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Frontier says billing conversion successful
Sep 06, 2010 (Charleston Daily Mail - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
The transition of thousands of accounts from Verizon to Frontier Communications Corp. in West Virginia "has gone extremely well," Frontier's southeast region manager said.
Ken Arndt said, "From a billing conversion perspective, I hate to use the term 'better than expected' because we expected it to go very well. If you had a billing issue before the conversion you had a billing issue after the conversion but we didn't create new issues.
"We made the strategic decision early on to keep the business operationally status quo," he said. "We were very concerned about the continuity of business. But early into it, we felt we didn't want to 'Verizonize' Frontier's processes. We quickly pulled the trigger to decentralize management and force decision-making as close to the customer as possible so we would have our true local market engagement model."
Frontier has nine general managers in West Virginia. Each runs a territory as an independent business unit.
"The primary difference between the two cultures is, Verizon was a process-driven company and Frontier is an accountability driven company," Arndt said.
"We don't want people focused necessarily on just making the doughnuts. We want them to think of who's supplying them with the dough and what kind of doughnuts the customer is buying. We want to put the customer in the center of the room. To accomplish that, you need to drive decision-making down.
"In the previous environment, Verizon was focused on productivity: How many jobs in a day can each technician accomplish? Our focus is on doing it right the first time.
"We want to solve the problem, not mask it. So if a customer has a repeat trouble every time it rains, we can send someone out to dry out the cable or we can replace the cable. We're focused on service quality improvement and expansion of network infrastructure."
When Frontier acquired Verizon's landline network in West Virginia on July 1, the network offered broadband Internet service to about 60 percent of Verizon's customers. Frontier has promised to increase availability to about 90 percent of customers.
Arndt said Frontier just brought broadband service to Terra Alta and three other sites in West Virginia. "We have an aggressive 180-day plan, which basically is the remainder of 2010, to turn up approximately 50,000 households," he said.
"We have an aggressive 2011 plan to bring up 100,000 households, while increasing broadband speeds and reliability in the areas that have it today."
The landline telephone business is shrinking as consumers, who have an increasing number of options, sometimes cut the cord in favor of a wireless phone or switch to a voice-over-Internet system.
That puts companies with legacy systems like Frontier in a race to add products and services so their offerings become "sticky" and consumers decide not to switch.
Arndt said the three building blocks of the business are voice communications, data and programming.
"Our philosophy is to expand and add incremental product value to each area," he said.
"On the voice side, it's about bundling features and services like unlimited long distance, voice mail, caller ID. You're inherently getting more value for less cost."
On the broadband side there are conventional broadband services and technical services like those offered by Frontier under the name, "Peace of Mind." Examples:
--"People are storing their digital pictures on their personal computers. The rate of hard-drive failure over a personal computer's lifetime is high. How can you ensure your family's memories are not lost? Provide an automatic hard-drive backup."
--"A large portion of households in West Virginia still don't have a personal computer. So when they get a computer and the Internet, they may not know how to connect the printer, their iPhone, their gaming systems. We provide those geek-like services. That's building on broadband."
Arndt said the programming side involves delivering video, voice and data over the data pipeline so customers can access whatever they want when they want it using the method they choose.
For an example he cited myfitv.com (My Frontier Interactive Television), which provides television programming.
"It is almost like a TV Guide for Internet content," he said. "You go there and see a grid of shows that were on TV last night. If you want to watch last night's episode of CSI, for example, you can click and watch that episode. It is providing over-the-top content availability and puts more choice in the consumer's hands. Anyone anywhere with Internet access can use it. That's step one."
All Blu-ray disc players and flat-screen televisions purchased in the past year are equipped to wirelessly connect to the Internet.
"If we can provide content through my fitv through your primary viewing source, which is TV, we've increased the 'stickiness' of our applications," Arndt said. "It's really about finding viable convergent technologies and using our broadband as the delivery mechanism.
"So today you receive your TV programming via satellite dish or coaxial cable. You're limited by the device it's connected to." he said. "But in the future, through broadband, whether wired, wireless or the Wi-Fi hotspots we provide, you can be anywhere in your home and still get the same experience without having to sit in front of your TV at 9 p.m. Tuesday night to watch the programming you want to watch.
"You can have a Wii gaming system that allows you to stream Netflix and, in theory, with that $9 monthly Netflix subscription, a broadband connection and my fitv, you can probably watch the vast majority of TV out there. It might not be real time but it will be near real time. And you can do it and not have a cable bill."
Contact writer George Hohmann at business@dailymail.com or 304-348-4836.
To see more of the Charleston Daily Mail, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go
to http://www.dailymail.com. Copyright (c) 2010, Charleston Daily Mail, W.Va.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information
about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
(MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail services@mctinfoservices.com, or
call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544).
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