TelcoTV: Telcos share IPTV lessons learned
At Conklin Intracom’s Perspectives on IPTV Workshop, held yesterday in advance of TelcoTV, several telecom service providers in various stages of IPTV deployments shared what they learned from being in the trenches. Here’s what they had to say:
“Don’t always believe vendor time lines. The soft launch is essential. Clean up your copper plant. Pre-qualify customers, and create a bandwidth rich environment that will enable you to give customers their TV.” – Lynn Pike, president and CEO of BTC Broadband
“Allow adequate time. Have your projections done. There’s a lot of homework to be done before you make the first call. You need to be able to address system security. And the most important one, be persistent. Hang on and work it out. In most cases, it worked out for us.” – Gary McGillivray, vice president of sales and marketing for Bruce Telecom (in reference to working with programmers)
“Any of the moving parts can fail.” – Bill Trelease, vice president and CTO of Delhi Telephone Company (with a picture of a snow-covered receiver to illustrate his point)
“It takes four hours per install, most of which is spent at the home, so be prepared to get your customers used to seeing technicians there…Everyone’s homes are different, and it takes a lot of time. We tell our technicians to do whatever it takes to make the customer happy. Be proactive.” – Dallas Cox from Manti Tele Communications Company
“If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.” – George W. Bush (Words of wisdom that assured BTC Broadband’s Pike that if TV didn’t work out, at least he still had the telephone company.)
