Keeping customers close: Partnership leads to new real-time service offering

Clear Communications has become a strategic partner with PointCast in order to offer telecommunications providers the ability to give end users up-to-date network and industry information.

PointCast, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is an Internet news and information service. In cooperation with Coopers & Lybrand, three telecommunications-focused channels are offered over the PointCast Network using push technology. PointCast subscribers automatically get updates on the telecommunications industry from sources such as the FCC, Communications Now, tele.com magazine and Telecommunications Reports. For example, if two major telecom companies announced a merger, that information would immediately be broadcast over a subscriber's PC desktop screen.

"We have combined the aesthetics of the television with the interactivity of the computer," said Max Mancini, senior manager for business consulting for PointCast. The company has 1 million active users, he said. "The benefit is we're raising the customers corporate IQ by keeping them informed of their competitors' actions."

The technology PointCast deploys also can be used in network management programs, which is where Clear has joined with PointCast. With ClearCast, the Lincolnshire, Ill.-based company offers carriers the chance to help their customers monitor bandwidth performance.

Carriers that offer bandwidth, such as any of the Bell regional holding companies or interexchange carriers, can offer customers a view of their service via ClearCast.

For example, with ClearCast, if part of the Bell Atlantic network experienced an outage that affects some automated teller machines owned by CitiBank, that information would be immediately broadcast to the head of operations at CitiBank.

"Right away the customer knows there's a problem and that the carrier is on top of it, without a time-consuming phone call," said Dave Miller, a senior vice president at Clear.

"Then the customer is less likely to call for a trouble ticket," he said.

But if customers do wish to put in a trouble ticket they can. Customers can use ClearGateway and ClearJacks service management solutions to connect with ClearCast and put in trouble tickets, monitor the action on them and do billing and service orders.

"Simply put, ClearCast brings the carriers closer to their customers," said Bob Copithorne, president and CEO of Clear. "And carriers who do that will definitely have an advantage."

ClearCast is in line with Clear's electronic telephony, or e-telecom, concept, which seeks to use Internet technology to improve services and reduce costs for carriers and their customers. Currently, users of Clear's software can access bandwidth information by pulling it from the company's Web site.

"But now the push technology of PointCast is a better delivery system that can be tailored to the needs of each carrier customer and has added features such as telecom news," said Miller.

Clear does not yet have any carrier customers for ClearCast, but a large IXC and a large RHC are beta testing the product, Copithorne said.

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