Summary

• • In 2019, Coos-Curry Electrical Co-op created Beacon Broadband, a wholly owned subsidiary with a mission to bridge the digital divide in southwest Oregon.
  • At build-out, Beacon Broadband will serve over 20,000 addresses in Coos, Curry and other areas of Douglas counties.
  • Provisioning was initially a time-consuming process without integration of the company’s various vendor partners under one integrated billing platform.
  • Beacon selected GLDS for customer management and billing, GLDS BroadHub® and SuperController® to power auto-provisioning for Calix Support Cloud, Revenue EDGE and Intelligent ACCESS EDGE systems for fiber access, support operations and Alianza Cloud Communications Platform (VoIP phone services)

• GLDS launched Beacon Broadband with deployment ready, pre-integrated vendor solutions with their partners for service delivery in less than one month, reducing customer provisioning time from 30 minutes to 5 minutes.

2019: History Repeats Itself 

Over 83 years ago, the founding members of Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative (CCEC) identified that for-profit electric providers were unlikely to bring power to rural areas in Coos and Curry Counties. So they took matters into their own hands and CCEC was born. In 2019, CCEC recognized its customers were underserved by the new essential infrastructure of the 21st century, high-speed broadband. After many months of planning and feasibility studies, the CCEC determined that the time was right to take fiber internet to the residents of rural southwestern Oregon. The co-op secured a $14mm grant subsidy through the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. The project was approved to move forward in the fall of 2020. This led to the creation of Beacon Broadband, a wholly owned subsidiary of CCEC, in December 2020.

Here to Bridge the Digital Divide

Like CCEC did with electricity decades ago, today Beacon Broadband is bringing high-speed fiber to the southern Oregon Coast, including remote areas unlikely to be serviced by the incumbent providers. Beacon Broadband will connect over 20,000 addresses in Coos, Curry and parts of Douglas counties at build-out. Serving an expansive rural area dominated by fishing and lumber industries in the south and farming in the north, the company is mission-focused on bridging the digital divide for its customers. Their goal is to provide reliable, affordable gigabit-capable fiber broadband to every resident in their service area within 3-5 years.

“GLDS guided us professionally and treated us like family,” added Paul. “In just one month they helped transform us into a true customer-focused organization.” – Scott Paul Customer Service Director, Beacon Broadband

And they mean every customer. Scott Paul, Beacon Broadband’s Customer Service Director says, “We want to give all the addresses we service with electricity access to high-speed fiber.

Even in cases where our competitors would only service with satellite solutions, we’re willing to invest in connecting their home or business.”

The company would focus on winning customers over through a better user experience, higher speeds and better customer service. “No gimmicks, no contracts and pricing doesn’t increase as our customers become loyal,” says Corporate Services Director Shelly Yockey. In 2021, Beacon Broadband was on its way to becoming a community-focused entity on a mission to improve the lives of the people they serve. But a no-nonsense mission can get easily distracted without the right solutions in place.

Fighting the “Swivel Chair Effect”

To provision a new Beacon Broadband customer, data needed to be entered across multiple systems – Calix SMx (Fiber Service Delivery and Network Management), Calix Support Cloud (support and Wi-Fi management operations), Alianza Cloud Communications Platform. The lack of customer management integration across platforms meant the process took up to 30 minutes per customer. Scott Paul and the rest of the company’s customer service team were feeling this “swivel chair effect” pain.

The successful launch depended on superior customer service. Yet time-consuming, error-prone manual data entry was becoming a drag on operations.

Making Up For Lost Time

The team began researching solutions. It was at that point they found GLDS.

Impressed with the company’s track record of helping Broadband Service Providers quickly go to market and the many proven vendor integrations, the decision was made to use GLDS BroadHub® billing and customer management solution.

“We selected GLDS because of their reputation in the marketplace and their understanding of what broadband providers need to make an OSS and a BSS function as useful products.” – Shelley Yockey Corporate Services Director, Beacon Broadband

Guided by Implementation Specialist Sandi Kruger and Addressable Engineer Jorge Macias, GLDS

got to work configuring the GLDS platforms and putting their pre-integrated vendor partner

solutions in place. Working with proven solutions eliminates uncertainty and allows the company to focus on taking care of customers. According to Yockey, “Jorge was able to quickly work through configuration and give accurate answers to our questions. And Sandi was great about accounting for our different learning styles when training us.”

“GLDS guided us professionally and treated us like family,” added Paul. “In the end, they accomplished what they said they would in one month.”

The Results: A Community with Better Broadband. A Co-op Empowered to Succeed

Using GLDS BroadHub®, Beacon Broadband can onboard customers seamlessly, reducing data entry errors and focusing on building exceptional customer experiences. The ability to auto-provision with GLDS BroadHub, SuperController® and BroadHub Tech™️ technician app across multiple vendor systems meant that a customer’s name and address are input just once, glued together with the customer’s selected equipment and package information, auto-populating the service delivery details across multiple vendor backends.

“When Beacon Broadband told us that GLDS was the choice for its billing system, we knew it would be an easy and thorough integration. GLDS provided excellent training and an important follow-up training document so Beacon was able to start using the integration in record time. I enjoy the partnership we have built with the GLDS implementation team and our joint customers benefit from our solid working relationship and experience in the market.”- Amy Malone Onboarding Solutions Engineer, Alianza

Data entry time for each customer has been reduced from over a half hour to 5 minutes. “Now I just have to load a name and address. The phone and email are already pre-loaded, I just hit send and the technicians can add the equipment and activate the whole thing. It frees up my entire day to focus on our customers.” says Customer Service Director Scott Paul. Beacon Broadband is on track to roll out its service and achieve its mission on time. Plus, the company can now focus on enhancing the customer experience through various GLDS partner solutions. The company plans to offer customers both fully managed streaming video and security solutions. Offering customers EspialTV, Enghouse Network’s over-the-top IPTV video services solution using the NCTC Watch TV Everywhere Single Sign-on. Both suites are natively provisioned through GLDS’ MyBroadbandAccount and SuperController products. To complement the existing solutions that GLDS automates service delivery today for the organization, Calix’s cloud-managed security solution, including Wi-Fi-enabled cameras, an app and professional monitoring from Arlo, is scheduled for rollout soon. The Calix Support Cloud, Revenue EDGE suites and Calix Intelligent Access EDGE solution are already pre-integrated into the GLDS product suite.

“The GLDS and Beacon Broadband teams were great to work with during the Calix Cloud solution integration. Their collaborative approach and partnership was an important part of making this a successful launch.” – Charles Porcella Technology Partnerships Manager, Calix

Going with GLDS BroadHub®, a proven pre-integrated customer management and billing solution, allows Beacon Broadband to quickly auto-provision accounts and bring new customers on board, giving new customers a superior service experience from the get-go. Combined with reliable, affordable high-speed fiber internet, Beacon Broadband is indeed bridging the digital divide for their customers in southwestern Oregon.

About GLDS

GLDS customer management, billing, and service delivery ecosystem is built on decades of broadband experience. From start-ups, to scaled deployments, GLDS solutions are built for fiber, and have been launched at more than 850 operators in 49 states and 48 countries. Flexible interfaces, and dozens of proven integrations, mean quicker time to market and no headaches. GLDS brings experience you can trust, at budget friendly prices.

About Calix

Calix cloud and software platforms enable service providers of all types and sizes to innovate and transform. Our customers utilize the real-time data and insights from Calix platforms to simplify their businesses and deliver experiences that excite their subscribers. The resulting growth in subscriber acquisition, loyalty, and revenue creates more value for their businesses and communities.

About Alianza

Alianza delivers the only true cloud-native, carrier-grade communications platform built for service providers. Our proprietary full-stack cloud communications platform offers wholesale residential and business communications services, including voice, video conferencing, collaboration, text messaging, and standalone UC softphones. Our team of experts are passionate about transforming communications delivery and ensuring first-rate customer experiences for more than 200 service providers worldwide. As a result of the platform’s exceptional quality and always-on availability, our service providers can innovate quickly and address the evolving demands of their end-user customers in a way that is easy to manage, easy to consume, and highly profitable.