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The Cable Box War |
If bundled services don't present enough of a challenge, cable operators now face a looming deadline to deploy CableCards. The cards fit into cable boxes or digital cable-ready (DCR) TVs and will now carry the security information that has historically resided in cable boxes to prevent piracy.
In 1996, in an effort to facilitate consumers' adoption of digital services and, ultimately, render cable boxes unnecessary to cable programming, Congress required operators to remove this security information from cable boxes and allow that information to reside in CableCards.
After much opposition from the industry and two deadline delays, operators must now ditch noncompliant boxes and deploy compliant ones by July 2007 -- a costly prospect: The National Cable & Telecommunications Association estimates that deploying new boxes could cost an additional $90 per box. And some DCR models already bypass cable boxes, which cuts into the $2.5 billion a year the industry makes in leasing fees, according to Kagan Research LLC. All told, deploying CableCards to consumers could cost the cable industry $470 million.
The Burden of Being Smaller
For cable operators, the deadline might be less of an albatross if CableCard technology could sustain the shift. But the software is still buggy, and different cards work differently. "The FCC Federal Communications Commission assumes that low-cost, effective devices will be in the marketplace, but we're just not seeing it," says Matthew Polka, president of the American Cable Association, an industry advocacy group in Pittsburgh.
Paul Shryock, VP of IT at midmarket Buckeye Cablevision in Toledo, Ohio, says immature CableCard technology means smaller operators will have to thrash out compatibility issues on their own dime. If there's a problem during cable installation, the TV is often the culprit, Shryock says. "But I'm the guy standing in the living room."
And that's just one of the burdens operators have to shoulder. "Our billing systems weren't designed to accommodate these cards," says P. Andrew MacDowell, VP of IT and central support at Insight Communications in Louisville, Ky. MacDowell's team has to get cracking to reconfigure Insight's Convergys billing system to recognize these cards by the July deadline. So what's the time frame for reconfiguring Convergys?
"We have to test these cards in different variations," he says, so Insight is shooting for early spring. "But really, that's the million-dollar question."
--L.H.
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Flexibility on the Front Lines
Bringing greater flexibility to installers and service representatives is a big part of improving customer service on the front lines. Armed with laptops that run workforce management software from Mobile Data Solutions Inc. (MDSI), SureWest's 75 installers can access their schedules and customer accounts and also update inventory systems. If an installer discovers that a modem is defunct and takes a replacement from his truck, MDSI sends an automatic message to replenish stock. Installers can also send labor expenses to the billing system.
While Dunlap says GCI's consolidation onto Comverse has been "pretty seamless," the vagaries of installer dispatch still reflect the old way of doing business. GCI's Kenan workforce management system schedules telephone and Internet installations, but it isn't integrated with the scheduling application GCI uses for its cable line of business. As a result, GCI might send one installer to activate cable and another to activate phone services to the same home, Dunlap says. GCI hopes to eliminate these kinds of inefficiencies as IT moves greater functionality to installers' mobile devices.
Offering new services also means taking a hard look at customer-facing processes. When Insight launched VoIP, the company restructured the way it routs technical support calls at its 12 call centers so that customer service representatives trained in video services weren't troubleshooting technical VoIP problems. The routing system now sends calls to reps based on their product training as well as the complexity of the problem. Sending calls to the right reps enables faster, better customer service, MacDowell says.
But greater front-line efficiency has its downsides. SureWest installers may try to adjust an account they've just set up, only to find the order has already been processed. The goal, says Dotson, is to balance the efficiency of automation with added flexibility in making real-time changes.
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