Senior Director, Services Marketing, Calix

linkedin.com/in/thomasschroer

Every service provider can benefit from being more proactive in addressing subscriber impacting problems. If a services provider takes a reactive approach to problem detection and resolution, they can experience longer resolution times, inefficient operations, and a negative impact on customer satisfaction. Why are services holding back from innovating their operations? They are often challenges by limited time and resources. Most importantly, a lack of visibility and and insight into network problems.

Learnings from Valley Telecom Group

Valley Telecom Group is committed to innovate their operations, make them more efficient, and catch network problems before they impacted subscribers. Valley Telecom Group was a participant in our Remote Monitoring Service Early Adopter Program, and almost immediately they began to see tangible progress. The team now looks back to the moment they started receiving notifications from Calix as a catalyzing event, referred to as “the little pebble that started the avalanche.”

Reduced incident intervention by 83% and issue resolution time by 50%

The team saw how Remote Monitoring Service notifications could help them get proactive when it came to customer impacting problems on their high value accounts. They could also leverage the reporting capabilities to provide information in their planning process to identify problem areas where they need to upgrade their network. Working with the Calix Managed Services team, Valley Telecom Group was able to reduce the number of incidents requiring technician intervention by 83 percent and issue resolution time by 50 percent! They have also seen a spillover effect to other parts of their operations such as how they’re managing truck rolls and analyzing problems at the Tier 2 level.

You can find out more how Valley Telecom is executing on their strategy of becoming more proactive in an upcoming webinar: Valley Telecom Group Innovates its Operations Learn How You Can Too!

Learn more about Calix Remote Monitoring Service here. 

AVP, Product Marketing Subscriber Experience,

Calix

linkedin.com/in/fergusonpam

@IoTPamF

It’s 2019! We are already a few weeks in, and hopefully any resolutions you’ve made for improving your personal and professional lives are still on track. According to the time management firm FranklinCovey, one-third of resolutions don’t make it past end of January.

If your business goals have anything to do with doing more with less, or being smarter about how/when/where you invest your precious time and money, the survey findings from Independence Research may make keeping your resolutions easier.

Insights from the Broadband Internet Study

Independence Research's recent Broadband Internet Study explores the evolution of the consumer Internet market based on how households make their decisions to choose or change their service providers. Questions like: If you could change anything about your Internet service what would it be? And why did you leave your last service provider? uncover some interesting trends in how exactly subscriber needs and expectations are changing.

More interestingly, by comparing some of the research findings with what Calix Cloud customers are actually seeing in their subscriber base, Matt Davis, Founder and Principal Analyst at Independence Research, discovers gaps in what subscribers say and the actual service provider data.

For example, the study revealed that about 80 percent of households believed that they were subscribing to either mid- or top-tier speeds offered by their service provider, while in reality an average of 44 percent are on those tiers.

Matt Davis shared some of these fascinating findings at ConneXions 2018, but if you missed his session or the conference entirely, be sure to check out the webinar.

By putting powerful data and analysis like this behind your decisions, whether you are building out your managed Wi-Fi or smart home and business services in 2019, you are sure to be set up for success.

Wishing you a booming success this year on behalf of Team Calix Cloud!

Product Marketing Director

New Markets/Premises, Calix    

linkedin.com/in/bridget-watkins-8564343a/

Calix has conducted hundreds of marketing consultations to assist you with your go-to-market strategies. We have shared messaging, best practices, and materials that you can use to effectively launch and market your Managed Wi-Fi, Whole Home Wi-Fi, and Smart Home services.

Education and Content Messaging

One of the most common themes we hear in the marketing consults is: “Where should I start?” Our Marketing and Educational Materials page is a constantly growing resource for ideas, messaging, and education topics that can be used for both internal training and as external collateral. If you haven’t looked at this content recently, we encourage you to check it out again. 

Based on recent discussions, we have also identified a need to do more. This led to the creation of our ‘Kick-Start Initiative’.

The Kick-Start Initiative

The goal of this initiative is to develop campaigns and materials that can be shared, but in direct collaboration with select service providers who are looking to create customized, targeted marketing campaigns that will drive additional sales of your services.

How will this work? Once a specific campaign or collateral need is identified, Calix will work with you to develop the materials to take to market. After creation, Calix will genericize and share the content through our Marketing and Education Materials page for others to use. This process will allow us to keep making fresh content available, while developing materials that are meaningful and relevant.

As an example, we are currently working with service providers to develop:

• short videos for use in education and promotion on social media platforms
• short articles based on the current education materials for use in blogs, newsletters, and websites
• talking points for CSRs and field technicians for consistent answers to the most common subscriber questions

How Can You Participate?

If you’ve never had a Marketing Consult, or you have already launched these solutions, and want to discuss sales strategies, tiered services, best practices, or have ideas for the Kick-Start initiative, contact us to schedule a consult and/or discussion.

Next Steps

We will be hosting short workshops at some upcoming industry events to walk you through the process of developing, launching and evolving the customer Wi-Fi and Smart Home experiences that you provide.

Finally, we want to share your success! In future issues of The Beacon we want to share the stories of the campaigns you’ve implemented to educate subscribers in our new Profiles in Marketing section. Please reach out to the Product Marketing Team to share your success story and potentially be featured in a future Beacon article. 

Senior Director, Solutions Marketing, Calix

linkedin.com/in/teresamcgaughey

@t_mcgoo

I’m on a plane, a 4+ hour flight across the US and there is no Wi-Fi. The flight attendant jokingly said to us “what are we, in 1999?” 

The reality is that we live in an always on world. We expect, and actually need, to be connected all of the time. We can’t function without it. We can’t complete our work, we can’t shop, we can’t even watch TV without a connection.

Not only do we expect the world to be always connected, we expect to be able to accomplish all of our tasks without ever talking to a human. Why do you think Uber is so successful? It’s not because of its lower price. (Sometimes it is, but not always.) It’s because we can finish our drink while we call a car via an app on our phone. The app tells us the time the car will arrive, how much the trip will cost, the type of car we’ll get, and even the driver’s name. It’s predictable and its self-service. A recent McKinsey study showed that subscriber satisfaction when the journey was all digital was 76 percent and that number reduced substantially when any part of the journey required talking to a human.

The Always-On AXOS Journey

Have you thought about how it might impact your business if your subscribers could have an always on, all-digital journey when they interact with your company? This would mean you’ve:

• eliminated maintenance windows
• enabled rapid, even proactive, resolution of network issues
• automated your network to enable subscribers to make service changes without talking to you, often immediately, or better yet, automatically

This is the journey that AXOS will enable you to take. It is delivering the ability to simplify your operations and network, so the network will run itself and you can focus on accelerating your business. Last month, I summarized all the great ground work we did in AXOS and the E-Series portfolio in 2018. Now, I’m here to tell you that in 2019 we’re stepping it up to a whole new level. Think business intent, cloud, automation, and AI. It’s going to be an exciting ride. 

We have heard the positive response from all of you, so our popular AXOS webinar series is continuing and evolving to keep you up to speed on all the AXOS-related excitement. Each month, we’ll share perspectives on industry trends like 5G, showcase unique AXOS customer success stories, or provide updates on new capabilities. Register below if you’d like to be on the list for the webinar invites or post-event recordings.

Senior Director, Thought Leadership Marketing, Calix

www.linkedin.com/in/alan-dicicco

There is so much media coverage of 5G that it is hard to go a day without reading a headline about it. There is a lot of noise about 5G, and it can be a bit overwhelming.

However, it is clear that consumers want more of everything wireless. We want faster, more responsive, and everywhere. And we want it now. We are demanding instant access to media and entertainment, low latency online multiplayer gaming, and connected online cloud computing, to name a few. 

Because existing LTE networks are increasingly challenged to deliver these services, CSPs are beginning to deploy 5G mobile networks that promise dramatically greater performance and capabilities for mobile and fixed broadband services. 5G is significantly different from previous generations in the mobile evolution because it delivers higher bandwidth, lower latency, and supports a dramatically greater number of connections  – though not necessarily all at the same time.

Two Operator Strategies for 5G Deployment

With the opportunity to provide highly differentiated services with 5G, operators are exploring two approaches to deployment:

• Upgrade of existing LTE infrastructure – By upgrading their existing LTE wireless networks with 5G radios, CSPs will realize 10 to 20% higher bandwidth for 5G mobile devices. This approach will offer a quick path to 5G services and may temporarily differentiate traditional mobile broadband services but offers limited improvements in wireless bandwidth capacity.
• Millimeter wavelength technology – Operators will deploy 5G small cell radios using millimeter wavelength (“mmwave”) spectrum to realize 5 to 10-fold increases in capacity. This approach will enable CSPs to support virtually any next generation service application, opening new business opportunities for early adopters. Due to the inherent range limitations of millimeter wave technology, 5G small cells must be deployed in very close proximity to subscriber devices.

With the adoption of 5G millimeter wavelength technology, CSPs will require 5G transport that is both capable and economically efficient. Hmm. Do we know of anything like that? As 5G radio technology gets more integrated, less costly, and easier to deploy, I believe 5G small cell networks will quickly come to resemble high-density broadband access networks that leverage high-bandwidth, reliable PON-based fiber transport.

Want to learn more about 5G? Join me and Hal Roberts in a replay of our webinar: Taking a Closer Look at 5G. 

What’s your perspective?

And of course, there’s plenty more to read and share on the Calix Perspectives pages. I look forward to hearing your perspective in 2019.

Serving more than 9300 square miles in western Kansas, Nex-Tech has evolved over its history from being a provider of rural telephone service to building a diversified broadband service portfolio, which includes support for businesses and marketing teams.

At the center of its residential broadband service is the Calix GigaCenter and 804Mesh satellites. As CEO Jimmy Todd shares, “The customer equates a good Wi-Fi connection to a good broadband connection.” With that in mind, the Calix Whole-Home Wi-Fi solution has helped Nex-Tech’s subscribers enjoy an excellent in-home experience, which allows for seamless streaming and supports the new Wi-Fi Now OTT video offering.

With nearly a third of its subscribers connecting via a Calix GigaCenter, Nex-Tech has built a great foundation for future in-home services, including Smart Home technologies.

Learn more about Nex-Tech’s success with Premium Wi-Fi and how it partnered with Calix to create materials for its marketing campaign in this 2018 Calix Innovation Award video.