Industry Leader in Telecom Data Analytics and Revenue Assurance

Over the last two years, the FCC has been in the process of determining whether it still makes sense to have telecom service providers collect and report on call answer and completion rates on long distance domestic calls that were handed-off to Interexchange Carriers who provided routing, transport and completion functions for the calls made to customers of a NECA-provided list of small ILECs as well as to the much larger non-rural local exchange service providers in aggregate.

Remember the days when investigating a customer query meant your employees needed to carry out a checklist of manual steps? We do. And in spite of the digitization of the telecom environment, many providers still retain some of these steps as part of their process. It’s not unheard of for an employee to spend between 15 and 20 minutes investigating a single issue, such as whether a client's usage records are accurate or not. When doing so requires accessing one system, gathering the information, and then using it to access another system (or more), it can be a lengthy process. The solution is to automate as many tasks in your workflow as possible, and stitch all of the information together with a workflow manager.

The telecoms industry in the U.S. is expected to continue growing in 2017, according to Deloitte’s latest outlook report. Furthermore, we anticipate providers will work hard to remain competitive in the battle to attract customers and create new revenue streams. With data generated from every customer touch point ranging from calls to text messages, video downloads, mobile commerce and service calls, telcos have access to significant amounts of information. Implementing big data analytics (BDA) is critical to enable them to make use of this intelligence to get ahead.

Wikipedia defines Robocalls as follows:

A “robocall” is a phone call that uses a computerized autodialer to deliver a pre-recorded message, as if from a robot.

Robocalls are often associated with political and telemarketing phone campaigns, but can also be used for public-service or emergency announcements. Some robocalls use personalized audio messages to simulate an actual personal phone call.

This is the good news.

Unfortunately, robocalls are all too often blatantly geared to relentless selling of a product or service that is not wanted by the person receiving such calls.

At ATS, we work at the intersection of Telecom and IT and, in order to focus our efforts on what we’re really good at, we outsource our IT wherever possible.  So, naturally, we’ve turned to a few of the big cloud providers for help here.  If you’re using our services, you’re also using AWS’ and Google Cloud Platform -- they’re both too big and impressive for any mid-size software company like us to ignore, and we firmly believe our customers are better served when we focus on what we're really good at, which is developing software.   But, when you dig a little deeper, you realize that some of the cloud providers' tech offerings tell a tale of how they got big and impressive in the first place.  What can the Telco industry learn from the rise of these Retail and Search giants, given what they've exposed as cloud services?  

When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) first mandated Local Number Portability (LNP) on June 27, 1996 in the 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas by October 1, 1997 and elsewhere by December 31, 1998 as a spur to open up competition for customers among local service providers, I doubt that it had any idea how pervasive their requirement would become.

At the time of the initial FCC ruling on LNP, the concept of allowing a user to transfer his/her fixed-line telephone service from one service provider to another without changing the service’s ten digit telephone number was viewed as the end-of-the-world by Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) and Independent Local Exchange Carrier (ILEC) personnel.

The most common issue we run into when beginning work with a new customer, whether they are a telecom or cable company, is gaining access to data records.  Call detail records (CDRs) and IP detail record (IPDRs) contain an enormous wealth of information that can be used to drive KPIs and analytics for almost any part of the business including operations, marketing, regulatory, revenue assurance, etc.  Unfortunately, we find that that majority of the time these data records are owned by a specific department and gaining access to them can take weeks, months, or in some cases even longer.  As a solutions provider, this can obviously be frustrating.  But when an internal group has the same issues accessing its own data, it can be downright debilitating and ultimately impact customer experience and revenue.

The title is most likely one that would cause certain readers who happen to be service providers to experience a little negative reaction upon reading it.  However, the title is not meant to be anything more than a cause for some reflection in that there is considerable amount of information about customers that is not always utilized to expose traits and trends that could be harnessed to generate increased revenue as well as to promote customer loyalty in an environment of ever-growing competition.

The title is somewhat misleading in that I am sure there are many user tasks that go beyond the scope of Big Data and Cloud Computing to satisfy.  However, being a dinosaur-type with over fifty years of professional experience in the telecom environment, I am continually amazed by the capabilities and associated minimal costs with implementation of systems and processes that were only dreamed about when I started in the telecom business.

It is apparent that in the new world regime of Bill & Keep of interstate terminating switched access charges there are still many reasons why the Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) providing interstate terminating switched access must record, summarize and report calls and associated conversation Minutes of Use (MOU) of this type.