable operators to successfully upgrade in scale from a coaxial-cable plant to a software-defined 10G XGS-PON fiber network. The upgrade enabled ABB to increase new subscriber daily turnups, dramatically reduce operational costs, and offer high-speed broadband tiers to its subscribers to grow profitability. Leveraging Intelligent Access EDGE, including the AXOS E3-2 Intelligent PON Node and AXOS DPx software connector, ABB is deploying the lowest possible cost-per-bit-per-mile network while significantly reducing back-office integration effort and maintaining its existing DOCSIS infrastructure to minimize both operating and capital expenditures.
  • Norvado is using the CommandIQ® mobile app to transform its relationship with subscribers, driving 80 percent app adoption. Norvado has placed its branded version of the CommandIQ app at the center of the Apex Managed WIFI experience. Eighty percent of subscribers have adopted the app and 38 percent have purchased EDGE Suites for enhanced parental controls and home network security. This is just part of Norvado’s strategy to successfully leverage world-class broadband solutions and data-driven intelligence to create a compelling service offering, develop and execute an omnichannel marketing strategy, and drive unbelievable service adoption rates.
  • Jade Communications is deploying CommandIQ and EDGE Suites to deliver the ultimate subscriber experience and grow revenue with new services like Arlo Secure. Jade Communications is a family business serving rural Colorado and staying ahead in a highly competitive market. Their strategy? Use the popular services in EDGE Suites to excite subscribers while growing revenue. Using the CommandIQ mobile app, which has a 64 percent adoption rate, Jade is achieving 98 percent adoption of ProtectIQ and 11 percent ExperienceIQ penetration. In late November, they launched their Arlo Secure service. Jade’s install and repair (I&R) team (which Jade calls “Wi-Fi wizards” because they make internet magic happen) educates subscribers onsite about the value of these EDGE Suites services.

We believe that your success is our success. That’s why you’ll never see the Calix logo featured prominently on any of our products. Unlike the consumer giants—who want to get their devices into your subscriber’s home to co-opt your relationship with them—we ensure you retain the value of the relationships with your subscribers, members, and communities. When you partner with Calix, you don’t need to be a giant to win big.

 

Watch video highlights from ConneXions 2021.  

 

THANK YOU!

View our session highlights from Vegas and register

to access the virtual on-demand library and showcase

 
 

THANK YOU!

View our session highlights from Vegas and register

to access the virtual on-demand library and showcase

 

Industry Standards

Here’s How Industry Standards Help You  Shrink Deployment and Integration Times From Months to Weeks 

Michel Langlois

Chief Technology Officer, Calix

Why does it take so long to deploy a new Wi-Fi 6 system for your amazing fiber-fed broadband services? Let’s consider the steps involved. At minimum, you would need to:

  1. Select a vendor
  2. Create and configure test beds with those new systems
  3. Execute test plans
  4. Validate performance
  5. Create support processes

On top of that, managing multiple systems is complex. For example, you might already have three different premises systems managed by three disparate cloud (or on-premise) based applications. Each one has different configurations, user interfaces, and levels of visibility into the in-home experience and different operational workflows. Each one requires your support reps to swivel from application to application to get insights during support calls. That means each of those systems would require a different process and offer a different level of information to the support rep during a troubleshooting call.

 

How Industry Standards Eliminate Integration Complexity

Sounds complex and confusing, right? Here’s the good news. When vendors and customers embrace industry standards, they can reduce or eliminate many of these time-consuming steps.

 

  • TR-069 standardization gives you unprecedented visibility into the in-home experience—regardless of the system in the home. Let’s start with the communication protocol between a premises system and your management application. TR-069 works with nearly one billion managed premises systems worldwide. The next-generation standard, TR-369, features a management protocol that supports streaming from multiple systems to a single management platform. Calix standardized on TR-069 in the early days of the protocol. That standardization allows for Calix Cloud to support 90 third-party residential systems. It also provides an unprecedented view of the in-home experience to broadband service providers (BSPs), regardless of the deployed system in the home.
  • TR-181 standardization means you can easily access critical data in management applications—across any system. TR-181 is a standardized set of data elements in managed systems. This standard set expands on what the applications in Calix Cloud can see and do with all managed systems. That includes non-Calix systems—all systems under management have a standardized “like” set of management capabilities. This allows you to access the same level of data and insights in a management application.
  • TR-369 standardization helps you seamlessly deliver the ultimate subscriber experience. These management capabilities and actionable insights grow exponentially with the adoption of the Broadband Forum’s TR-369 protocol. Also known as User Services Platform (USP), TR-369 is a faster, lightweight management protocol that optimizes support for big data and analytics. USP is also designed for application-layer security, authentication, integrity, and privacy from the ground up. The actionable intelligence that TR-369 enables will revolutionize how you can deliver experiences to your subscribers.

Some say industry standards stifle innovation, but the opposite is true. Industry standards foster innovation by creating a level playing field. Further, they encourage healthy market competition that drives companies to innovate. Standards provide a critical mechanism that encourages companies to bring their best solutions to market so all can benefit. In the case of Calix premises systems, our adherence to standards helps you seamlessly deploy and integrate new systems in mere weeks—not months—so you can deliver the ultimate subscriber experience while growing revenue and reducing operational expenses. That’s how everyone wins.

 

Learn more about the Calix commitment to industry standards.  

 
 

Marketing Insights

All the Ways You Can Execute World-Class Marketing at Scale To Grow Your Brand

Naylor Gray

Area Vice President Product Marketing, Revenue EDGE, Marketing Cloud and Revenue Solutions, Calix

At ConneXions we underscored our commitment to helping you grow your brand, grow your members, and grow your community. Marketing is now the number-one driver of your business growth. And Calix makes it easy for even the smallest team to execute seamless omnichannel campaigns. Here are the latest marketing developments that will help you grow value.

 

  • Seamlessly execute omnichannel marketing campaigns. Our new, out-of-the-box integration with HubSpot comes on the heels of our recent integrations with Facebook and Mailchimp. With Marketing Cloud and HubSpot, any BSP can leverage advanced, real-time behavioral insights and automated marketing processes to seamlessly deliver the right message to the right subscribers at the right time. As a result, the integration enables BSPs to market smarter, stretch their marketing investments farther, grow their business, and measure ROI.
  • Explore the new Broadband Marketing Academy to upskill your teams and accelerate go-to-market. Available to Calix Marketing Cloud customers and delivered by the Calix Success Services team, Broadband Marketing Academy gives service providers virtual training, education, and best practices. This resource will help your teams simplify marketing processes, automate marketing workflows, excite subscribers, and quickly see bigger returns on marketing investments.
  • Grow your brand with world-class market activation videos featuring Gerry Dee. To ensure you maintain a direct relationship with subscribers, you must focus on growing your brand. On the ConneXions page, you will see a series of BSP ads that Calix has created as part of Revenue EDGE Enablement, which BSPs can brand and use in their marketing campaigns. We produced these videos (watch them here) in partnership with comedian Gerry Dee from the TV show, “Mr. D,” now streaming on Amazon Prime.

Learn how to build a world-class marketing team at scale. Schedule a marketing consult with a Calix expert today.  

GROW
YOUR BRAND

GROW
YOUR BRAND

 

Customer Support Insights

Would You Like 35 Percent Fewer Inbound Calls? Here's How FTC Did It

Greg Owens

Senior Director, Product Marketing, Calix

How would end-to-end visibility into the subscriber experience help you lower support costs and excite your subscribers? Farmers Telecommunications Cooperative (FTC) embraced a more proactive approach to customer support and leveraged the end-to-end visibility provided by Calix Support Cloud. As the largest member-owned telecommunications cooperative in Alabama, serving more than 17,000 members, FTC decreased the number of inbound calls to their help desk, reduced average handle times, and minimized the unnecessary deployment of field technicians.

 

Revenue EDGE is Helping FTC Cut CPE-related Service Calls by 90 Percent

Using the comprehensive Calix Revenue EDGE solution, FTC is delivering the ultimate Wi-Fi experience to members. FTC standardized on the GigaSpire® BLAST family, rolling out the GigaSpire BLAST u6x (equipped with 10G PON technology), providing whole-home Wi-Fi with speeds up to 1 Gbps. In addition to positioning members to move to 10G speeds over time, the BLAST u6x enables FTC to consolidate equipment and bring fiber inside the premises.
 

Calix Support Cloud gives FTC end-to-end visibility into their members’ home networks, resulting in streamlined and accelerated troubleshooting. By leveraging Support Cloud and the GigaSpire BLAST family of systems, FTC has improved its support function across several key performance indicators (KPIs), including

  • Slashing unnecessary truck rolls by 20 percent and cutting truck rolls related to CPE servicing by 90 percent
  • Decreasing total inbound calls by 35 percent
  • Reducing total talk time by 55 percent

New Support Cloud Quality of Experience Score Offers Holistic View of Subscriber Satisfaction

FTC relies on Support Cloud to help them become more proactive. The cooperative is looking forward to implementing the new subscriber quality of experience score, which will give them an at-a-glance view of individual subscriber satisfaction and contributors such as WAN health, client efficiency, and whole-home efficiency.

As Charles Austin, executive vice president of network engineering at FTC, explained: “With every Support Cloud release, Calix offers us new capabilities to excite our members, cut costs, and grow value for our communities. We expect the new quality of experience score to do all three. It provides a comprehensive view of individual member satisfaction—and the factors that may be affecting their experience. We can’t wait to start using this new Support Cloud feature.”

 

Discover how the subscriber quality of experience score can elevate your support operations by scheduling a demo with a Support Cloud specialist. You can also join interactive sessions with your peers and Calix experts by registering for one of our Circles of Success, including “Ask Me Anything: Calix Support Cloud.”  

 

Network Engineering Insights

How To Maintain Your Always On Connectivity With an 10G XGS-PON Network—Despite Pesky Fiber Cuts

Teresa McGaughey

Area Vice President, Access and Field Marketing, Calix 

Internet connectivity—it’s what makes the world go round. As the pandemic made clear, when subscriber connections don’t support Zoom calls, subscribers can’t work. When businesses can’t make transactions, businesses stop. New technologies like 10G XGS-PON add bandwidth to help solve some of the problem, but what happens when the fiber is cut by those pesky squirrels (which continue to be the number-one cause of fiber cuts)? When a squirrel chews through the fiber, you as the service provider have two concerns.

  1. Find that fiber cut as fast as possible so you can repair it.
  2. Maintain mission-critical services regardless of the squirrels’ insatiable appetite for fiber!

End-to-End Visibility in Operations Cloud Helps You Find Fiber Cuts—and Maintain Critical Services

Paul Bunyan Communications (Paul Bunyan), which serves the rural Minnesota communities of Bemidji and Grand Rapids, worked closely with Calix to ensure their network is Always On despite the large geographic area they cover. With the Always On capabilities of the Calix Intelligent Access EDGE and Network Innovation Platform, Paul Bunyan rapidly deployed its 10G XGS-PON network without downtime—and continues to maintain critical services when fiber lines are cut.

As an added bonus, Paul Bunyan is also exploring the new Calix Operations Cloud enhancements to accurately identify the precise location of fiber cuts. Many Calix customers are eager to leverage these new capabilities in Operations Cloud to eliminate the time it takes to locate fiber cuts and restore the network to full capacity. This will help BSPs reduce truck rolls and slash OPEX even further.

 

Deploying, Managing, and Future Proofing 10G XGS-PON Networks

Over 225 BSPs around the world have joined Paul Bunyan in building Calix-powered XGS-PON networks in diverse geographies to deliver high-speed symmetrical 10G services to both residences and businesses, with three benefits.

 

  1. Deliver an Always On 10G network: XGS-PON redundancy keeps your critical services running and Operations Cloud—with new alarm correlation capabilities for fiber cuts and power outages—enables your repair crews to reduce truck rolls and slash OPEX by rapidly pinpointing and restoring damaged fiber lines. Your alarms can also be filtered to quickly identify issues across specific categories such as batteries, optics, and ONTs.

  2. Simplify service delivery to remote subscribers: The Network Innovation Platform, the recently launched E7-2 XG801 line card, and new temperature hardened extended range XGS-PON optics, enable you to rapidly deliver Always On XGS-PON based services in remote locations and extreme environments. In addition, new 40km XGS-PON optics help you extend your 10G coverage areas by up to 300 percent!

  3. Future-proof with on-premises installation: With Automated Network Service Provisioning and the new GP1101X XGS-PON ONT with 10G LAN connectivity, your subscriber services can be rapidly turned up without a truck roll—enabling a single turnup to meet subscriber needs for years to come.

Learn why your peers are deploying 10G PON and XGS-PON. Watch the replay of our recent webinar, “Meet Future Bandwidth Demand: A Simple Path to 10G XGS-PON and 100G Deployments.” 

Funding Updates

What Is Your Strategy To Win Your Share of 65 Billion Dollars in Federal Broadband Funding?

Greg Bathrick

Director, Solutions Marketing, Calix

Remember when one billion dollars was a lot of money? Last month’s 65 billion-dollar landmark broadband infrastructure bill dwarfs previous funding programs. This new comprehensive program aims at finally closing the digital divide with broadband service tiers that will stand the test of time while providing distressed communities access to these services through discounts and awareness programs.

 

Achieving Broadband for All

Most significantly, NTIA will oversee the 42.5 billion-dollar Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program, which will fund buildouts needed to connect every American to reliable high-speed internet. Gated by FCC’s completion of its nationwide broadband map, funding is expected to start early 2023 through the states. Other deployment programs include one billion dollars for middle-mile expansion, two billion for Tribal governments, and two billion for extremely rural areas through the ReConnect program.

 

Making Broadband Accessible

The Affordable Connectivity Program, at 14.2 billion dollars, is designed to extend the Emergency Broadband Benefit program, launched earlier this year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be administered by the FCC and targets low-income households by offering a monthly 30-dollar discount. Moreover, the 2.75 billion-dollar Digital Equity Program is designed to help ensure that all Americans can effectively use broadband.

 

Three Ways You Can Get Started Now

Federal and State governments are driving a multibillion-dollar surge of new funding through ARPA and ReConnect. Whether you wait for the infrastructure bill or take advantage of these programs, here are a few things  we have learned during our complimentary funding consultations, “Top Three Insights From Government Broadband Funding Consults.”  

 

  1. Don’t assume feds will manage all funding. During the pandemic, the Treasury Department injected billions of new grants to be administered across the states, as seen in the Calix State Funding Map. The infrastructure bill will continue this trend. 

  2. Get involved in your local community. Local officials know what is needed and will be able to guide you. This will give you a leg up on securing approval when the time comes.  

  3. Start now—before the application window opens. The average application window is 45 days and does not provide enough time to build a winning bid. Competition is high. To win, you must roll up your sleeves now to make sure your application is as strong as possible.  

Calix is here to help you stay on track with government funding. Stay informed by regularly checking the Calix funding webpage and sign up for your complimentary funding consult today. 

 
 

Featured Resources

Customer Resources To Help Keep You on Track

Webinars

  • New: HubSpot Best Practices
    Wednesday, December 8
    12:00 PM ET | 9:00 AM PT
  • Facebook Advertising Best Practices
    Tuesday, December 14
    1:00 PM ET | 10:00 AM PT

  • Driving Upsells with Marketing Campaigns
    Wednesday, December 15
    12:00 PM ET | 9:00 AM PT
  • Pricing Considerations for EDGE Suites
    Wednesday, December 15
    3:00 PM ET | 12:00 PM PT

Visit the Calix Virtual Engagements page for a full schedule of sessions (login required).

 

Recent Software Releases

New product software released in the last month:
 

EXOS

  • EXOS 21.4.0 (XGS-PON ONUs)*
  • EXOS 21.4.0.0 (GigaSpire BLAST u6, u6x, u4, u12) *
  • EXOS 21.4.0.0 (BLAST mesh satellites: u4m, GigaMesh) *

AXOS

  • SMx 21.3.1 *
  • AXOS 21.3.0.1 (E7-2) *
  • SMx 21.4.0 *
  • AXOS 21.4.0 (E7-2) *
  • AXOS 21.4.0 (E3-2) *
  • AXOS 21.4.0 (E9-2 OLT) *
  • DPx 21.4.0 *
  • AXOS Sandbox: vE7-2/vE3-2/vE9-2 OLTs 21.4.0 *

  • AXOS 21.2.2.3 (E9-2 ASM) **

Mature* 
Early Adoption** 

 

* Mature status means the release is the latest production version recommended for use.

** Early Adoption status means the 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.