3 Ways Cumberland Connect Makes Network Reliability a Key Differentiator

At Cumberland Connect, we’re proud of—and work hard to maintain—our consistently high Net Promoter Scores® (NPS®), which regularly surpass 90 (far beyond what most in the industry ever achieve!). We’re regularly asked to reveal the secrets of our success and how we can compete with much larger competitors.

As an electric cooperative, we have served communities across rural Tennessee for almost a century. We recognize that subscriber expectations for our broadband service are the same as they are for our electricity service—they expect it to be always available.

However, despite deploying a state-of-the-art network, Cumberland Connect is not immune to outages. In the major storms that hit our community in March 2023 – the worst for the area in nearly 30 years – more than 110 mainline locations suffered service-impacting damage. But we were able to identify issues quickly, respond efficiently, and proactively communicate with subscribers. Here are three reasons why:

Three Ways to Make Network Reliability a Key Differentiator

• We build resiliency into the heart of our network. Running our network on the Calix Broadband Platform gives us all the capabilities necessary to build a resilient and reliable network. Our simplified network foundation, based on Intelligent Access, is designed to eradicate any single point of failure. For example, our network rings always have more than one route to the core network, utilizing different data centers in geographically distinct locations.
  
  
• We have the tools in place to act now. When an outage occurs, time is of the essence. Actionable insights from Calix Operations Cloud enable us to quickly identify the root cause of the outage, dispatch the right team, and reduce our mean time to repair (MTTR).
  
  
• We keep our subscribers informed. We believe subscribers need to know three things: Are you aware I have a problem? Do you know how long it will take to fix it? What are you doing about it? If they contact us with these questions, it’s already too late. That’s why we utilize the latest Calix Cloud tools to provide outage information to customer support representatives (CSRs) who work with subscribers throughout the process. We use the data from Calix Cloud to facilitate our outage response.

Subscribers are only as loyal as the last outage, meaning we expect them to look elsewhere if we don’t manage the outage well. With tools like Operations Cloud, we can proactively manage the narrative and reduce customer support calls. This fast resolution and proactive communication help Cumberland continue to build trust and loyalty with our subscribers—and continue to grow our business.