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October 2002 Issue

Case Study

New Service Provider Altrio Offers Lesson in Meeting Customer Needs

Los Angeles: A market with millions of homes that meet Altrio's ideal customer profile.

How will broadband competitors differentiate themselves in the future? Los Angeles-based Altrio Communications offers a glimpse.

By Justin J. Junkus,CT Telephony Editor

Picture a broadband world where every service provider offers high-speed access at the same price, end-to-end quality of service (QoS) guarantees, and service level agreements (SLAs) to provide bandwidth that fits user needs and budgets.

This may be the future of broadband, as technology and competition drive the offerings of service providers toward commodities. Advanced technology, although still important, will become the price of market entry. In the end, owning the customer's loyalty will depend upon traditional marketing attributes such as flexibility, reliability, customer service and bundled service packages.

The design

Recent cable telecommunications start-up Altrio Communications may be a precursor of how to succeed in this new world. Located in metropolitan Los Angeles, Altrio competes for video, voice, and data business against established giants Charter and Adelphia, as well as Verizon, and the Pac Bell unit of SBC. State-of-the-art technology, reliability, and flexibility are at the cornerstone of Altrio's business.

Altrio's base video technology is a combination of digital and analog. Since the founders literally built the company from the ground up a little over a year ago, they must have been tempted to create an all-digital headend.

In the video world, however, Altrio elected to use consumer-friendly analog for its base video offering and digital for narrowcast, premium, PPV, and interactive services. Digital-output satellite receivers and processing equipment occupy one side of the video equipment aisle in Altrio's headend, but the other side is filled with analog receivers and modulators for the remainder of its video feed. VOD and local programming are digital. One group of nCUBE video servers holds up to 606 hours of video content. Another group provides ad insertion capability.

New services are totally digital. For now, telephony is the constant bit-rate version, using the Arris Cornerstone voice product to provide primary line, carrier-grade service. High-speed data equipment includes multiple Arris Cornerstone 1500 CMTSs that interconnect to a Nortel Shasta Broadband Access Switch for Internet access.

Flexibility and reliability

Bucking the trend to decentralize, Altrio loops all its hubs and nodes back to the headend, where cross-connects can be re-configured to re-size nodes as traffic and service subscriptions change. Because everything is brought back to the headend, hubs can be physically smaller, as well as more flexible.

Everything, from building structure through equipment, has been designed for continuous service. To provide extra insurance against possible earthquake damage, equipment is mounted on a two-story system of racks which are structurally independent of the building. System power is protected by a one megawatt uninterruptible power supply (UPS), including generator and battery backup.

Except for the receivers, the system has full redundancy for anything that involves more than two nodes. Even the power supply for the satellite antenna down-converters is redundant, as is every headend RF amplifier, optical amplifier, and transmitter.

To avoid the effects of optical transmitter distortions and non-linear fiber characteristics, analog and digital video are distributed separately from the headend to the hubs, over separate fibers corresponding to the spectrum allocation of the services. Dual rings service the hubs. On the network side, the OC-48 link to Altrio's tele

Altrio's distribution plant is designed to scale efficiently from approximately 500 home nodes down to the 50-home level. When required, it will be able to extend fiber to the curb or home. Of equal importance, the design allows scaling of individual nodes to meet market opportunities without front-loading the cost.

The headend building also houses a network operations center (NOC), which will be staffed 24 x 7. NOC personnel will be cross-trained to monitor multiple systems. Continuously monitored equipment includes virtually every piece of active headend and hub equipment, nodes, power supplies, the telephony network interface devices (NIDS), modems and digital set-top boxes installed at customer homes. Monitoring even includes individual circuit breakers in the redundant 48-volt power system.

On the signal side, the NOC can see the usage levels of the digital pipes and the upstream RF spectra as well. Acterna spectrum analyzers monitor four upstream nodes each, but can be manually switched to individual nodes as required.

Training plans

Training is an important part of Altrio's reliability implementation. Two fully equipped training rooms are part of the headend building, and staff competence is definitely an asset. In addition to drawing on CTO Dave Large's expertise (see related story, "Interview with a Leader," page 26), Altrio has Bill Kostka as its in-house data guru. Prior to joining Altrio, Bill was managing the cable modem DOCSIS certification program for CableLabs. In total, the staff includes four degreed engineers, who all personally conduct part of the technical training

Despite all the technology, Altrio firmly believes that their customers' experience is the most important component of their offering. Because of the complexity and range of services offered, their customer service representatives received more than two months of intensive training before the first customer was added to the system. For technical questions they cannot handle, technical backup resources are also available. In addition, language translation services have been included to deal with Los Angeles' diverse population.

Customization

For Altrio, digital video, high-speed data and telephony are not incremental services, but part of the core offering. In its markets, Altrio is the only supplier that can deliver every wire-based communications service. The key to its marketing approach is choice and flexibility. While they offer various service bundles, Altrio can customize these packages to meet customer needs. In data, for instance, open ISP access is a given, as is the choice of speed, number of computers, and optional home networking. While most customers take cross-service bundles, Altrio has customers who take only a single service.

The bottom line is that Altrio offers proof that competition has fostered choices, and that market share must be earned. Technology alone adds no value to the consumer, but reliability, quality, product mix, and customer service certainly do.

Justin J. Junkus is president of KnowledgeLink and director, applications consulting, Arris. Email him at .

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