Many telephone companies are getting into the business of providing bandwidth and IPTV service to their customers. The change from the standard services provided today will take some effort on their part. It is a strategic business decision requiring a commitment of time, money and equipment as well as the development of processes and procedures.

Reactive Work Approach Won’t Work for IPTV
Recently I was working with field technicians at a rural telephone company in the Midwest. We’ll call them XYZ Telco. We were identifying and fixing problems with IPTV services that were failing.

This company has been fairly successful at providing typical phone services such as POTS, HDSL, ADSL, TI, and other products. I say “fairly” successful because they tended to be reactive when it came to day-to-day repairs of the infrastructure. The day-to-day approach was to get the customer back into service fast, and move on to the next problem.

Replacing pedestals, terminals, and bad cable sections didn’t fit into their plans. Bonding and grounding issues were delayed until customer complaints such as unacceptable power influence affected customer service, and simply had to be addressed. That approach is problematic because eventually you run out of lines, and then it becomes a major cost outlay to either go back and try to fix all the bad lines you walked away from or because you have to install new cable.

That approach is always going to bite you in the end but once you decide to add IPTV to your list of products, you WILL be forced into becoming proactive.

What’s So Different About IPTV?
Once XYZ Telco jumped into the IPTV arena, they found that problems such as pixelization, freezing, and losing sync required them to think and implement on a proactive level.

Changes in installation and repair were in order. First, on any install the cable pair must be tested to show a clean cable pair free of DC type faults, crossed-battery, shorted and grounded cable pairs, capacitive unbalance, series resistance, and split cable pairs within the reach. The telephone network interface at the house must be tied to the power ground electrode and tested to 25 ohms or less.

For the most part, if the customer was well within the limits, the telephone company showed a great deal of success. Customers on the end of the reach were the ones that had problems, and customers that exceeded the reach were nightmares when it came to implementing IPTV.

Note: When a circuit for ADSL or IPTV is installed beyond the reach, two things happen. First, you get an upset customer complaining of unacceptable service. Second, you get an upset field technician who cannot do anything about it.

Installs for ADSL and IPTV are done between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., when there are few disturbers from associated cable pairs, with the exception of HDSL and IPTV, and little or no AC interference from the associated distribution power system. Folks come home from work after five o’clock and start turning things on. Power usage goes up, AC interference goes up, and some circuits go down.

Unacceptable bonding and grounding issues in the distribution plant still allowed high frequency interferers to enter and travel along the cable pairs. Some of the ADSL and IPTV customer’s circuits were affected by AM radio, short wave, ham radio, and other high frequency signals.

XYZ Telco was forced to start a proactive bonding and grounding program to assure that they had continuous bonding and grounding from end to end on their cables to mitigate those high frequency signals. AC interference from the associated distribution power system may still cause problems, but, for the most part, frequencies above 1 kHz are mitigated.

Tools for the Field
Field technicians were affected greatly by the implementation of IPTV service. In the POTS arena, while it’s not ideal and doesn’t promote a proactive approach, technicians may have limited access to equipment and they often only have a Volt/Ohm meter and a butt-in test set. These are good, necessary tools, but alone they aren’t sophisticated enough to deal with IPTV issues.

Field technicians need multi-functional test sets with a digital multi-meter, a transmission test set, an open meter, a Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR), and a DSL testing capability for sync, fast rate, maximum rate, errors, bits per tones, and a spectrum analyzer, and more.

Extra time and money will have to be allocated in order to find the root causes of unacceptable AC interference, impulse noise, and dirty power in the residence. Dirty power in the residence will have to be identified by the field technician, and, for the most part, repaired by the customer if they expect acceptable bandwidth at the side of the house for their services.

When the field technician receives his test sets he then needs to be trained on how they work, and how to interpret the results to solve those complicated problems in the field.

If you are committed to IPTV and excited about the additional revenue, then make it a strategic decision and do it right.

You may spend more money on equipment and training and you will have to introduce proactive maintenance procedures, but I promise you that you will make it up quickly through highly increased efficiency and happier customers. The first thing a dissatisfied customer does is look for a better solution. Don’t give your customer that opportunity.

Signing Off
Send your letters, emails (dmccarty@mccartyinc.com), or call me on my cell (831.818.3930). Tell me what’s happening at work that is keeping you up at night. Or visit www.mccartyinc.com.

About the Author - Don McCarty

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