Dilemma for the Cable Operators

For decades the cable companies have said, NO FTTH! It's blasphemy to the die-hard HFC folks. We didn't spend the last thirty years learning how to fine tune the cable system coax plant and customer drop just to see it all swept away by some stinking fiber!

Well we all know about progress; it follows the route to the biggest pot of gold. Once that pot of gold is FTTH and not HFC, guess what?

There are some who think it's necessary to rework DOCSIS so it can run over fiber.

There are some who think that replacing the drop with LTE will be the answer.

There are some who think an all IP DOCSIS 3.1 is the answer.

And, you have all the cable operators wondering which of these is the right choice. Each one means a visit to the investors, the banks and the CFO.

If it were your money, where would you place your bet?

Now, to make matters worse, which FTTH technology do you choose? EPON, GEPON, or GPON? Maybe it's just RFoG or perhaps you go wireless. Which one? FDD-LTE or TDD-LTE?

Or do you say, "The heck with it!" and just concentrate on stealing those ripe and juicy commercial accounts out of the hands of the Telcos and run Metro-Ethernet? OK, now which technology; WDM, EPON, GEPON, or GPON?

See? It's not easy. You need a handicapper (shameful plug - that's us), someone who doesn't work for a manufacturer. You need to see where the standards committees are headed and which manufacturers have investor confidence. You just can't rely on your brother-in-law to tell you which way to go, you have to make an informed decision.

We also need to face some truths here; it's going to be FTTH eventually. It may be a hybrid fiber-wireless solution, too. A new acronym, HFW.

Don't you think you need to learn and teach your techs about this stuff now?

The Internet of Things

No, I did not coin the phrase but I wish I had. Each time I start writing about training in this chaotic broadband world, there is a new device to think about, to inform, educate, install, and maintain.

The customer premise devices are making it difficult to maintain any control over the user experience.

Let me ask you, as a technical operations manager, you get a call that says the customer's washing machine can't talk to the Internet, your Internet. Or that the customer's kid's tablets are running slow connecting to YOUR Internet.

See, no matter what the problem really is, you run the Internet for them. You are the lightning rod.

So what are you going to do, hide your head in the sand? Tell them to call their manufacturer?

Oh yeah...can we say CHURN?

So, 2013 is not only The Year of the Internet of Things, it also has to be The Year of Learning how to Install, Configure, and Maintain the Internet of Things.

My, how the definition of CPE has grown; that single three- letter acronym, Customer Premise Equipment. No longer the realm of TVs, DVD players, tablets, smartphones, and computers, CPE now means: Thermostats, IP security cameras, Carbon monoxide alarms, fire alarms, burglar alarms, lighting controls, the refrigerator, washing machine, dryer, furnace, air conditioner, air cleaners, vacuums, blood pressure monitors, urine testers, toilets, ventilators, dog collars, litter boxes and sexual aids.

No, I am not advocating that we teach our technicians how to install configure and maintain the customer's sex toys.. wait, there may be an app for that... I am suggesting that every broadband provider consider the need for a document repository that grows and contains the instructions for any type of device a customer may try and connect to our networks.

One way or another, and that other way is usually through Google, the technician is going to leave the customer with a smile on their face. And, if you don't make it easy for the technician to do their job, they will take up a lot of time learning the same information over and over again.

That's money off the bottom line. That's a customer waiting for a tech because they are trying to figure out why the dryer isn't sending a text reporting that the clothes are dry or why the litter box isn't connecting to the Internet.

As I said, IT DOES NOT MATTER WHO MAKES THE CPE, if something goes wrong  it's the fault of YOUR INTERNET.

Here's what we recommend. 

• A set of YouTube Channel videos, in a few languages, that show the customer and the technician how install, configure, and maintain all sorts of CPE.
• A mobile-accessible knowledge base with manuals and diagrams and troubleshooting workflows.
• A lab, somewhere, that can be shared among all broadband providers, that tests and documents and rates the CPE's ability to work on all or systems.

Live long and prosper.

It's not Evolution, it's Revolution!

Can you imagine Verizon and Comcast merging? Can you imagine Comcast purchasing Disney, with its ESPN, Disney and ABC programming? Can you imagine a time when you will no longer use the words "cable drop" or "inside wire" any more?

The time is soon upon us, perhaps in as little as five years, when the bandwidth required to stream live TV at 4K and 8K resolutions will easily occupy a 5-20MHz wide carrier in the 700-800MHz range in free space.

Now imagine that the HFC infrastructure we so carefully maintain is now used to place thousands of LTE neighborhood cells, talking to small base stations in the home and office. Using the new 802.11ac, Super WiFi technology, the home LAN now supports 1.5Gbps. No more inside wire.

All this is great news to the cable industry where the majority of all service calls are related to installation and problems with inside wire, connectors, splitters, and amplifiers at subscriber's homes and businesses.

But is this good news for consumers? That's a lot of technology and programming in the hands of just a few enormous corporations. Where is the competition? There doesn't seem like any are around except for a few municipal fiber nets touting ubiquitous WiFi.

And what does this mean for rural America? In every one of the over 18,000 communities in the USA, there ought to be a fiber, multi-gigabit per second interface to the Internet. How access gets to the citizens ought to be up to the local powers, as in franchise or self-build.

Trackable QR Codes Help Generate ROI on QR Code Campaigns

If you haven't buzzed around to http://www.qreatebuzz.com/  then I suggest you do. Interested in running an in-store or in-restaurant QR campaign? Find out how many times your code was scanned and when. Tie it to Foursquare, Facebook, and Twitter as well as your web page. Social networking never looked so good.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Scan for a 10% discount coupon

2. Scan for a free dessert

3. Scan for a free gift

4. Scan for a chance to win a free dinner

5. Scan for a chance to win a $200.00 shopping spree.

And many many more.

Call today and let us show you how to tie it all together. We make sense out of all the confusion.
Call 309-310-7245

The Message is the Message - Dos and Don'ts of Digital Signage

We see a bright shiny sign and instantly look at it. It changes right before our eyes...very cool! We might even touch it and interact with it. Even cooler!

But, for those of us in the electronic communications biz, the technologies we have available to deploy these solutions for our customers are as diverse in cost and complexity as the messages our clients want to get across.

If your clients are asking you for digital signage, be sure you know what they, and you, are talking about.

Do sit down and evaluate their existing signage and traditional communications strategy.
Don't start selling them on all the new gadgets.

Do spend some time educating your clients about the options for replacing or adding to their strategies and what it should deliver in terms of things like employee retention, satisfaction, loyalty, morale, customer service, and the bottom line in reductions in returns, increases in value-added sales, and in more sales during new campaigns.
Don't make wild promises. Adding digital signage is just part of an overall change in culture. Be sure that you lay out what's required of everyone in order for it to be a success.

Do see the "FUN" in visual communications. Signage can open new doors for engagement, competitions, contests, karaoke, and social networking.
Don't just set it and leave it. Messages need to be dynamic and change often.

Do be prepared to produce all the graphics and videos.
Don't assume your client will have the skills to produce their own.

Can Salesforce Save Your Business?

You have tons of information, right? Outlook contact lists, emails from vendors and clients, faxes, contracts, orders, FedEx receipts, and so much more!

If you are overwhelmed by the thought of getting organized, don't worry - Think SALESFORCE.com.

This is one powerful and expensive Customer Relationship Management platform. Nothing less than Enterprise will do for a small business planning on growing. And, get Premier Support with Admin; it is worth every penny.

Give us a call if you already have Salesforce.com Sales Cloud or are thinking about getting it. We can help you understand how Sugar, ZoHo, and Oracle/PeopleSoft compare with Salesforce. And we can help you add applications that can speed things up, eliminate double entry, and improve productivity.

The Business of BPM (Business Process Management)

Do you manage you business processes? Do you even know what they are?

If you are like most businesses, you have an idea how to run your business. You know where the keys are, the code for the alarm, the bank account numbers, the phone number for the IT guy, and you know how to take orders, place an ad, and maybe a few more things. But, most business owners and managers keep these things in their heads.

That's a bad idea.

A business is like an orchestra. If everyone just played what they wanted it wouldn't sound very nice. The orchestra needs music, instructions that tells each member what to play and when. The orchestra needs a conductor, making sure that the players manage their time wisely and are all on the same page.

Are you a player or a conductor? You can't be both at the same time.

Isn't it time you started to map out your business processes?

Where do you start?
At the beginning! Start with how you answer the phone, then move to how calls are transferred, what is said before putting a call on hold, and what are the rules about taking messages or transferring to voice mail?

Next, take a look at how you are managing your customer and prospect information? If you brought up a contact right now, could you tell when they ordered last and what it was?

Now how about your marketing campaigns? Sales practices? Order fulfillment?

Now might be a good time to engage a business process engineer.

That's what we have been doing for over 30 years - call us at 309-310-7245 to see how we can document and streamline your processes to help your bottom line.

Of Apps, Images, and eLearning

Are you still designing and developing "Please click NEXT to continue" eLearning? Why? With all the tools out there to design and develop eLearning that has better uptake numbers and delivers a better result, why are you stuck in the linear rut?

The biggest excuse we hear is, "My customer doesn't have the budget." But, that's an excuse. What isn't being discussed is the lack of understanding among the ISD community on how to sell alternatives to linear eLearning.

There is a plethora (I love that word, my 10th grade English teacher would be so proud!) of bad eLearning. It just keeps coming. And, more than likely, it's you, yes I mean you, that's the culprit.

Have you begun to learn how to turn a lesson into an App on an iPhone or Android? Have you even thought about the way technology has changed the old pedagogy? Could you write a storyboard that incorporates social networking, YouTube, Wikis, simulations, polls, surveys, chats, webinars, mobile apps, and more?

One thing we need to understand - we are no longer in charge of the way students learn. They are using all the resources now available and crafting their own "playlists." They are writing their own learning apps with uploaded files, downloaded files, web pages, Facebook pages, shared presentations, YouTube videos and sharing these among their peers.

Can we, as ISDs help educators regain control of the curriculum? Yes, we can.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Learn about Articulate's new Storyline. An updated version of Studio '09 that publishes HTML5, and eliminates the Flash roadblock on iPads and iPhones.
2. Try out Appbuilder. you will be amazed how easy it is to create an App for any mobile device.
3. Pay attention to the following design rules:
• The Box Rule - Anything in a box will be read.
• The Red Rule - If you want it read, make it red.
• The Clean & Bright Rule - With images, iconic high-contrast designs get the most attention.
• The Spaghetti Rule - Too many words and images on the screen is like throwing spaghetti on the wall, a mess! Be concise and pay attention to the use of blank space.
• The Play Me Rule - If you want an interaction, make it relevant with a reward at completion.
• The Triplet Rule - The mind absorbs ideas when presented in triplets: 1, 2, 3; A, B, C; Good, Better, Best; Red, Blue, Green; etc...
• The Spelling Counts Rule - Yes, even in this era of texting, spelling still counts. Make sure you don't look like a fool to your client. Do you know when to use their, there, and they're?
• The Consistency Rule - It really makes a difference. Maintain a style guide to manage things such as: the serial comma, colons and semicolons, capitalization, words found in the glossary, and other common elements.
• The End It Now Rule - Make sure your lesson has a beginning, middle, and an end. Make sure that all objectives have matching content and that expected outcomes are clearly stated.

That's all for now, folks.

The Next Big Thing for Video

It's the carrier's dirty little secret. More demand means more program flows. Problem is that there's only so much bandwidth. Something suffers. Can you think of what it is? It's video quality. It will get worse before it gets better. And the problem is that everyone, MSOs, TELCOs, CDNs, OTTs, and IPTVs will all suffer. What's worse is that we will be paying for intermittently degraded TV for a while.

At this point we can measure and analyze real-time video quality as it leaves the programmer and as it leaves the headend. There's talk about including a quality probe in every set-top box, but the messages that will flow back in the upstream will bring it to its knees. There's a cost for measuring too much.

So, where does that leave us? How about spatial analysis and reconstruction? It's a technique that seems a bit out of Roswell. It can  rebuild an SD image into an HD, even a super HD image. If you're a member of the IPTV and OTT groups on Linkedin, you've seen samples. They are quite impressive. It is a game changer coupled with MPEG-4. This new compression technique actually improves quality and it's only going to get better.

But, with such a large embedded base of only MPEG-2 decoders, it may be a while before we see any real improvement. So, as we see more and more badly constructed compression, we better get used to more macroblocking, jerkiness, mosquito noise, and smearing.

Next, a look at the biggest contributor to poor video quality - Customer premise.