Reengineering for the broadband telecommunications environment

The cable industry is undergoing a transition from one-way broadcast entertainment to two-way telecommunications over broadband Hybrid-Fiber/Coax (HFC) networks. Historically, cable operators have outsourced CAD engineering maps and billing systems and have depended on customers for network management. Today, cable operators are facing the task of combining AM/FM/GIS and other operations support systems to facilitate fully-integrated enterprise management. This paper addresses two approaches by CableLabs member companies to this integration task. The first is TCI's Integrated Network Management System (INMS), a client/server based, largely off-the-shelf application integration effort. The second approach is by Rogers Cablesystems. Rogers is facing the integration task by initially building on an in-house legacy mainframe subscriber management system with migration plans to a client/server architecture. The vision for both approaches is to integrate AM/EM/GIS, network monitoring and control, workforce management, trouble ticketing, and customer care as quickly and cost-effectively as possible while allowing for migration to newer technologies. Benefits of these dynamic, yet fully-integrated solutions include the ability to proactively manage the network and therefore increase customer satisfaction, and the ability to easily expand new service offerings while holding operating costs at a minimum.