In the mid-90’s, the arrival of Internet, cable, and mobile phone services produced a charged cocktail of events that changed the communications landscape forever.  Approximately 30 years on, the broadband industry looks profoundly different than it did in the early Internet dial-up days. For example, while the world’s incumbent operators are still going strong, they now have a challenge that none of them had 30 years ago – being in the wholesale business.

To foster competition in the last mile, incumbents are now compelled by regulatory agencies in their respective countries to unbundle last mile connections to competitive companies, i.e., the wholesale business. Although such competitive policies result in consumer benefits, they burden the incumbent-turned-wholesale access provider with duties it would otherwise not have, like fielding a trouble ticket from a wholesale customer while their impatient end-user is on the line expecting a fast resolution. Managing those tickets is a challenge from both sides of the wholesale fence.

Whose Fault Is It Anyway?

Without proper network visibility, it’s impossible to know the root cause of a wholesale ticket when the call comes in. Does it lie in the wholesale access provider’s network? The customer’s? The end-user’s home/place of business? Without any information, most wholesale access providers will simply send a technician out to investigate to maintain SLAs.  Unfortunately, blind troubleshooting is very costly and is a drag on mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) metrics.

Worse, some studies indicate that up to 80% of trouble tickets opened with the incumbent are not its fault. That results in thousands of wasted tech hours and truck rolls, and—at $300-$500 a truck roll—a lot of expense. Many wholesale access providers charge their customers for “no fault” site visits but those fees usually don’t cover the full cost of the site visit, so neither competitive telco nor incumbent are happy. Perhaps most importantly, end-users want problems fixed in minutes, not days.

Fusion Cuts Through the Headaches

Fusion is a Layer 2-4 network test system from VIAVI Solutions that provides wholesale access providers with the ability to test the Ethernet circuit between the demarcation points of its network and those of its wholesale customers. Smart SFPs (VIAVI JMEPs) deployed at those demarcation points (or at any other point in the access infrastructure) provide the test end points used in combination with an active test to and from end-user CPE. The end result is that Fusion gives service providers a critical asset: the ability to test its network remotely. That line of sight comes with key benefits, including:

  • Truck Rolls Cut in Half. With accurate information provided by standards-based test protocols (Y.1564, RFC 6349), Fusion allows the wholesale access provider to identify when a truck roll is not necessary and therefore cut truck rolls in half, saving thousands of tech hours.
  • Improved Customer Experience. Both the wholesale customer and their end-user will enjoy a better experience with faster problem Fusion’s accurate test data allows the wholesale access provider to send the right person to the right place with the right tools.
  • Quick Break-Even. By cutting expensive site visits in half, wholesale access providers can experience as little as a 6-month breakeven time on a new Fusion deployment.

 

Watch the video – Dispatch to Fix, Not to Find

BT Openreach Testimonial

Openreach is the wholesale arm of British telecom giant BT. In a recent interview, Openreach’s Trevor Linney, Network Technology Director, describes how Fusion streamlines their operations and how easy it was to implement.  Check out our website for more information on Fusion or to schedule a conversation.

About The Author

Tomás is a marketing leader who bridges the communication gap between engineers who develop technology and the users of it. After earning his MBA in Marketing and Finance from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Tomás has spent his entire 25-year career in telecommunications, with both service providers and vendors. He has spent the last six years in VIAVI solutions marketing, with responsibility over multiple product domains including wireless, metro, and virtual test.

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