The Beacon
February 2020
Over the past 2 weeks we have shared the latest advances made across the Calix portfolio as part of our first quarter release cadence. These daily updates are available on our release summary page and on our My Calix release resources page (Login Required). This February edition of the Beacon will provide additional context for these announcements. Below are the highlights:
As always, our goal is to help you build more valuable businesses and win in your markets with access to the latest cutting-edge technology and expertise. This first quarter release is chock full of compelling news, so I encourage you to read through this February edition to learn more.
At Calix, we want to help you do that.
Regulatory and financial environments are encouraging increased competition and investments in fiber. The only way to stay ahead of disruption is to focus on subscribers’ experiences, increased network and operational efficiency, and a relentless pursuit of data driven insights. Join Calix at a Regional Summit near you to learn more.
AVP, Product Marketing Subscriber Experience,
Calix
Investing in subscriber experience has proven to help service providers easily adapt and align their business with ongoing shifts in subscriber behavior. With the introduction of the Revenue EDGE, we are seeing our customers benefit from new insights that are enabling them to develop plans to deliver the value-added services their subscribers crave.
The latest release introduces new innovations and advancements that continue to accelerate them down this path. You’ll find a more comprehensive release summary here, but let’s take a look at a few noteworthy developments.
New subscriber-empowering controls from ExperienceIQ™ and ProtectIQ™ that not only boost value, but also build trust that you are invested in creating better and safer experiences for your subscribers. ExperienceIQ enhances parental control with new abilities such as managing application-specific access and adding VPNs to filtered lists, so adults can stay ahead of the digital-savvy Gen Alpha. ProtectIQ now includes more security settings, while it continues to work tirelessly in the background to ensure your subscriber experiences are secure and dynamically adapt as network threats grow and evolve.
Amped up end-to-end EDGE Insights that reinforce the fundamental shift in how your business needs to align operations to own the complete subscriber experience. Customer Care now has deeper and broader visibility into how subscribers are utilizing and experiencing ProtectIQ and ExperienceIQ via CommandIQ™, and can also run speed tests in real-time, allowing CSRs to troubleshoot faster. More importantly, they can also guide subscribers in customizing the services with the right settings to meet their unique needs, creating more stickiness which is critical since the stakes are much higher with subscribers today having more choices.
To learn more about how other service providers are giving themselves an unfair advantage with the continuing advancements in Revenue EDGE, watch the webinar replay Don't Be Left in the Dark: Using data and insights to launch new services and drive revenue.
Did you know that, 25 Mbps + 35 Mbps + 250 Mbps = 10 Gbps? No, that’s not some new way of doing math, that’s what’s going on in your subscribers’ homes today. In a typical home of two adults and two children, there could be the following happening at any given time:
395 Mbps used by a single home
Now look at your GPON network, if you are running a typical split ratio of 32:1 in a neighborhood of homes like this, your GPON is out of bandwidth.
The reality is that not every home is like this. It is, however, easy to see how a home could use 100 Mbps during peak hours. Also, if there are more than 25 homes on the PON and they are each using 100 Mbps at a time, you will have some unhappy subscribers.
This is what is driving all the noise around 10G PON and the need to upgrade to XGS-PON, NG-PON2, or 10G EPON in the access network. In addition, it takes most service providers 2 to 3 years from the time they make the upgrade decision to the time the upgrade is completed. With Nielsen’s Law of Internet Bandwidth, a user’s bandwidth grows at a rate of 50 percent per year. So, you can see why 10G PON is a major focus for service providers today.
As with every technology upgrade, there are some future considerations that should be factored into the decision. This is where the excitement really begins. The Intelligent Access Edge solution already has a complete portfolio of everyPON solutions enabling you to deploy the 10G PON of your choice today and easily add the next PON technology when you’re ready.
With Release 20.1 the Intelligent Access Edge brings an extremely scalable 100G aggregation system to the access network with the E9-2 Intelligent Edge System and the ASM3001. These latest innovations provide increased capacity, decreased power consumption and requires less rack space than alternative high capacity options. Additional enhancements include 64 10G SFP+ interfaces per chassis (32 per card) and eight QSFP-DD ports per chassis (enabling as many as 32 100G interfaces). This solution can meet the needs of service providers everywhere. Whether you are building a new Layer 2 access network or already have an existing access network, you can take advantage of the ability to simplify the network by consolidating the functions of aggregation, subscriber management, and lawful intercept while delivering 100G or more to the access network.
Learn more about the Intelligent Access Edge Solution in our latest Solution brief.
There are many network and architectural challenges facing service providers as you ready your network to support ever-increasing bandwidth demands.
The old concept of the busy hour for voice traffic has been superseded by the Internet Rush Hour. But, it’s no longer just an hour. It is every evening from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. Subscribers expect an “always on” experience along with exceptional service quality during that time. It results in a seemingly constant cycle of infrastructure exhaust for your business, followed by reactive adjustments to network capacity that, in many cases, only provide a temporary fix.
The team at Highland Telephone Cooperative (HTC) wanted to be more strategic in its approach to addressing network congestion and other challenges facing its network engineers. Jared Carson, chief operations officer for HTC, shared they were growing their broadband business and usage was increasing exponentially. HTC’s traffic growth curve showed they were close to exhausting some Ethernet rings. They realized that the way to address the issue in the short term meant using additional fiber plant and physically rearranging nodes. But with demand continuing to ramp, they knew they would soon grow beyond short-term fixes. They needed to look at the bigger picture and develop a better long-term plan.
HTC engaged Calix Network Consulting Services to help develop a plan that Jared indicated, “would help them fix the problem today, but also give them the peace of mind knowing that in five years, they would still be doing okay without the need for a forklift upgrade.” HTC has exceptional network engineering on staff but knew by engaging Calix Professional Services, they would have a trusted adviser that could validate their approach as well as propose new options.
The Calix Network Consulting approach is straightforward and proven. It has delivered immense value, particularly for service providers with limited staff or those lacking access to the technical expertise required to undertake a full network transformation project. To find out more, read the recent press release with Highland and visit the Professional Services web page.
Broadband and Internet service providers connect the Internet to the subscriber–a pipe-first orientation with services attached as something else to sell. It’s a name, network architecture, business orientation, and cultural identity that goes back to the earliest days of what it meant to provide an Internet access service.
The 1990s were the golden age of dial-up modems. My first was a 34kbps model and I still recall my excitement when I upgraded to a 56k version. Woo-hoo! With the new century came the glory decade of DSL, a dedicated higher speed physical connection that transported a likewise dedicated logical connection of 53-byte ATM cells. And now we’ve finished the enlightened decade (pun intended). We’ve embraced FTTH and moved from ATM to Ethernet. Yet, for all the technological advancement, we’re still obsessed with the connection. Ethernet is wonderful, but it’s a dumb logical pipe used to perpetuate a 30-year-old connection-oriented architecture and mindset.
Subscribers don’t care about your connection
When is the last time you overheard a conversation like this: “Hey, I heard there is a new season of Barry on broadband?” Or, “Can you guys stop using the ADSL2+ for a few minutes, I’m trying to finish up a video call on VLAN 100.” Never. The language of subscribers is HBO, Fortnite, Skype, Spotify–the language of applications.
Subscribers care about applications, so applications are the language of the consumer, not bits, bytes, VLANs, DSL, GPON, or even broadband. Those are words we use to describe the network and its operation; the words that trap us in 1990 concepts of what it means to be a service provider.
A new decade and another inflection point
It’s time to start building access networks optimized to deliver applications, not ‘broadband.’ No service provider is suddenly going to reinvent themselves as Netflix, Google, or Disney, but it’s possible to change the cultural and the network orientation from connections to applications.
In 10 years, we will look back and identify the service provider winners as those that shifted to an application-optimized experience delivery business and network orientation. It will be one that delivers applications people want to pay for and not the connection they feel obligated to pay for.
Join the conversation. You can read more about Calix Intelligent Access Edge solution or reach out to a Calix representative. We’re ready to share ideas on how to lead with applications.
In Western Kentucky, Ballard Rural Telephone Cooperative (BTC) has built a 100 percent fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network to serve residents and businesses across two counties. In order to make the most of its fiber investment and to ensure its subscribers receive the best possible broadband experience, BTC selected the Calix Remote Monitoring Service.
The Remote Monitoring Service allows BTC to get a better insight into what issues are occurring in the network and within inside the subscriber home, so the CSP can focus in on trouble spots. In addition, this Calix Managed Service has allowed BTC to take a more proactive approach by addressing problems before subscribers notice, which has garnered rave reviews.
BTC has also experienced operational savings with reduced truck rolls by fixing problems on the first visit, as well as by not changing out systems unnecessarily. For example, BTC learned through the Remote Monitoring Service that instead of having faulty batteries, some ONT batteries had just been wired incorrectly. With this insight, BTC easily fixed the wiring without incurring expenses for new batteries.
Learn more about the additional benefits BTC has gained with the Calix Remote Monitoring Service, including how it compliments Calix Support Cloud to give CSRs a troubleshooting advantage, in this Calix Success Story video.
Have you ever worked on a project and felt like it’s under control, then suddenly something comes up and completely derails it? Ever called support over a problem which you have worked on for hours, if not days, and the tech solves it for you in a couple minutes with one simple step?
It’s simple, we don’t know what we don’t know… until we need to know.
Luckily, Calix Academy offers courses to help your team acquire the skills they need to excel.
We have a variety of training by role for our Revenue EDGE solution:
Who should take Calix training:
What Calix customers are saying about our courses:
Contact us today to learn more about the Calix Academy options available for your team.
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Role: Associate System Support Specialist
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Years of Service: 3 years
Calix Expertise: Salesforce (Dashboards and Reporting)
School: University of Minnesota
Favorite Movie: Chicago
Favorite Vacation Spot: Lagos, Portugal
Fun Fact: I can play 9 instruments - oboe, trumpet, clarinet, saxophone, french horn, flute, violin, euphonium and bassoon
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten? Fried Cuttlefish
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