Wanted: Telecom technicians with extensive IP background

“We are very much a zero-touch fulfillment organization,” Dotson said. “From the time one of our agents takes a request to have our triple-play service — voice, video, data, IP across the board — that order is electronically captured in our order and billing systems and from there, there is program-to-program activity, without human intervention for the most part, to identify what services have been ordered, what facilities exist from CO all the way in between to a customer's house, what the topology of network connections looks like, what gear is on the side of the home, what is inside the home, right up to activating devices to light up service. If there is no gear installed, there is a scheduled truck roll, and a technician will install what is needed, then that technician makes a mobile request from his laptop to activate.”

That activation is specific to that customer, with their specific channel lineup, Dotson said. “Everything from the time the customer services is fulfilled to the things you talk about — verifying service is up and running, managing trouble after the fact — all of these back office electronic systems, which have been in the IT camp, have to be acutely aware of what is out at the premises.”

Through its integrated systems, SureWest is able to do extensive monitoring for QOS and also collect aggregated statistics about network performance to understand the consumer response and reaction to various products and services, Dotson said. SureWest is able to reduce error rates and save money on installation and repair crew costs as well.

“We do this in our traditional back office, even with our copper network and traditional telephony and DSL data; we have automated and done zero-touch provisioning for a significant number of orders” for residential services, Dotson said. “What that has forced our IT folks to do is become very network-aware. Most traditional telephone shops haven't asked their IT shops to do that. “

To handle this integration of function, SureWest has been training both sides of the house — legacy telephony and IT — in the other's skills, Dotson said.

“We have been very fortunate to be able to take folks with skills on both sides and be able to retrain them,” he said. “Things like Java programming are common in both camps. On the other hand, what we have seen is the ability to leverage a single pool of talent because we have effectively redundant skills sets, so we can get more done with less.”

In general, Dotson said, there is “a shorter learning curve to take an IT person that is really good at IP technologies and get them up to speed with things like gateways, DSLAMs and 5Es than it is to go the other way. IP software technology takes years to master, whereas to these guys that come from a traditional IT software background, these telephony devices are just like one more device.”

Telus faced something of a crisis when it first started deploying IPTV, said Dan Turner, program manager. When the service took off, Telus faced a lack of qualified technicians, pressures to reduce installation times and insufficient training in new systems — all of which combined to create a much higher number of problems that was driving up costs and threatening to cause churn. Because Telus offered IPTV as just another service under its brand, customers were expecting the same kind of reliability that they had come to expect from phone service, Tucker said.

“There was a not-insignificant number of customers who were repeatedly calling in with issues, and we were repeatedly sending technicians out, but we weren't fixing their problems,” Turner said. “Having customers we were unable to fix really threatened to undermine our brand.”

Turner created a task force called Advanced Chronic Troubleshooting (ACT). It pulled expertise from every part of the service chain, starting at the chief technology officer's desk and including IP support (core network), video support, tech support (call center), fulfillment team (provisioning), IT system support, and network operations and field support (technicians). For six months, ACT monitored all chronic problems

“They weren't fixing things,” Turner said. “They would watch and provide advice and analysis. They followed up with customers — the customers hated that, by the way — and they tracked completion and record-keeping of what was being done.”

One of the things ACT learned was that technicians weren't being adequately trained, so they were applying the wrong fixes to a problem, such as continually swapping out CPE, driving up capital costs and refurbished CPE inventories, or swapping DSLAM ports, labeling perfectly good ports as bad and decreasing port inventory. All of that plus multiple truck rolls were cutting into Telus profits.

As a result of the ACT findings, Telus revamped its training program for technicians and created companywide technology standards, Turner said.

PACE OF CHANGE

Many of those interviewed for this report pointed to previous transitions in telecom technology that the industry handled. What makes this current situation different, however, is the pace of change.

The rapid evolution of technology may even be outpacing workers' abilities to plan their long-term educations. For example, UT's MacFarlane said, only five years ago, the advancement of 100 Gb/s systems seemed laughably distant. But Verizon has been testing them since 2007, and Ciena recently deployed one for a single customer. “That suggests, at the hardware level, a board-design skill set that's much more microwave-oriented than we ever thought would play out this early — really advanced analog mixed-signal designs,” he said.

Telecom companies have little choice but to try to keep up with this pace, Verizon's Toohey said.

“Talent management is always one of the keys to making sure we have the right talent for the future as the industry changes because all industry changes, and we have to develop and train that talent,” he said. “What's different is the necessity to make the change faster is there. You can't wait. You have to be to be in front of the competition, and I think we are. It is different. As we all know, technology changes so rapidly, keeping pace with that is critical.”

ON THE WEB

Keep up with Telephony's continuing coverage of this subject by visiting our interactive feature main page, “The Future of Jobs in Telecom,” on our Web site. Visit telephonyonline.com/topics/telecom-jobs.