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CenturyLink CTO: Customers Like to Co-Invent CenturyLink is expanding its use of minimum viable product -- or MVP -- network strategy, since first using this approach to unveil its SD-WAN last fall, a top executive told attendees of ADTRAN Connect in Huntsville, Ala., this week. This collaborative approach empowers customers to co-develop the service, then use ongoing feedback to enhance later versions, Executive Vice President and CTO Aamir Hussain told Light Reading. (See CenturyLink Touting New MVP.) Today the cable operator uses MVP beyond the cloud, moving this approach into the network and over-the-top (OTT) offerings. MVP allows clients to implement DevOps, and "agile" processes and leverage CenturyLink's technical and business knowledge to design and create solutions, he said. "Our SD-WAN service has now gone through two major iterations and the product has changed a lot based on customer feedback," Hussain told Light Reading's Editor-at-large Carol Wilson in an interview following the executive's keynote. "It is a culture shift but customers actually like it because they like to co-invent and co-develop stuff with us because this is a brand new field, and they don't know what they don't know. They don't want to go buy something very specific and then be stuck with it." The MVP approach reflects customers' demand for personalized services, accelerated delivery and the continued move to standards-based, future-ready technologies instead of proprietary systems. Although this customer-involved approach entails more work for CenturyLink, the results include enhanced customer experience and more precise delivery of clients' exact needs in part thanks to the operator's use of net promoter score surveys for user evaluation of the transaction and product, he said. "It's more work for us, but it's worth it," said Hussain. "[CenturyLink has seen] more customer demand for SD-WAN than any other product." MVP is part of CenturyLink's initiative to evolve its network into a software-defined, cloud-based platform that houses services from the operator and partners. Today, programmable network nodes cover about 60% of CenturyLink's network, said Hussain. And 54% of services are software-driven, he added. Related posts: — Alison Diana, Editor, UBB2020. Follow us on Twitter @UBB2020 or @alisoncdiana. |
In a flurry of activity throughout the week, Donald (DJ) LaVoy, Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development at the US Department of Agriculture, and his team spent about $145.8 million in the non-urban or suburban areas of seven states.
Calix reported revenue of $120.19 million – up 4% – in Q4 2019, putting a bounce in the step of company president and CEO Carl Russo and a shine to Calix's ongoing transition from hardware vendor to a provider of platforms enabled by cloud, APIs and subscriber experience.
Looking to curtail e-waste and improve the bottom line, BT will require customers to return routers and set-top boxes, although subscribers will not have to pay a fee when they receive regular broadband equipment.
The industry standards organization is looking to ease operator pain from residential WiFi, while it also sees initiatives in connected home and other projects bear fruit.
Deploying DOCSIS 3.1 across its entire footprint gave Rogers Communications the ability to offer speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s,
contributing to a broadband segement that generated about 60% of the Canadian operator's $3.05 billion (US) in Q4 cable earnings.
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