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Capacity: The Sky's the Limit |
As all telecom providers are learning, the key to market share is the robustness of the network.
Since 1996 the cable industry has spent some $110 billion upgrading its network infrastructure; and over the next several years, telephone carriers like AT&T and Verizon plan to spend billions more to lay fiber optic lines and increase network capacity.
Now satellite providers -- whose competitiveness has suffered from the data latency issues inherent in sending a satellite signal out to space -- are making network reliability priority No. 1. At $800-million Hughes Network Systems LLC in Germantown, Md., CIO Prasad Margasahayam says that as his company sets its sights on growth, "we have to make sure that the network is always up and running."
This year Hughes will launch its new Spaceway 3 satellite. While the company currently uses satellites that operates on the Ku band of the spectrum, Spaceway 3 transmits on the less crowded Ka band.
And since Spaceway 3 can transmit data directly rather than routing it through a network operations center, data can make fewer stops along the way. That means Hughes can increase transmission speed 10 times over that provided by current satellites and improve uptime.
Spaceway 3 isn't just a product offering; it's also a strategic differentiator from cable and telephone providers. A more robust network means that the company can target the 15 million rural households that cable and telephone providers won't serve because of the high costs associated with running lines to areas with low home density.
But in a world of bundled services, competitive advantage isn't a constant. Since 2003, $326 million Alaska Communications Systems Group in Anchorage, Alaska, a provider of landline and wireless phone as well as Internet services, has been reselling Dish Network video services from EchoStar Communications Corp.
"It's not a large part of our business, but bundled services are," says Anand Vadapalli, SVP of network and information technology. "As we increase in high-speed wireless data, that will position us to offer data and video, and we expect that to increase over time."
--L.H.
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The Next Frontier
And that's where business process management (BPM) comes in. Currently, SureWest installers arrive at homes with blank cable boxes, which allows for lots of flexibility in scheduling; a box isn't configured with account information until it's installed. But with BPM, which Dotson plans to implement this year, IT could identify instances when sending signals over the network to activate a device would take longer than just configuring a box ahead of time.
Another initiative is enhancing customer self-service features on the Web so subscribers can pay bills online and upgrade packages. SureWest's customers can now order interactive gaming services online. GCI's Dunlap also plans to implement additional electronic bill-paying features; soon business customers will be able to "slice and dice" their bill and break down their minutes of long-distance calls.
Telecom providers' new offerings are meeting the needs of consumers for greater network capacity and more product options and self-service. But IP-based services also introduce uncharted territory for IT. "This business used to be about counting ports and switches," Dunlap says. Now providers have to sort out how to manage services that involve dynamic, nonphysical inventory, he says. "How do you manage an IP address as an inventory number so a customer can use his laptop for long-distance calls?"
And more important, new modes of service delivery -- providing video on a cell phone or on-demand TV programming -- mean that authenticating users, devices and levels of service is the next frontier, says Dunlap. Some of the challenge is technical, Insight's MacDowell notes, but much of the burden involves building business logic into systems to enable customers to establish controls "so kids aren't ordering a million pay channels," he says.
"When you think about how far IP will go, and the infrastructure that it requires to make those services happen, that's what keeps me up at night," Dunlap says.
Lauren Horwitz, former managing editor, production, for CIO Decisions, is now managing editor for TechTarget's Data Center Media Group. Write to her at lhorwitz@techtarget.com.
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