The Beacon
September 2019
I am delighted to provide you with a sneak peek into the amazing line up of speakers who will take to the main stage at Calix ConneXions 2019. As you know, the theme for this year’s conference is “It’s your time to lead,” and there is no better way to bring this to life than with amazing stories of success from our customers, partners, and industry leaders. This year we will more than double the number of compelling stories shared during the general sessions on the Monday and Tuesday morning of the conference. We will also celebrate our sponsors and announce our Innovation and Marketing Awards.
We will align these stories by the market driven challenges each are facing and successfully overcoming. Here is a summary of the stellar line-up we have planned to date:
Your time to lead
Letting insights be your guide
Turning insights into action
Converting subscriber demand into new revenue
Solving subscriber issues before they notice
Building the autonomous network, the last one you will ever need
Creating new businesses and business models
Getting help for every stage of your journey
Taking the lead
I think you will agree that this is quite a line up, and you can expect that we will add more over the coming weeks. You can expect even more to be featured in our breakout sessions.
So now is your time to step up and go beyond. To take a stand against the status quo. To eliminate your preconceived notions of what’s possible. There has never been a better time to join us at ConneXions!
Executive Product Line Manager,
National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC)
National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC) and Calix partner in many ways to streamline your business processes. As a matter of fact, a large percentage of NISC Members use the iVUE Enterprise System in conjunction with Calix technology, and the results are quite impressive.
The focus behind all of the development, partnership, and subsequent success is simple: Leverage technology to increase efficiencies as well as subscriber satisfaction – all while reducing operating costs.
Free up valuable CSR time
Processes that once required manual entry and a significant paper trail have now been reimagined with the help of NISC’s SmartHub Order Management solution. The ability for new subscribers to sign up for service via New Customer Signup streamlines the once manual CSR process, generating the customer, account, and connect service order with the click of a button. The workflow within Service Orders allows for provisioning of services for turning up the appropriate ports for voice, video, and broadband depending on the services selected. This means your staff has more time to focus on true customer care and less on the pushing of paper and step-by-step service initiation.
Streamline scheduling
Utilizing NISC’s iVUE AppSuite solution for driving daily tech appointments eliminates paperwork as the installation order information is at their fingertips on a mobile device. Provisioning is also an option while the tech is on premise, and assignment of additional devices such as set-top boxes is possible with the order changes captured and pushed into NISC’s Customer Care and Billing solution – all at the push of a button and all powered on-the-go by iVUE AppSuite.
Provisioning made easy
If changes are made via SmartHub Order Management for increasing broadband from 25 MB to 100 MB, creation of service orders are generated with Calix provisioning in a truly automated fashion without the need for any CSR interactions. When NISC’s provisioning with Calix is utilized, the system seamlessly changes the profile broadband port based on the desired speed.
SmartHub app
The powerful Mass Non-Pay process generates DNP Service Orders with provisioning for turning down services as well, providing a major time savings for your staff. As payments are received via NISC’s SmartHub mobile app to satisfy past due balances, reconnect service orders can be generated and Calix provisioned 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
For more information on NISC’s iVUE Enterprise System and other powerful solutions and apps, please visit www.nisc.coop.
Last year we announced this new award for marketers, and the excitement was overwhelming. So it’s back for a second year. How can you apply? Record a brief video (under 3 mins) describing your marketing campaign and send it via WeTransfer to award.submissions@calix.com. Be sure to include the following in your video:
What is the award? The winning video will be featured at ConneXions 2019 in Las Vegas during the Main Stage General Session, and the winning team will receive a complimentary marketing workshop with Decision Counsel (the producers of “The Millers”).
What is the deadline? Monday, October 14, 2019
Product Marketing Director
New Markets/Premises, Calix
While we anxiously await the FCC’s clarification on outstanding items from the DA 18-710 broadband performance testing order, time continues to speed by. Testing needs to begin in the first quarter of 2020, but there’s no need to wait. You can, and should, be ready to go sooner.
In our August 28 webinar, Five Area Telephone shared their pre-testing experience and shared why companies should be pre-testing now. They found that even though they were testing to Dallas, all their traffic was going to Seattle first. This impacted their latency results, dropping them to unacceptable levels. It took several weeks to get this routing issue resolved, so they were thankful that they didn’t wait until the last minute to discover a problem.
During this same webinar, we asked service providers to share their progress with performance testing requirements. The results are interesting:
According to the results of our survey, less than one-quarter of service providers have begun pre-testing and 6 out of 10 have not yet selected a testing solution. The first quarter of 2020 is just around the corner, so our recommendation is to begin pre-testing now, just in case you need time to resolve unexpected issues.
As a reminder, the Calix CAF Performance Testing solution — with Calix Support Cloud and EXOS — provides a turn-key solution for service providers to utilize their existing network infrastructure for testing. Learn more here about how Pioneer Telephone Cooperative selected a solution for their broadband performance testing. As soon as the FCC provides updates to the order, adjustments will be made to the software to reflect these changed requirements. At a minimum you need:
It’s just that simple. Even if you plan to test on GigaCenters, take action now! This is the perfect opportunity to get your Calix Support Cloud and EXOS agreements in place and ensure your network routing is optimized to perform the testing. If you do not have the resources in-house to spend time on this or you want to have experts manage this process for you, our Services team can manage this entire process for you.
As always, visit our web page for the latest updates on CAF Performance Testing.
No, this is not a headline for a new Star Trek episode but rather the underlying value proposition that the AXOS E3-2 Intelligent PON Node has to offer service providers. With its rugged and sealed form factor, the E3-2 is a revolutionary system that features an environmentally hardened, modular “deploy anywhere” design that can be mounted aerially, on a wall, in a pedestal, or on a pole. This flexibility dramatically reduces costs while accelerating construction and service activation. By operating in the most challenging operating environments and conditions, you can reach more subscribers by adding resiliency to your network and ensuring reliable connectivity within diverse geographical areas.
Fully field serviceable and upgradeable, the AXOS E3-2 delivers PON technologies to provide gigabit services to residential or business subscribers. As announced in our 2019 3rd quarter software release, the E3-2, with the addition of the NG201 interface module, joins the Calix everyPON™ solution portfolio with the ability to deliver XGS-PON based services along with the other PON technologies (GPON, 10G EPON) it currently supports today. Thanks to its modular architecture and hardware independence, the AXOS platform delivers a common operating model that simplifies your operations and enables you to run any and all PON technologies on a single network while delivering 10G services from virtually any location.
The Calix AXOS E3-2 was designed with flexibility and modularity in mind satisfying use cases spanning the telco and MSO segments. It’s temperature hardened and does not require active cooling, thus providing a significant reduction in total cost of ownership over a cabinet based solution. The system also eliminates many of the challenges associated with deploying a cabinet, such as land acquisition and securing construction permits.
Our E3-2 customers have seen and realized the value of deploying the system within their network. For example, Eric Furr, Network Operations Manager at United Fiber said, “Calix’s AXOS E3-2 Intelligent PON Node brings unprecedented network expansion opportunities to remote locations for us given its deployment flexibility. Its ‘deploy anywhere’ design represented a great option to reach areas that lacked a sufficient fiber network or where it wasn’t cost effective for us to build out a cabinet.”
For additional information on how AXOS and the E3-2 are the benchmark access solution for greenfield networks, specifically highlighting success with electic cooperatives, watch this webinar replay.
Armed with the following attributes, the AXOS E3-2 Intelligent PON Node system will enable you to become the winning service provider of tomorrow:
If you would like to learn more, please see our related E3-2 web page for additional details.
Calix ConneXions provides a wealth of opportunities for you to expand your business, technical, and marketing IQ. Along with a full day of training opportunities provided by the Education Services team on Sunday, we will also be featuring a complimentary Professional Services workshop. This workshop will provide an immersive experience into setting up and using SMx and AXOS Sandbox. The Professional Services team offers this as a premium deployment service and is making it available at ConneXions to the first 50 registrants.
In the SMx and AXOS Sandbox Live Workshop, Calix Professional Services and Solutions Engineering experts will take you through the steps to implement and use AXOS Sandbox and SMx in a virtual environment. It will feature live use case demonstrations on service configuration, provisioning, and APIs to back office platforms. The session is targeted at engineering and operations team members and is designed to show how to get the most out of the AXOS Sandbox test bed and SMx in your operating environment.
An Do, who heads up the Professional Services solution design and implementation group shared, “We want to expose the attendees to the same level of expert guidance that customers receive when they engage Professional Services on their transformation projects. We’ve helped numerous customers with their AXOS network expansions and greenfield projects, and we see first hand how Calix Services can give them a competitive advantage and help significantly accelerate their deployments.”
Other Calix Services sponsored opportunities at ConneXions include:
To find out more what ConneXions has in store for you, visit the 2019 Calix ConneXions Session Finder. Within the Session Finder, select “Accelerate”, “Hands on Labs,” and/or “Training and Education” options in the Conference Stream menu to find out more about the Calix Services led sessions.
Most new online applications come and go without having any impact to the access network or causing even a minor ripple in the overall data stream. Even those that arrive with great fan fair, such as online music streaming service Spotify, have no significant impact to the access network other than to contribute to the steadily increasing river of data.
Every so often an application comes along that is more than a ripple in the water. Its impact on data usage is so big, or causes such profound network architecture changes, that the water level rises around the beast as it enters the bay. The network impact of Netflix is a great example of an application that greatly disturbed the waters. If you’re a network engineer staring out at the approaching wave, it's probably time to evoke your best Police Chief Brody impersonation: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Here are three applications that will have an outsized impact on the access network.
I hope you are as excited for the future as I am–and that you are coming to 2019 Calix ConneXions. I’ll be moderating a panel of networking experts who will discuss emerging technologies that will impact the access network and ways to turn these waves into an opportunity to "Hang 10"! See you there.
What’s your perspective?
There’s plenty more to read and share on the Calix Perspectives pages. I look forward to hearing your perspective.
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Join us at Connexions 2019 to learn more about the connected home and prepare for software defined future. With over 16 Sunday training sessions including the popular Nerds of a Feather, Ensuring Successful Home Wi-Fi, Cloud training and many more. And as an extra incentive, we are offering an opportunity to get the new E7-2 AXOS GPON or AE certification Sunday afternoon (a $295 value). Sign up links will be provided in the upcoming weeks.
Benefits of Certification
If you are unable to attend this year’s Connexions, we still have an opportunity to get the training you need. Purchase an education subscription between now and December 31, 2019 and receive a coupon code to take the E7-2 AXOS exam at no charge.
Benefits of Subscription:
If you want to find out more, you can set up a consultation with an Calix Education Services Expert or view past webinars on the Calix Webinar Hub.
A local not-for-profit public utility located in northeastern Tennessee, BrightRidge has entered the broadband business to bring today’s “essential” service to its 78,000 subscriber locations, which include both business and residential subscribers.
Utilizing an eight-phase approach, BrightRidge is systematically building out its network, over its 350 square mile area, with a combination of fiber and fixed wireless technologies. Once the fiber backbone is in place, however, BrightRidge will also look for opportunities to expand into additional areas.
AXOS and the E9-2 Intelligent Access Edge solution provides the foundation for the BrightRidge network. With the flexibility to support both centralized and decentralized BNG architectures, BrightRidge is looking forward to taking advantage of the full functionality of the system. In addition, it allows BrightRidge to utilize GPON and XGS-PON today, while positioning them to quickly move to NG-PON2 in the future.
Learn more about how BrightRidge is leading the way in the Tennessee Valley and how they are already finding success with early subscribers in this Calix Success Story video.
Role: Associate Order Management Specialist, Global Sales
Location: Napa, CA
Years of Service: 1.5 years
Calix Expertise: Order entry, Software contracts
Favorite Movie: The Holiday
Favorite Vacation Spot: Any place close to nature/ocean
Fun Fact: I’m an only child and grew up in Chile and Venezuela; love animals & I’m the proud mommy of a 4 year old
What is the next place you'd like to visit? I’d love to travel to London soon!
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**Note: Mature Release means the latest production software is current and recommended for use.
