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Batter-up: Three Telcos Tout Their Triple Play Success:
by Ken Pyle
August, 2003 Issue
The “triple play” of voice, data and video was the theme for USTA’s small company caucus in Kansas City. Walter McCormick, the President of USTA, remarked in his opening comments that the attendance to this event had tripled in comparison to last year’s event. A big part of this increase in attendance appeared to be because of the interest in increasing and diversifying revenues that comes with offering multiple services over a common network.
Bill King, President of JSI Capital Advisors, made the point that a true triple play of services really has to be transmitted over the same network. He suggests that other types of approaches, where multiple services are delivered via different, but parallel networks, is really service bundling and not a triple play. He pointed out that triple plays are a cost recovery or dilution strategy, as opposed to the marketing strategy of bundling. He suggested that the triple play is much more critical to the smaller operator than it is to the larger operator.
King pointed out that the cable threat is real, even for smaller operators. He cited the number of cable veterans who are getting back into the business and are focusing on smaller markets. King stated that the cable companies, with $75 billion invested in rebuilding their networks, have done a good job at closing the quality gap and have massive quantity of bandwidth available.
All West Communications is an example of a very rural telephone company that had a traditional, parallel coaxial cable television network which needed an upgrade. Like many telcos, the impetus for adding video services was done as a service to the community. In many of their communities, their customers would not have cable or internet services, had it not been for All West Communications. It was a combination of factors, including the need to upgrade their plant and the winter, 2002 Olympics, that caused All West to scrap their coaxial plant and install a VDSL system.
All West Communications, like most independent telcos, is very pragmatic when it comes to constructing a network. Vernile Prince, President of All West Communications, explained that developers were requesting fiber to the home (FTTH) deployments for their high-end deployments. Working with the developer, they found it is possible to succeed with a FTTH triple play. They also found that by being flexible, they could expand their service territory, as incumbents outside of their exchange refused to help the developers add FTTH to their developments.
The viewpoint of a slightly larger independent telephone company, Horizon Chillicothe Telephone, was presented by Karen McKee [McKee will be speaking at the iTVcc in Las Vegas in October]. Their decision to add video was also driven by the demands of the community, primarily local cities that wanted an alternative. Unlike, All West Communications, Horizon Chillicothe did not have a legacy video network, so they examined all possible approaches before settling on VDSL.
Horizon considers itself to be a marketing-driven company. They design and print their own materials, produce three different newsletters and are diligent about customer follow-up after the service installation. Additionally, she outlined some of the ways they have created local content that is truly unique, relative to the cable or satellite competition, and that reduces churn.
One of the side benefits to the VDSL network is a significant reduction in the number of trouble tickets. McKee emphasized the importance of considering the cost of not implementing the new network (e.g. in lost revenues due to competitors or increased maintenance costs) when evaluating the cost-benefit of a triple play.
SureWest Communications serves a much more urban area than Horizon Chillicothe or All West Communications. They were on their way to building a triple play network, when they took a little detour with the purchase of a bankrupt CLEC. This gave them 5,000 new customers and fixed assets, such as a 260 channel headend.
Like All West Communications, SureWest Communications is pragmatic about the network they deploy and, as a result, have fiber to the home and video over DSL solutions. Their objective is to deploy standards-based, Internet Protocol video that can be deployed over fiber or copper. One of their goals with the IP video approach is to be able to mix and match elements, such that they won’t be dependent upon a single supplier for any of the components.
The majority of their near-term deployments will use ADSL S=1/2, while the plan on deploying ADSL 2+, sometime next year. They will need to have the bandwidth of ADSL 2+ to meet their average 2.2 televisions per customers that they have experienced thus far. They will continue to support FTTH where it makes sense. One of their biggest challenges is to reduce the installation time at the home. But, the local presence is important for them when it comes to selling customers. They find that if a sales person can get into the home and present their lap-top presentation, they close over 73% of sales.
Despite their different demographics, geographic locations and sizes, the common thread among these telcos is that their decision to pursue triple play was market-driven. Once into the triple play, they were both pragmatic and aggressive about the deployment of their network. Additionally, they all used their local presence as an advantage when dealing with larger, outside competitors. All in all, this was a very useful conference for any sort of telco that has an interest in the triple play.
Note: Viodi is producing a CD for USTA that will include audio from the conference, synchronized to the presentations. For more information on this CD-ROM, please contact Allison Flerl at [email protected].
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