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Quick Jump Menu to this Issue’s Articles May 12th, 2004 Overview CTA’s Supplier’s Showcase – Something New in Sacramento Small Company Caucus Gambles on Sacramento: VoIP – The Quadruple Play?
CTA’s Supplier’s Showcase – Something New in Sacramento
by Ken Pyle ([email protected]), Viodi, LLC
May 12th, 2004 Issue
[a telco’s] “customer base is at risk like never before.” – Fred Arcuri
Fred Arcuri is a 30 plus year independent telephony veteran who has quickly transformed into a broadband expert. The way he described it in his presentation at the CTA show, broadband is much more than technology, as, fundamentally, it starts with marketing. That is, understanding what customers will want and then packaging, pricing, placing and promoting the appropriate products. This is what happens in a competitive market.
Arcuri warned that increased competition is what all telcos will face as “access will get easier”. Because access is easier due to broadband, a telco’s customer base is at risk and, ultimately, the telco’s existence is in jeopardy. His comments were echoed a week later at NTCA’s VoIPossibilities conference when one of the speakers suggested that those telcos that are not broadband providers are doomed.
SureWest has been very aggressive about becoming a broadband operator. One might say they were lucky to be able to purchase the assets of WinFirst for pennies on the dollar. I would say they made their own luck as they already had an aggressive ISP subsidiary and they were actively pursuing video services, when the opportunity came along. Because of their readiness, they were able to jump-start their video efforts with an immediate subscriber base of 5,500 subscribers.
The impressive thing is that they have been able to swallowing the WinFirst operations with minimal hiccups (easy for me to say, as I sit here from my easy chair) and have actually doubled the number of subscribers in less than a year. While they have been absorbing the WinFirst operations, they have somehow managed to redesign the system for a true IP video system that will operate in a Fiber to the Home configuration in their new deployments and over copper to their existing telephony customers.
Another asset that SureWest inherited from the WinFirst deployment was a home-grown operations support system that provides complete flow-through provisioning, such that the process of a customer ordering service is mostly automated. Even with this OSS, WinFirst was on such a rapid build out that they lost track of fiber placement. One of things that SureWest has done is created a much more disciplined and controlled build out of the plant.
They have integrated their operations and build out with their sales and marketing effort in such a way that they have 11,000 subscribers with 42,000 homes passed. The sky is the limit for them, as they have their sights on the greater Sacramento area. Key to this effort will be continuation of their sales and marketing programs.
To read about some of their sales and marketing techniques, please click here [club viodi members only – Note, to view the rest of this article, you must be a club.viodi member. Club.viodi membership is only open to independent telcos and is made available at the sole discretion of Viodi, LLC. To obtain a user ID and password, please contact us at [email protected].
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