Client Case Study
Our client’s situation:
A US Tier 1 carrier needed to migrate its customers to a fiber access network while decommissioning its legacy copper network. Cartesian planned, managed and executed a Proof of Concept (PoC) for three switches to migrate customers and decommission the TDM switches.
Why decommission TDM switches?:
Legacy TDM Switches (Alcatel-Lucent 5ESS, Ericsson AXE 10, Nortel DMS-10, etc.), transport equipment (DACS frames, etc.) and associated copper infrastructure (cables, frames, cross connects) have had a lifetime of well over 30 years. Most of the TDM switches are today at their end-of-life, end-of-support phase, occupying valuable space in central offices, consuming large amounts of power and requiring regular maintenance & repair routines. All these costs combined with high risk of failure, declining TDM revenue and low switch utilization make their existence unjustified in today’s IP world.
While most operators can see the opportunity for cost savings, operators are concerned with customer migration churn and are reluctant to set their high-margin TDM revenue at “uncertain” risk. This is counterintuitive to the fact that TDM revenue will otherwise keep declining; only a TDM-to-IP migration can reduce long-term churn and enable future revenue growth by migration to IP platforms that are higher quality, more cost effective and offer flexible unified communication & collaboration (UC&C) services.
What we did:
- Validated the business case for the outcome of network transformation
- Developed the process, conducted data cleansing and reconciliation, identified best practices for communications approach and handled regulatory filings, including:
- Cleansing and creating “single source” list of residential, business, carrier and internal circuits combining inventory and CRM data as part of the data preparation process
- Filing NCN and 214 notices to FCC and local regulator
- Developed a customer migration matrix and helped implement customer communication plans for each segment
- Assisted with network planning, engineering and construction (NPEC)
Client gains:
Our client received end-to-end strategic support with planning and analytics throughout their transformation process. We accelerated our client’s transformation by 1.5x, while also reducing execution risk and achieving the benefits of its validated business case.
Why Cartesian?
We assist operators with TDM switch migrations by providing end-to-end support from business planning, data preparation, product rationalization to customer communication, migration monitoring, and project management. Cartesian has repeatedly supported clients in network migration projects thru the following stages:
- Business case planning
- Data cleansing & staging
- Development of physical & logical network map
- Product rationalization and development of legacy-to-catch product matrix
- Customized customer communication plans
- Migration performance monitoring
- Project Management, PMO
As a result of our expertise, Cartesian consistently adds value in migration projects (see figure below) across two key dimensions:
- Program Acceleration
- Mitigation of Revenue Risk & Upsell Stimulation
Cartesian Decommissioning Benefits:
