Problem
The MSO’s contractors were about 95% completed with the 2,000 mile outside plant upgrade, but only 15% of the completed plant was certified as two-way capable. Construction crews were leaving town and the CATV plant was not able to be certified for two-way Internet nor generating the digital video and Internet revenue planned from this upgrade.
Solution
Benchmark instituted project controls and a strict Quality Control / Quality Assurance program, that included a QC walkout of the entire plant, by node, to identify construction gigs (each node had an average 1,250 gigs), instituted a sweep program to sweep each node and identify bad cable with signal issues and provided a gig cleanup contractor to repair all the construction and bad cable issues in the field.
Results
Within 6 weeks of implementing the Benchmark Quality program, the amount of certified plant increased from 15% to 60%. After 3 months, over 90% of the plant was certified and the MSO was generating about two times the revenue per subscriber with the newly certified upgraded plant.