Recently in Operations Category

“Fewest dropped calls…”

“Most coverage…”

“There’s an app for that…”

“There’s a map for that…”

We have been pummeled with claims and counterclaims regarding the quality and coverage of major wireless networks via commercial advertising and court cases.  However, now there are some additional voices providing facts and opinions to this conversation

On the side of fact over opinion, Michael Finneran has an excellent post where you can see the results of 3G network testing.  These numbers show how major carriers perform in some major US cities ( … a little bummed that denver didn’t make the ‘major’ city list… ):

• Chicago
• Dallas
• Los Angeles
• New York
• Seattle
• San Francisco
• Washington, DC

An excellent piece, in particular if you live in one of those locales.

On the side of opinion ( … as in the ‘the customer is always right’… ), Consumer Reports has issued their wireless customer satisfaction survey.  The returns show that customers are more satisfied with “maps” than “apps” even if the iPhone is the smart-phone of choice…

NOTE – AT&T has decided to provide an iPhone application to provide feedback for network performance improvement.

Has anyone used it? Have you noticed differences in the AT&T Network since the Verizon ad campaigns have started?

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (JohnLMyers44) me directly.

PS – AT&T improved the network around Denver, but they moved the dead spots all around. Now I don’t know where my ‘fewest dropped calls’ will occur… :)

Change takes a long time in telecom…

Last January, I posted a blog on how Time Warner Cable was looking at their customers’ network traffic in new ways.  Recently, it was announced that Time Warner Cable was in fact looking to adjust their “unlimited” plans with “caps” for high usage.

Not quite the “utility-based” pricing that I believe that many telecoms would like to implement ( … whether they can is another matter … ).  However, it does show how the data that is sitting in many Revenue Assurance organizations can used for more than checking on revenue leakage.

Revenue assurance organizations can be “sooo” much more to their organizations than just “checkbook balancers”.  They have the data and knowledge about the business of a telecom to:

• Find trends like the imbalance of traffic by customer similar to those at Time Warner Cable
• Identify the new business opportunity, or at the least provide the data to support the business case
• Implement the controls that make those new business opportunities a reality

‘You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”  — Abraham Lincoln

While I don’t think that most job candidates try to “fool” their employers, I do like to use a couple of “proof in the pudding” questions to evaluate certain position candidates.

Chris Kanaracus has a good one relating to data modelers.  Check it out and let me know if you think his “elimination round” question is as effective as I think it is…

I have always been amused by the fact that if one person or organization does something the activity can be categorized as creepy. If someone else does that exact same activity, it is creative. For example, if the NSA tracks your voice or data traffic; it's creepy. If Google does it, it's a creative business model....

Graham Finnie has a good posting on how telecoms can use policy servers to manage and observe many concepts of their operations from usage to user preferences. Finnie also points out the concept can be a bit of tightrope for telecom organizations to tread.

Personally, I like that telecoms may start to mine the information from their operations to make a "better, faster more responsive" organization. However, I am concerned that they might actually kill the golden goose when they do these things. If the customer doesn't trust you, then they will probably take their business elsewhere... This is even if you are providing them with valuable service ( ... ie the creepy part... ).

From my standpoint, there are two facets to this situation. Customer facing programs and internal facing programs based on policy programs. For customer facing programs, the solution is legalese-esqe approach of aggressive / proactive subscriber opt-in notifications and discounts for allowing for the usage of the information ( ... ie the creative part... ) will provide telecoms with the cover for subscriber based and facing "policy" decisions.

For internal facing operational decisions based on policy programs, the slope is much less slippery since you can effectively segregate the subscriber information from the operational decisions without too much trouble. However, there is still risk associated with these types of activities. But hey... no guts... no glory... :)

Technorati Tags: Telecommunications, Telecom, Graham Finnie, Telecom Policy, NSA, Google

In the list of post holiday "experiences", here are a few of the highlights for 2007:

• December 26th sale purchases
• Setting New Year's Resolutions
• Waiting... and waiting... and waiting... for your Xbox Live session

It appears that Xbox suffered similar issues in December to the Skype "network" downtime this Fall. While the technical issues were quite a bit different, the end result was similar... Lots of consumers unhappy with their product/service due to downtime.

Being a fairly experienced computer user ( ...and former systems admin... ), I find the "regular" Windows updates to be annoying. I can just imagine what the average 13-16 year old thinks of having to wait for an XBox to download updates before they can start playing online.

Technorati Tags: Telecommunications, Telecom, XBox, Skype, Downtime, Operations