The Beacon
October 2018

In this particular case, I’m not talking about your average, run-of-the-mill toolbox. This is a Diagnostics Toolbox that has a very unique set of tools powered by our AXOS platform. These tools will empower you to proactively address service troubleshooting issues faster than ever before, which leads to fewer service calls, lower costs, and greater subscriber satisfaction.
To this day, a significant portion of service problems are still resolved by initiating truck rolls and sending a technician on-site to support service calls. From a service provider perspective, this is costly, not only in terms of labor and support expenses, but also in terms of down time that their subscribers experience as they try to resolve the issue. While traditional support approaches will always have a role, advanced remote diagnostic capabilities are needed to add new levels of serviceability and flexibility to address the increased volume of services demand in our future. Capitalizing on them will require a shift in mindset by both service providers and their subscribers. Advanced remote capabilities and proactive service troubleshooting represent the future and a major focal area for Calix.
So, how can Calix help you succeed in today’s market? You can now shorten resolution times for addressing network or service-related problems with the AXOS Diagnostics Toolbox. Imagine a virtual technician on-site without having to initiate a truck roll; gaining the visibility on an issue in an instant or troubleshooting network connectivity issues in real-time while the subscriber is on the phone with you.
The AXOS Diagnostics Toolbox is comprised of:
You can learn more about the AXOS Diagnostics Toolbox and each of the disruptive tools by visiting our web page here. With AXOS, service providers can utilize these tools and capabilities on any of the AXOS E-Series access systems. Calix is committed to ensuring you can deliver a best-in-class subscriber experience and the AXOS Diagnostics Toolbox is just one of the many capabilities we’re providing to make that possible.
The Calix Event app allows you to customize your schedule, connect with other attendees, and more!
Make sure to download and create an account in the Calix event app to view the agenda, bookmark your favorite sessions, and interact with Calix experts and other attendees.
Join Calix on the third Wednesday of every month for our AXOS Tech Talk Series. Each Tech Talk webinar will go into topics to help you further understand AXOS and how it can benefit your business. The sessions will enable you to ask questions about capabilities within AXOS of Calix experts as well as service providers deploying AXOS. You can register below for notification of future webinars topics as they are announced.
At Clearfield, we make every decision by LISTENing to our clients, RECOGNIZEing our skills and talents, UNDERSTANDing our client’s needs, COLLABORATEing with each other to DELIVER the best solution—and then CELEBRATEing our success. And no matter what we undertake, we utilize outcome-based thinking to work toward the desired goal. We are the fiber to anywhere company. And when we solve for the variable of X in FTTx – we’re not solving for one specific thing, but rather, whatever issue our customer brings to us. Here are three customer case studies that illustrate these Clearfield company values.
MDUs
Our award-winning products are being used to address fiber fed broadband in communities across Canada like in Olds, Alberta. O-NET was the first to develop and deploy a community-owned fiber network and triple-play offering to compete with incumbents in this region. O-NET delivers high-speed internet, television and phone services, and sought an MDU fiber-to-the-suite solution for a new 22-unit condo. Read more about how Clearfield stepped in with the YOURxTM Flex Box.
FTTH
Lincoln Telephone provides voice, video and internet services to the Lincoln, MT, area. The company has a multi-year project to connect rural residents by increasing access to broadband. With the Clearfield solution, Lincoln Telephone typically now connects 10 houses a day with just 2 technicians. Read more about this big improvement. The Clearfield solution for Lincoln Telephone’s fiber to the home (FTTH) challenge consists of running a FieldShield® FLATdrop fiber drop cable assembly from the street to a house. FieldShield FLATdrop conveniently connects to the network through traditional splicing in the hand hole. The demarcation test access point on the house is the Clearfield YOURx-TAP equipped with the FieldShield Deploy Reel with 900 μm FieldShield StrongFiber, which is easily pulled through conduit into the home.
Speeding Up Deployment
Cerento is an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) Company headquartered in Riverton, WY. Read how Cerento delivers secure, reliable, individualized information technology infrastructure and networking solutions to its business clients. “The biggest value of the Clearfield YOURx-Terminal solution is the substantial increase in speed to market through the lower product lead times offered by Clearfield, and by the reduction in deployment time,” says Kim Kobbe, Project Manager, Cerento.
You can learn more about Clearfield by visiting our website at www.SeeClearfield.com, which includes links to case studies, press releases and videos.
Find out how you can deliver a smart home experience like never before. Learn about the ecosystems that are available to help you move beyond providing mere connectivity. Observe best practices and hear the lessons learned from other service providers. Identify what services will meet your subscribers’ needs in the future, and how you can elevate your services, your brand, and your subscriber relationships.
The future of the smart home will be redefined at Calix ConneXions 2018.
Recently, I hosted a live webinar with Midwest Energy & Communications (Midwest), a co-op delivering electric, propane, and fiber Internet to more than 40,000 consumers in 15 counties across southern Michigan, northern Indiana, and Ohio.
My conversation with Candy Riem, Vice President, Marketing and Member Solutions at Midwest, was centered on how they were using data analytics to reshape their marketing function.
While Midwest recognized the power of data fairly early, they also realized that collecting and correlating information across different systems manually would not scale. And engaging a data scientist who could not only automate the process, but also interpret and apply the analytics to subscriber marketing was neither easy, nor budget-friendly.
Investing in subscriber insights
According to Candy, when Midwest heard about Calix Marketing Cloud, a self-service tool designed for service provider marketers, they were thrilled that their solutions provider had built a platform that would put subscriber insights at their fingertips. They were going to get easy and immediate access to information they needed to engage with their subscribers in more meaningful ways.
For example, one of their first campaigns, aimed at improving subscriber experience, targeted heavy streamers with a competitively priced Managed Wi-Fi offer. It not only increased the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), but also spiked a 250 percent increase in their total Managed Wi-Fi subscribers.
The clear success of that campaign led to more micro-segmented campaigns, and since taking this new data-driven approach to marketing, Midwest has overall increased its annual revenue by 23 percent and grown its subscriber base by 18 percent.
Extending existing subscriber insights to acquiring new subscribers
Midwest is now looking to expand outside their territory where prospects may have never heard of them, and more importantly, where Midwest is completely unfamiliar with the prospects.
With the recently added acquisition insights, they are able to tap into what they already know about their existing subscriber base to decide which prospects to target and how. Instead of blindly targeting all prospects, one of the first things they have done is identify prospects within close proximity to their current high-value subscribers. By using this intelligence to segment their long prospect list and prioritize their target subscribers, Midwest is again set up to maximize its revenue potential.
We will continue to follow their success in the coming months. But for a detailed look at what they have accomplished so far, be sure to check out the webinar recording.
The smart home shouldn’t be a confusing mix of connected sensors and devices for consumers. It should be a manageable and robust ecosystem that works together seamlessly.
Consumer-brand companies have created disruptive products and services that are delivered on top of the broadband network infrastructure. Their approach is threatening to sever the strong relationships that service providers have established with their subscribers, relegating them to providers of connectivity — and little else.
It is not too late for service providers to protect — and strengthen— their hard-won position in the home network. How? By leveraging the ecosystems that are available to help move beyond providing mere connectivity. By launching new services that will meet subscribers’ future needs. And, by elevating their services, their brand, and their subscriber relationships.
It is time for service providers to start offering new smart home services that are keeping pace with the market. Learn more by taking a sneak peak at the big announcement that is coming from Calix.
The future of the smart home with be redefined at Calix ConneXions 2018.
Calix ConneXions is where pioneers and thought leaders come to debate, collaborate, and learn about the latest innovations that winning service providers are using to evolve their business models. You will have the chance to engage with thousands of your peers, industry leaders, and Calix executives on topics that will help you accelerate your transformation.
Learn more about the dedicated Smart Home sessions at ConneXions.
Keep pace with the market. The time is now.
Can’t wait until ConneXions? We’ve got your covered with a series of blog and papers designed to help you get familiar with various trends and technologies related to the Smart Home, including:
It’s time for service providers to retake their position as the essential enabler of the smart home. Turn the potential confusion, disorder, and chaos associated with the smart home into an open, managed, and secure ecosystem that can be harnessed for your subscribers. But, there is no time to waste.
What do you think Calix Technical Assistance Center (TAC) experts want you to know when it comes to network management best practices? It’s all about delivering services! In an upcoming Tech Talk webinar on October 25 and a Calix ConneXions breakout session, they’re going to share their top tips on efficient service delivery.
When TAC experts talk with customers they emphasize the importance of creating a scalable and reliable foundation for delivering services with a step-by-step approach that involves identifying traffic types, priorizing them correctly, and then applying those rules in the appropriate locations.
The Support team’s goal is to make it simple for Calix customers and provide them a world-class support experience. They do this with a world-class team that collectively has over 400 years of information and communications technology experience along with 35 industry certifications and accreditations to date. The team has handled thousands of cases year-to-date and our customers are its best advocates with a customer satisfacton level of 94 percent and net promoter score of 62!
In the upcoming sessions, experts from the TAC will discuss topics such as:
You can find out more about the AXOS Diagnostic Toolbox in a related Beacon article. You can also register for the webinar by following this link and get more information on Calix ConneXions and the breakout sessions here.
There is a lot happening in Washington D.C. this year… and some of it will lead you to new sources of funding to build high speed broadband networks that will delight your subscribers. Surprisingly, there are quite a few sources of funding available, if you know where to look.
Calix can help you with that. Our Regulatory Updates perspectives page is dedicated to keeping you up to date with regulatory, industry, and funding news coming out of Washington.
Want to find out why the latest FCC, Department of Justice (DOJ), and FTC announcements matter to broadband service providers? We have the inside story brought to you by Tom Cohen, partner at Kelly Drye & Warren, working in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office. Tom is a good friend to Calix and our service provider partners, keeping us all up to date on what’s happening in Washington.
Are you a recipient of Connect America Fund (CAF) high-cost universal service support?
I hope so, but even if you’re not, you should know that there are new CAF-required speed and latency performance requirements. In July 2018, the FCC released DA 18-710 describing its new rules for CAF Broadband Performance Testing. We recently held a webinar that provides a snapshot to what tests are needed, when the tests are needed, how many test locations are required, and a solution set that will meet the FCC requirement. You can find a link to the webinar replay on the Regulatory Updates page.
Coming to ConneXions 2018?
Great! This year’s marquee panel – Ask the Experts: Regulatory and Industry Updates – will continue the, “Where’s the money,” conversation in front of a live audience and we want to hear from you. After another year of market-impacting regulatory and funding changes, we’ve assembled a panel of experts to discuss the latest news from the FCC, DOJ, and FTC. Broadband providers of all kinds - wireline, cable, municipal, electric cooperative, and wireless - can benefit from this informative session. Joining Tom Cohen on the panel are:
If you can’t make it to ConneXions this year, don’t worry. We’ll shine the Perspectives Spotlight on the conversation highlights in upcoming Regulatory Updates perspectives.
There’s more to read and share on the Calix Perspectives pages. Spend some time and let us know your perspective. Who knows. Maybe you’ll be the next featured Perspectives author.
Each month, we highlight the top 5 recent Calix Blog posts to make sure you don't miss out on the latest news and insights from Calix experts and industry guests.
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Configure an ONT with RG Service
Did you know you can enable the GigaCenter 2.4Ghz ‘Wi-Fi Self-Heal’ feature network wide from Calix Support Cloud?
A September 2017 IDC study showed that “without an ongoing investment in updating skills, organizations lose approximately 60 percent of their capabilities in just three years.” So, whether you are using Calix platforms to build next generation networks, deploy new services, or optimize the subscriber experience, the demand for new skills and knowledge is constant.
An annual Calix Education Subscription with unlimited access to online eLearning and virtual instructor-led training, complete with hands-on labs, helps you meet this demand. Whether you are onboarding new employees or training existing employees on new technologies, an annual subscription allows you to consume learning quickly without transacting a course at a time. All-you-can-consume access means your team can increase knowledge deeply to achieve mastery or broaden knowledge across multiple technologies. Take advantage of this offer to deliver the critical skills your team needs today!
CityFibre leverages AXOS and the E9-2 to deliver UK's first software defined access (SDA) network.
One of the most innovative network operators in Europe, CityFibre has been partnering with leading Internet service providers like Vodafone to bring gigabit services to UK communities for several years. With a goal of reaching to up to one million UK homes and businesses with gigabit fiber service by 2021, and targeting five million by 2025, CityFibre is rapidly transforming the UK broadband market.
Last month, Calix and CityFibre announced a partnership to bring Software Defined Access (SDA) to its network with the introduction of the AXOS platform, allowing CityFibre to emerge as the UK’s only advanced-intelligence, wholesale infrastructure company. As it expands the reach of its fiber network, CityFibre is also looking to support the deployment of NG-PON2, 5G, and Artificial Intelligence, as well as autonomous and IoT technologies.
Learn more about this groundbreaking Calix customer and hear the CityFibre story at Calix ConneXions.
Effective immediately, please use the following shipping address for all Calix RMA product returns to our US warehouse:
Attn: Calix RMA #________
C/O Choice Logistics - US Pack
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Please update your internal systems with the new address.
AXOS R3.3 10G-EPON Applications Guide