Bright House Networks is a cable television company, the seventh largest cable (video) operator and the sixth largest traditional multiple system operator in the United States owned by Advance/Newhouse, headquartered in Syracuse, New York. The company provides service to cities including Indianapolis, Central Florida (Orlando/Daytona Beach areas), Tampa Bay area, Lakeland, Birmingham-Hoover area, west suburban Detroit, and Bakersfield. Most of its business is concentrated in Central Florida, where Bright House is the dominant cable system in the Tampa and Orlando TV markets.
More than one of every four American homes (26.6%) deserted their landline telephone service and now rely exclusively on wireless service. Approximately 24.9% of all adults (approxi- mately 57 million) live in households with only wireless telephones and 29% of all children live in households with only wireless telephones.1
The development of wireless telecommunication technologies has jeopardized the staying power of the landline telephone. In recent years, cell phones have revolutionized the way people communicate and stay in touch. It took less than 17 years for wireless cell phones to reach 100 million consumers. On the other hand, it took over 90 years for landline tele- phones to reach the same number.
Challenge
Find a way to augment the existing landline service into a more robust and mobile-friendly solution, in an effort to offer additional value to its landline subscribers.
Resolution
Customers already had access to cross-talk between their digital phone service and their cable television services via caller ID that would pop up on the TV screen, but Brighthouse wanted to expand that access to the PC. Mersoft assisted with building a soft phone thick client prototype that fit the bill. The challenge then became cross-platform compatibility. Customers on various operating systems were being forced to install the program on their PC to achieve access to this feature, and this became a limiting factor in adoption rates by the customer base. The client worked well once it was installed, but achieving installation was adding a great deal of operational expenses in the form of customer service phone calls.
Mersoft and Brighthouse together decided that a thin client utilizing Adobe Air technology was the solution. Mersoft was responsible for successfully putting the pieces together for back end SIP communication to the server and switches. Customers could now, from any PC, Android, or iOS mobile device, view missed and incoming calls or download and listen to voicemails left for their home line.
Today more than half of the Brighthouse TV subscriber base–to the tune of over 1.2 million users—utilizes the Easy Gadget technology. Since the original release additional functionality has been added, such as DVR management via the mobile or PC application. Customers are now able to make their landline communications accessible from anywhere, thereby marrying their mobile and home devices in straightforward, easy to use manner.
1(Source: Wireless Substitution: Early Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, January-June 2010, Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, December 2010.)