Rural electric cooperatives and municipalities from all over North America now offer broadband service to their markets. Many more are studying it. These companies are in a unique position to address the challenge of closing the digital divide and making broadband available and affordable for all Americans regardless of where they live. This is because they already serve the communities that are most in need of the network assets that are a natural fit for adding broadband.
Despite this fit, it’s still a significant undertaking and a very different business than the utility business. Beyond building the physical network, providers also must ensure they have the right operational support systems unique to broadband that can help deliver the best customer experience possible, while also delivering much needed back-office efficiencies.
The ETI Service Management Platform removes the complexity and pain of this process by working with municipalities and utility companies to simplify device and application integration, consolidate data and provide role-based views that help municipalities reduce cost, improve subscriber experience, and offer next-generation services more reliably and affordably to their communities. All of this information is available on an intuitive, easy to use, scalable platform and in an Open Access environment if desired.
Integration to Existing Billing Systems
For utility service providers and municipalities who are preparing to launch broadband services and would prefer to augment, rather than replace, existing billing and financial systems, ETI’s Service Management Platform is proven and pre-integrated for speed-to-market. Through the flexibility of the platform, service providers have the choice of billing for these new services through the customer’s existing utility account or setting up a new account.
Encompassing subscriber services such as billing, order entry and rating, work order management, device inventories – the tasks that make up the core of the front office – ETI’s solution provisions and activates high-speed Internet while integrating directly into over 20 industry-leading utility billing systems. Partners include CSA, Cogsdale and many more.
The result is that munis and utilities can launch services faster, drive efficiency, and reduce not only capital expenses but ongoing operational costs.
For more information about how ETI helps municipalities and utility companies stay on top of work and expand their reach, please read our case study.
Growing the Customer Base
ETI’s muni and utility solutions are not just for greenfield projects – the Service Management Platform is designed to grow with the providers in any stage of deployment. Additional features available include:
- Service rating, subscriber and service management, work order management, service provisioning, device management, and automated flow-through to any billing system,
- Device management to remotely help subscribers with simple service issues faster and increasing satisfaction.
- OTT – protect valuable assets with real-time activation and deactivation; integration to legacy back-office systems and subscriber portals.
- Build subscriber loyalty with better OTT experience across multiple devices.
ETI Service Management Platform simplifies device and application integration, consolidates data and provides role-based views to help municipalities protect and grow their businesses by reducing costs, improving customer experience, and managing everything from a single platform.
For more information about how ETI helps municipalities and utility companies grow and strengthen the customer relationships they have, please read our case study.
