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ISE Columnist Sharon Vollman, Editorial Director

ICT Visionaries COVID-19 CliffsNotes

July 1, 2020
As of late May, read what our Visionaries had to say about the impact of COVID-19 on their companies and team members. Their full insights to many other relevant topics […]

As of late May, read what our Visionaries had to say about the impact of COVID-19 on their companies and team members. Their full insights to many other relevant topics can be found on pages 16-33 in the July issue of ISE magazine.

Sheilon King Director, Mobility Transformation

AT&T’s services are Essential, and we continue to enable connectivity. To meet this unprecedented demand for broadband capacity to allow people to continue working remotely, our AT&T teammates are working tirelessly daily on the frontlines in all communities. For these customer-facing heroes we are providing a 20% bonus and more flexible time-off structures to handle family situations.

Anil Simlot
Vice President of Virtual Services Development and Support

Due to CenturyLink’s focus on SDN, our network has been performing well because of our flexibility to add capacity, modify paths, and adjust traffic based on utilization. This flexibility was visible when we connected the U.S. Naval Ship Mercy just hours after it arrived in Los Angeles to help support healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Johnny HillCOO

At Clearfield, we have found ourselves to be remarkably resilient and efficient in moving into our home work environments and maintaining the productivity level we established before COVID-19. We proactively addressed the potential disruption of supply chains by adjusting our min/max, safety, and on-hand inventory positions with suppliers. Our vendor redundancy for all critical raw components has paid off; we’ve seen no disruption in our ability to produce….

John Robbins IIISenior ManagerNetwork Engineering for City of Fort Collins

Fort Collins Connexion has been busier than ever scaling systems to ensure City staff are able to stay connected and productive from remote locations. We also partnered with the local school district to address a lack of Internet access for children in several underserved communities. Resources were redirected to deploy outdoor APs via GPON backhaul at mobile home parks, increasing Internet availability and capacity….

Curt Christensen
Customer Network Manager

Norvado accepted the FCC’s Keep Americans Connected Pledge. We are offering free Internet install and first 3 months free for new customers, as well as free speed upgrades for current customers to the next tier. Along with that, we expedited the upgrade of our recent purchase of PCTC Telephones network from 1G to 10G/100G to match our Cable exchanges.

LaTanya BuggsDirector of OperationsGlobal Network and Technology Division

At Verizon the coronavirus pandemic has transformed daily work life and changed how we communicate with consumers and our teams. For frontline employees we shifted to a
dispatch-from-home strategy, where company vehicles serve as the technicians’ offices. On service calls we restricted the in-home dispatch experience and moved to virtually assisting customers via video chat.

About the Author

Sharon Vollman | Content Ambassador for ISE EXPO

Sharon Vollman is the Content Ambassador for ISE EXPO. She is passionate about collaborating with thought leaders, SMEs and hard-working doers who design, plan and deploy ultra-reliable broadband networks. Vollman is committed to creating a variety of educational offerings for ISE EXPO attendees that inspire them to connect every U.S. citizen with the broadband networks we all want for our children and grandchildren.

Vollman has created educational partnerships with Broadband Service Providers including  AT&T, Verizon, Lumen, Frontier Communications and others. She has covered the telecom industry since 1996.