Tiscali Business Services newsletter
June 2009 |
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![]() Welcome to the June issue of the Tiscali Business Services newsletter. I would like to take this opportunity to inform you that Tiscali Group has reached an agreement with TalkTalk , the wholly owned subsidiary of Carphone Warehouse Group PLC, for the sale of Tiscali's UK operations (including the brands Pipex, Nildram and Freedom2Surf) to TalkTalk. The agreement is expected to complete in the next few weeks and so you can be rest assured the newsletter will be packed with exciting news going forward! Tiscali remains the largest alternative wholesale DSL provider to BT as well as leading IPVPN provider and we are committed to the continued support of your business. In the first article, Warren Potts, Head of IPVPN, talk you through the most recent developments within provisioning which are already reaping benefits for our resellers. The first few months of 2009 have also seen some new improvements to Tiscali's Availability Checker which will provide our resellers with increased flexibility in building automated provisioning systems. Product Manager Rob Stanley explains what is new if you check the Checker! I hope you will enjoy this month's update and find it useful. Any feedback on our featured articles will be greatly appreciated. We also welcome your ideas on topics for future newsletters. ![]() Lance Spencer www.tiscali-business.co.uk |
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Making extra provisions for our customers Check this out! Reseller Focus |
If you have any queries regarding Tiscali Business Services Products or to unsubscribe, please email marketing@tiscali-business.co.uk. Copyright 2009 Tiscali. All Rights Reserved. |
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![]() For resellers who use our XML API Availability Checker, and even for those of you who do not currently, you may be interested to learn of some developments which have taken place recently to enhance the service. Rob Stanley, Tiscali Product Manager, explains what is new if you check the Checker! "Overall, the benefits of using the XML Checker are that it provides our resellers with much more flexibility in building automated provisioning systems. They can use real-time responses to choose the most applicable and cost effective product for their end user based on responses about the capability at the exchange and the quality of the specific line. "It is an extremely powerful tool when used in combination with Tiscali's DSL provisioning XML APIs (current version 5.2)." The latest release of XML API Availability Checker is Version 3.0 and includes several new enhancements, over and above previous release of Version 2.5. As Rob explains: "It is worth mentioning that some resellers are using a version prior to the release of 2.5 so they may not be entirely familiar with those updates, let alone the latest. It really is worth exploring the features and benefits of all these recent enhancements which have taken place." For example, a new field that has been added that reports on the actual port capacity for DataStream: "This provides more detailed information of current capacity on DataStream at the exchange which enables resellers to make more informed decisions when choosing the correct product for an end user," explains Rob. "This also minimises the amount of administrative time taken up when dealing with DataStream orders that fail due to lack of capacity." A new RAG (Red, Amber, Green) status has been introduced to show capacity:
With the development of fully unbundled (MPF) LLU products underway, the Availability Checker also now reports on the availability of SMPF and MPF services at the exchange. "The existing capacity tags for SMPF and MPF used to return a simple Yes or No to describe capacity availability," says Rob. "These fields have also been changed to return a RAG status and have similar benefits to the DataStream scenario." Another new field in Version 3.0 is an estimated Annex M upstream speed. "Not only does this show the potential gains in upstream speed over normal ADSL1 and ADSL 2+ technologies," explains Rob, "but if a reseller is buying SDSL (M) services this latest enhancement is very useful in determining which of these products the line can support." Because of the benefits, Rob is keen for resellers using older versions of the API to transition to the latest version. "Given these very latest enhancements, versions of Availability Checker older than 2.5 will be closed during the coming months and our customers will be notified exactly when we expect this to happen. The message is - 'transition to Version 3.0 as early as possible to take advantage of the new enhancements available!'. Proposed sunset dates for some of the older versions of the API specification can be seen below (formal notifications will follow).
The documentation for Version 3.0 of the API can be found on the Tiscali Business Services Partner Portal website at www.tiscali-business.co.uk under the Technical WADSL Specification button (after logging in). All of this additional functionality will be reflected in the Availability Checker GUI web page in the next version that is due to be completed in the first week of June. This too is being enhanced to detail current capacity at the exchange. An example of how this page will look is below. |
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![]() Throughout the course of the last six months we have put greater focus and energy on improving the Tiscali Reseller programme and our relationship with you. We have introduced webinar product training, enhanced our comms to you via our Newsletters and launched Annex M. But we want to improve the way we do business with you even further. We want to continue to enhance the monitoring of our performance against a number of key areas in our business relationship and provide you with an opportunity to make your opinions, good or bad, known to us. Thus we will be launching a Tiscali customer satisfaction survey. This will be the first survey to our Tiscali reseller base and we would like your feedback on several key areas so that we can identify similarities and differences by; region, suppliers, product etc. We promise you that we will act on the information we get from you through the survey and we will do our best to work through the key issues identified. Please take the time to complete the survey, it is important to us because the more we know about what you like or don't like the better position we will be in to improve the products and service we provide. |