Accelplus (www.accelplus.net), a division of Crawfordsville Electric Light & Power, the municipal electric utility owned by the City of Crawfordsville that delivers affordable and reliable video and broadband data services to the residents and businesses of the city and surrounding area, has deployed ETI Software’s Triad Order Entry & Rating (OER) and Work Order (WO) modules as their primary billing and operation support systems. Accelplus’s goal was leveraging their host utility billing system to generate a separate statement and manage the receivables for each subscriber’s IPTV and broadband services.
“We really needed to arm our customer services representatives with the tools they would need to sell complex video and broadband services,” says Roy Kaser, General Manager, Accelplus. “Investing millions to build a FTTP network is only half of a successful recipe, you need the tools to actually sell, schedule installation and activate the services to get cash flow moving.”
With Triad OER, Accelplus is able to generate detailed monthly recurring and non-recurring charges for IPTV and data services. Additional functionality includes comprehensive inventory control for the Accelplus set-top boxes and FTTP devices located at the customer premise. Triad’s WO module enables the customer service representative to manage technician resources and schedule installations. With additional software modules, the utility is also well positioned to support voice services.
“As municipalities rapidly enter the realm of delivering telecommunications services, they are challenged to adapt their billing and back-office systems quickly and affordably,” says Peter M. Pifer, Chief Executive Officer, ETI. “With Triad our customers can bring to bear their existing technology investments so they may quickly and effectively go to market and compete.”
ETI’s Triad provides out-of-the-box functionality to automate the complex provisioning processes for both active and passive FTTP technologies from a variety of vendors. ETI’s product automates activation of all service ports on the Optical Network Terminal (ONT), the termination point of the FTTP network at the customer’s service location. Triad is able to automatically set the bandwidth (i.e., Quality of Service) for a given port so it matches the service level requested by the customer allowing providers to offer differentiated services at varying price points. To support IPTV over FTTP, Triad provisions the secondary data port (on the ONT) supporting IPTV with the required bandwidth. It also activates the IPTV management applications (middleware) with the precise video services ordered; therefore, no additional data entry is required to activate video services.
ETI’s product also supports the auto-discovery of new ONTs on the FTTP network and can instantaniously provision these devices in real-time. Since Triad also provisions IPTV middleware, it eliminates multiple data entry points and the service errors and delays associated with manual “swivel chair” processes.
About ETI Software (www.etisoftware.com)
ETI Software’s world-class software products enable telephone, utilities and municipalities to successfully sell, bill and activate telecommunication services. With unparalleled provisioning capabilities, ETI’s products instantaneously activate voice, video and data services to any technology over any network topography, including Fiber-to-the-Premise. Founded in 1992, the company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and privately held.
About Accelplus (www.accelplus.net)
As the oldest municipal electric utility in Indiana, Crawfordsville Electric Light & Power has often been a pioneer in serving its customers and has consistently provided extremely reliable electric service and very affordable rates since 1890. The utility continually receives high ratings in customer satisfaction and has been a catalyst for local economic development. Accelplus is a division of CEL&P and will provide the utility and the community a competitive advantage for attracting and retaining businesses as well as the highly skilled workforce needed in the information age through its Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network.