A New Approach to Marketing to Enterprises

By Carl Weinschenk Senior Editor

The news a couple of weeks ago that Comcast has introduced Business Class Signature Support for small- and medium-sized businesses gave me an idea.

That’s an odd thing. As a reporter/editor, my job isn’t to have ideas, but to report others.’ The not having ideas part of the job is one I do with almost 100% efficiency. The jury still is out on the other piece.

In any case, the Business Class Signature Support is a three-tiered program that the MSO initially is launching across its Northeast Division. Essentially, businesses can pay for different levels of protection, including replacement of non-working equipment.

To date, the cable industry has not fully focused on enterprises because of the high level of services and technical infrastructure that is required. The industry still is evolving to the point that it can support these demands. It's getting there, but it is not easy.

It is not too early, though, to get on enterprises' radar. Cable can do so by addressing these prospect companies from the bottom up instead of the top down. It is almost a certainty that some huge organizations have home-based workers and small satellite/branch offices in a given cable system's footprint. Cable operators should market business support services to enterprises in support of these smaller entities.

Enterprises demand "five 9s" reliability, very short mean time to repair and real-time verification of service level agreement compliance - for the five-floor state headquarters facility. But they can’t demand it for the three-person office in the strip mall or for the home-based worker. It actually is sort of strange: An organization's headquarters can feature IT assets that are cutting edge - while home workers use PCs shared with the kids and WiFi connections that are extremely insecure.

Upgrading those small offices is a great way for a cable operator’s business entity to prove its worth and begin building the relationship. And it’s not just keeping these small offices up and running. They can ensure that protocols being used, the policies enforced and other details - beyond simply having a dialtone or access to the Internet - are in order.

Carl Weinschenk is the Senior Editor of Broadband Technology Report. Reach him at [email protected].