Total Premise Quality (TPQ):

Carrier Competition in a Deregulated World!

Overview

There hasn't been an Outside Plant technician that I haven't liked. I can't say that for support and billing staff. This is a problem facing the Local and Long Distance carriers in this era of deregulation. This is even a bigger problem for the end-user. Installations that should take hours drag on for weeks - even months.

The Problems

The growth of the telecommunications has shifted the power base from the carrier to the end-user. In the scamble to keep up, standards-based equipment is deployed at the Central Office. And the CO, for the most part, has the trained personnel necessary to operate and deploy this equipment. These trained personnel have their hands full maintaining and upgrading the network.

This same growth has resulted in an explosion of new equipment vendors. In order to compete vendors (that have been traditionally a "last bastion of support" for their customers) have been trimming back on their support capabilities. Unfortunately, its the end-customer that suffers!

The Differentiating Factor

Carriers have yet another problem facing them: increased competition from alternative Long Distance and Local Exchange organizations. So, in a standards-based world, how does one differentiate themselves? If a SONET mux is a SONET mux, an ATM switch an ATM switch, and a router a router - what makes Carrier "A" different from Carrier "B"? The answer is simple: Service!

TPQ Objectives

Total Premise Quality (TPQ) is a Carrier program with four basic goals:

Provide liason, management, and technical skills to the customer premise.
Provide a consistent level of quality throughout a wide range of service options and provisioning.
Increase customer satisfaction.
Minimize personnel costs.