2010 Buyers Guide - Broadband Properties

More documents

Recommendations

Info

with a provider that you never heard of. A provider that is a co-op. “Co-ops have a perception of being not progressive. So we need to get to the customer first. We have nine sales channels. If you interface with a customer, you have a quota. It is an expectation here at GVTC. If you are a technician or CSR or service center rep, you are expected to ask for the business.” How did Sorrells rally the troops? “His coming here was my confidence in him and what he wanted to do,” says Mnick. “We were not just going to sit here as a me-too company and just try to hold off a Time Warner onslaught or try to compete with Verizon [on copper]. He put us in a position to win … not just to stop the bleeding but to reverse the effect of what we were losing prior to his coming on board. “We were one of the first co-ops to put an outside sales force together. We were doing it before BellSouth. We were not going to just put out direct mailers and sit back. My background was in the CLEC end of the business. We had to scratch and fight against the incumbents. As a CLEC manager, I was battle-worn. And many of our managers are from CLECs.” “Fear is a great motivator,” says Sorrells. “We compete against Verizon in Boerne. They are the incumbent. We GVTC customer service center. had to seize the opportunity, or the window would close. We saw that in 2004. So we had to change the culture and seize the opportunity. We had to do the overbuild and do it right then.” NEXT MOVES GVTC is also quickly overbuilding its older network. “We have an overbuild strategy in our brownfields where we had copper and have a 60 to 70 percent penetration of homes that have computers,” said Sorrells. “Some 23 percent of the homes in our service area do not have a computer. We got out there quickly with broadband and now we are adding speed and TV. Lots of people in the area have satellite TV, so the urgency of the customer for change is not there. We have to come up with better services. “The fact that we are active in the community makes people in our area want to buy from GVTC, but sometimes they have to work through [long-term] contracts with other providers. They are not just going to wait in line for us until the contract expires unless we promote to them. We do mailers, telemarketing, we have two stores, door-to-door sales staff and telephone sales.” Sorrells noted that marketing to greenfields was easy, “but now we are seeing second-generation home ownership in what was a greenfield two years ago. We no longer have a relationship with the builder, but we have an investment in the equipment at the side of the house. How do we get a relationship with that second homeowner when we had a single-source partnership with a builder before? And we’re competing at a disadvantage. The electric company, CPS, has a relationship with a third-party vendor for broadband, and we’re so small compared to their footprint that we don’t get to represent ourselves in this area.” Early on, GVTC had to explain the advantages of fiber to developers. “Today they are asking for it to a greater degree as they see the value long-term and that it helps sales,” says Mnick. Mnick notes, however, that MDUs aren’t GVTC’s niche. “The Time Warners of the world will cable it for free, pay the builders, pay door fees, and we can’t afford that. We need a return on investment, and they want the market share at any cost. The problem is that the customer loses because the customer is not getting a discount. The guy in the MDU pays double the price of the guy in a subdivision.” It all comes back to the economic development effort. “The fact that we are involved in the EDC gets us in front of the owners and developers, and we are winning some of the MDU business – we just won two of them,” says Sorrells. Mnick adds, “We have not approached any of these MDUs with price. We talk about value and future-proofing, but we are not interested in ‘free this, free that.’” The future? “So many public companies are driven by quarterly results and what the Street has to say about those results. I find concentration on those results is very short-sighted and a detriment to the services we try to provide,” says Sorrells. “Obviously at GVTC we’re all about the long term … our strategic purpose is to stay in business … we’re planning today to be in business 20 years from now.” “We’re looking at CLEC opportunities,” says Mnick. “We have three subdivisions in the planning stage that were ready go when the economic downturn hit. They total nearly 9,000 lots.” What will you bet that GVTC gets there first? BBP 74 | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproperties.com | November/December 2009
Rural Success This excerpt is from the <strong>Broadband</strong> <strong>Properties</strong> Summit 08 Coverage in Dallas, Texas that ran in our June 2008 issue on pages 27-28. The entire article can be found at the following link: http://www.bbpmag.com/2008issues/june08/BBP_June08_Summit Overview.pdf. Dan Rogers, CEO of the Kendall County Economic Development Corporation, lauded the local telephone company, GVTC – the largest telephone cooperative in Texas and an early fiber deployer. Its service area spans 2,000 square miles and 11 counties, and includes more than 32,000 members with approximately 42,000 access lines. GVTC is willing to work with him to promise fiber to relocating or growing businesses. “If you don’t have a provider that will work with you, either find one or change your outlook,” he said. Rogers said the county, just outside San Antonio, is growing fast. “What’s critical for us is not being eliminated by corporate site selection committees,” he said. “Quality of life is necessary to attract businesses, and the business community is looking to all the utility providers to help. If I don’t have fiber, I’m eliminated – not just fiber to the business, because the executives are commuting to San Antonio and want to work from home because of gas prices. Fiber allows throughput and security.” “To us in small-town America, fiber is becoming the most important thing,” Rogers noted. “Advanced technology compan ies and medical companies are look ing for fiber.” He cited three examples: • A small software company relocating from Houston – “we were able to get them because we had fiber. Otherwise they would have gone to San Antonio.” • A software company in Boerne [in Kendall County] would have had to move to San Antonio, but they stayed because of fiber. Their big client is FedEx. • An aerospace company in Boerne asked for a package to compete with four states. It was the largest project in the history of Kendall County, and they won it. The company is moving into a new facility with fiber. Downspout Raceway Hide your cabling in plain sight Crown & Cove Molding Systems When ordinary raceway won’t do www.GoMultilink.com Sales@GoMultilink.com 440.366.6966 R November/December 2009 | www.broadbandproperties.com | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | 75
Page 1 and 2:
Get Check Out Foldout Section In Ce
Page 3 and 4:
3 big U.S. fiber opportunities 250,
Page 5 and 6:
Everyone benefits when you’re wir
Page 7 and 8:
Choosing the right teChnology Can b
Page 10:
Provider Perspective Do You Use Mar
Page 13 and 14:
Faster In the telecommunications in
Page 15 and 16:
Putting the FTTx puzzle pieces toge
Page 17 and 18:
Sumitomo Bringing Fiber Where & Whe
Page 19 and 20:
currently rolling out FTTH for appr
Page 21 and 22:
CityLink operates an open-access, n
Page 23 and 24:
in cooperation with Tantalus System
Page 25 and 26:
RBOC UPDATE FiOS at Five Verizon Co
Page 27 and 28:
Aerial splice case where the connec
Page 29 and 30: Municipal FTTH Deployment Snapshot
Page 31 and 32: and John Cohan, Southern Management
Page 33 and 34: amenities residents expect today an
Page 35 and 36: Buyers Guide Company 2010 Buyers Gu
Page 37 and 38: 2010 Buyers Guide For the FTTH mark
Page 39 and 40: 2010 Buyers Guide Contact: Ben Newe
Page 41 and 42: 2010 Buyers Guide Contact: J. T. Ch
Page 43 and 44: 2010 Buyers Guide Industry segments
Page 45 and 46: Connected at the Summit Get Biggest
Page 47 and 48: Get Connected… At The Summit Bigg
Page 49 and 50: 2010 Buyers Guide encing an upheava
Page 51 and 52: 2010 Buyers Guide Spot On Networks
Page 53 and 54: 2010 Buyers Guide character generat
Page 55 and 56: FTTH CONFERENCE COVERAGE Telemedici
Page 57 and 58: FTTH CONFERENCE COVERAGE sage on va
Page 59 and 60: FTTH CONFERENCE COVERAGE Four Stimu
Page 61 and 62: Country Stimulus Investment (USD Mi
Page 63 and 64: assigned little of the positive pre
Page 65 and 66: don’t own it, you can’t control
Page 67 and 68: Impact of digital inclusion on heal
Page 69 and 70: areas because the CDC requires that
Page 71 and 72: using broadband. What is more inter
Page 73 and 74: Broadband and the Economy: The Big
Page 75 and 76: etter jobs - 25 percent • Selling
Page 77 and 78: Texas Cooperative Spurs Economic Gr
Page 79: The total number of Internet custom
Page 83 and 84: to small businesses. T1s and bonded
Page 85 and 86: R E V E N U E - G E N E R A T I N G
Page 87 and 88: BROADBAND PROPERTIES Marketplace To
Page 90 and 91: Ad Index Calendar Advertiser Page W
Page 92: From concept to completion ... Corn
show all

2010 Buyers Guide - Broadband Properties

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?