Creating a Reliable Union

Ensuring network reliability is no easy task. On a daily basis you must protect against environmental issues, equipment failure and computer glitches. If that's not enough, today's business world is creating more network challenges -- mergers and acquisitions.

Smoothly integrating two wireless businesses is not just about getting FCC approval and aligning business issues. Mergers present a host of new concerns that directly and indirectly affect the network.

Carriers must integrate resources, address staffing changes and establish viable network-reliability programs for the new environment. Industry analysts and carriers involved in recent mergers said aligning individual network-reliability programs into a single cohesive plan, while complex, should not prove impossible provided carriers work to avoid potential problems. In fact, if you take the right steps, a merger can improve reliability because new ideas come into play and a greater number of assets are brought against problems.

Integration Challenges

A major challenge of a merged program is to establish a network-reliability plan that outlines who assumes responsibility for various monitoring, testing and maintenance, and how to best avoid a network failure. These functions include defining how to handle trouble tickets, assigning accountability for specific circuits and shared portions of the infrastructure, and ensuring a timely response to any problems that develop. Leaving things to chance only will create problems and lead to confusion about who has responsibility for specific network areas.

"There needs to be a single point of control in the network, someone who has an end-to-end view of the network and what is going on," said Martin Dunsby, a Deloitte & Touche consultant. "If two organizations are troubleshooting, it can cause more problems than it solves."

Alltel and 360* Communications wasted no time gathering representatives from both network-systems and network-planning departments. The groupreviewed existing network-reliability programs to determine how to consolidate a nd improve them.

"We are looking at different practices and procedures that the two companies have and are basically trying to converge them," said Jim Kimzey, Alltel vice president of networks. "We can try to use either one or the other, or maybe just develop a whole new process or practice altogether that would make it better on a combined basis."

The companies decided to maintain their respective network-operation centers to ensure system reliability but overhaul existing disaster-recovery plans to include the additional resources available. The restructuring is an ongoing process. Officials continue to review engineering and maintenance practices, authentication, and compliance with E-911 and government regulations.

"There are a lot of transitional issues to work out between the two companies -- everything from how to deal with a natural disaster to the basic differences in ways that we (operate)," Kimzey said. "It is just going to take time to work all of that out."

Bob Stozik, Motorola director of product planning & management for cellular switching systems, said consolidating reliability programs and developing a single, multifunctional 24x7 monitoring system is no easy task. If you decide a business merger is the best option, you also must consider the network integration. Different systems provide data in various ways, and there is no universal standard for equipment or network protocols. Integrating these different systems will take work. Carriers employ switches, platforms, routers and other equipment from different vendors that occasionally conflict with one another and affect network reliability. Adding new equipment to the system only increases this threat and can affect basic interoperability as well as roaming and enhanced services.

With mergers, carriers are dealing with multiple switch types in a single network," said Greg Selig, Airadigm director of network operations. "The more vendors you have to manage, the more difficult it is, so you have more opportunities for problems."

Decision-makers should avoid cases where equipment remains totally incompatible, or at least carefully consider the cost and feasibility of replacing affected systems before proceeding. Alltel and 360* avoided many potential problems because both employ primarily Motorola products.

"I don't believe we have run into any reliability issues at this point as a result of bringing the two networks together," said George Sidman, Alltel vice president of network planning. "Both companies have the same technology deployed, and on the wireless side we use the same infrastructure provider, which were both pluses."

Bell Atlantic and GTE employ similar equipment -- primarily from Lucent and Motorola. Officials expected similar success integrating their individual components into a single network.

"It is always a challenge, but we are not rookies at this," said Andrea Linskey, Bell Atlantic spokesperson. "As far as engineering is concerned, we have been able to integrate many different infrastructure providers' equipment into our overall network."

As digital technologies remain largely incompatible with one another, some carriers are forced to consider other options for their networks. Dunsby said dual-mode phones sometimes can solve part of the technical challenge, but although the units exist for AMPS-CDMA and AMPS-TDMA, there currently are no CDMA-TDMA phones available. The company must move entirely to one technology or the other, or it will have to support two different sets of customers with no roaming between them.

Separate Networks

That was the case when Southwestern Bell (SBC) acquired the Pacific Bell network in 1997. Facing different technologies and the considerable distance between the two networks, SBC instead opted to keep the networks distinct with separate operation centers and reliability plans. About the only interaction that occurs between the two markets involves procurement dealings with vendors, some customer-support functions and the occasional sharing of marketing or troubleshooting ideas.

"They remained two networks, separated by thousands of miles," said Larry Solomon, SBC spokesman. "One is PCS, and the other is traditional cellular. They have different configurations and different switching, so there was no real quality plan to make sure they integrated."

Integrating other forms of technologies such as voice and video also poses a unique challenge for maintaining reliability. AT&T faces a more difficult challenge in its merger with TCI than in some other telecommunications mergers, according to one industry consultant. AT&T's business focuses on voice now, but TCI targets video. Although it is possible to configure a cable TV system to carry voice, it is more difficult than merging two companies with the same primary business.

Vendors increasingly are called upon to establish universal standards and produce more compatible equipment and protocols that facilitate crossover between switches and networks.

"Interoperability is a key issue," said Motorola's Stozik. "Whether a carrier is looking to acquire a new market or another carrier with a major regional or national operation, they all want the same brand and the same feature complements. They want to hit the streets tomorrow with the same offer as in other markets."

The challenges are just one side of it, Airadigm's Selig said. If you merge networks properly, you can combine your resources and become more efficient by using common switching platforms, establishing different network-operations control centers and being able to maintain good visibility for all networks. Maintaining more monitoring systems and troubleshooting teams provides twice the network protection, as both centers monitor and respond to problems, added Alltel's Sidman.

"(Alltel and 360* Communications) have always monitored our network 24x7," Sidman said. "The immediate benefit that we gain from the merger is having both centers back up the other, giving us an additional level of protection."

Pacific Bell gained a lot from its Southwestern Bell merger, according to SBC's Solomon. After Pacific Bell spun off its wireless properties to AirTouch in 1994, few wireless executives remained in place to manage the buildup of the new PCS network. SBC shared its experience and practices to provide a jumpstart in terms of network layout, monitoring and other aspects.

"They didn't have any executives with wireless experience, and they were building a PCS network from scratch," Solomon said. "SBC was able to share our experience and best practices to help them really get off to a great start in terms of customer subscribers. It has kind of been sharing expertise."

Each company also can draw upon the other's personnel in events such as a natural disaster, power outage or a software glitch that crashes the whole system.

"We look at what types of resources we need from a technical perspective, like people with expertise in microwave systems or cell-site switching, and dispatch people from wherever we have got the expertise to those areas," said Alltel's Kimzey.

Aligning the organization, its processes and service levels are additional issues that could affect your network's reliability. Organizational changes can result in a significant turnover in personnel as new employees are introduced, and others leave for opportunities with competing carriers. Ensuring that the necessary staff remains in place to maintain network reliability and handle problems is an important consideration as you make the merger transition.

A merger is the perfect time for recruiters and other people to actively attack an organization, said Philip Carden, Renaissance Worldwide managing consultant. Rapidly losing several people from a particular technology area can affect your ability to maintain network operations. Internal and external security threats also pose a problem during mergers, leading to lost or stolen data on the network, or the threat of costly damage to computer or network equipment.

"An estimated 80% of all security breaches that occur are internal," Carden said, "and during a merger you are more likely to have a large group of employees who are disgruntled."

Merging executive philosophies also can create tension. You should address different philosophical views immediately. Merging a company that has an eye on newer, more advanced products and services with one that prefers to focus on the basic communications services can create conflict.

If you're lucky, a merger will not affect personnel responsible for monitoring and maintaining the network unless territories overlap and functions duplicate -- an issue that often does not pose too great a problem since carriers typically expand into areas not already covered. For example, the Alltel-360* and SBC-Pacific Bell mergers featured little to no overlap and avoided radical personnel changes.

Other mergers may fare differently: The Bell Atlantic-GTE merger faced 900,000 overlapping POPs in Las Cruces, NM, and El Paso, TX, that must be resolved. The SBC-Ameritech merger also has overlapping wireless networks in St. Louis and Chicago that company officials acknowledged would be divested eventually. No officials from these companies would comment on how the matter would be resolved.