Beyond the Glass
The YRT2™ Technology Concierge

New homeowners in the Carolinas can enjoy a hassle-free moving experience, at least as far as their communications services are concerned, by working with YRT2 Inc., “Your Residential Technology Team.”

Established in the late 1990s as a company focused on inside wiring, YRT2 has grown into a full-scale, fiber-based, quadruple-play provider (voice, data, video, security), including inside wiring and technology concierge services, expanding its operations to include multiple cities throughout the Carolinas. These areas are growing rapidly, but there is significant competition for the new home buyer’s dollar.

YRT2 enables a development to be more marketable in many ways. All services are delivered over dedicated fiber networks, enabling today’s services and providing an inexpensive path for upgrading the network for tomorrow’s services. Residents in a YRT2-enabled communities know that their homes are “future-proofed” for telecommunications capacity, in many cases enabling them to enhance their quality of life by moving to a more desirable location and telecommuting to work. Various local and national development companies understand the value proposition and are served by YRT2, including Great Southern Homes and D.R. Horton. Especially in a slow nationwide real estate market, YRT2’s developer partners understand the value provided by supplying essential telecommunication services and infrastructure at a higher level than what’s traditionally been available.

YRT2 takes this service to the next level by providing a “Technology Concierge” service. This service starts when the homeowner is picking out the specifics for his or her home. This means that the same level of attention is given to the home network and electronics as is given to the countertops. This may be as simple as assisting the homeowner through the maze of HDTV technology choices, or as complex as installing a full home-automation system or top-end home theatre. All houses are pre-wired with generous numbers of drops of the latest technology. Once the home is built, there’s no waiting from 8:00 to 5:00 on multiple days for the cable company and telephone company to turn on service. Service is turned on before the customer moves in. Finally, YRT2 is onsite to take the customers through their house and train them on how to use their various new gadgets and services. For the new resident, the move is stress-free, and services are up and running when they move in.

So, how do they do it?
YRT2 builds and owns the network, and provides voice, data, video, and security services. The voice services are provided over YRT2’s Class-5 Softswitch, and the internet backbone is handled out of their ISP and Data Center division. The softswitch enables standard telephone services, as well as all the bells and whistles associated with Digital Telephone service. The equipment used in the home enables the use of either IP or traditional telephone headsets, so the customer doesn’t need to learn new technology if they wish to stay with their trusty home telephone. The voice service equipment is backed up by a UPS.

Video services are provided through DIRECTV®, enabling residents to receive various pay-per-view packages, such as NFL Sunday Ticket®, NASCAR HotPass®, and also an industry-leading HD channel lineup to be launched late in 2007. YRT2 has also found that their customer base is interested in the wide range of international programming offered by DIRECTV.

MFH-1™ Headend

The DIRECTV delivery technologies, either over RF or IP, also significantly minimize the size and expense of the headend. Whereas a comparable traditional headend may cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, a DIRECTV headend is significantly less expensive. Instead of racks of equipment with individual receivers and modulators for each channel, the digital service is received from a small, inconspicuous satellite dish, piped through a few pieces of equipment and distributed digitally out to each customer, where the signals are ultimately received by either an RF or IP-based set-top box and are transmitted to the television. The infrastructure is transparent to the end user.

In most neighborhoods, these services are delivered over a two-fiber, 100 Mbps symmetric point-to-point network with passive products and electronics provided by AFL Telecommunications. The point-to-point (PTP) architecture is used because it delivers today’s services very cost- competitively with high levels of flexibility and bandwidth. Where a typical PON network may struggle to provide the bandwidth needed to support the number of standard and high definition streams of video needed for multiple TVs in each household, a PTP network can handle with ease these bandwidth requirements plus the added load from VoIP digital phone, web surfing, and downloading. “The AFL offering is a solution, instead of a set of products. After experience with a number of different suppliers, we’ve found that AFL best understands the myriad challenges of greenfield FTTH networks. From content acquisition and network design to on-site field training, AFL’s support has been key in allowing us to provide world-beating services at a significantly lower total system cost than we’ve found anywhere else,” said Taylor Jones, CTO of YRT2.

The passive plant usually consists of one handhole for every 12 customers, and the splicing and drops for all customers are usually installed when the first customer asks for service. Drops for homes that have not been built are run to the edge of the lot and stored for future use. Provisioning these services has become a snap. The FTTH drop cable is run inside a pre-installed duct to a box placed between the studs in the house. When the installer comes to the house, he or she provisions the equipment in the box, dials a number and the latest software is downloaded to the box. The service is then provisioned and is available for the “Technology Concierge” to complete the property walkthrough with the new resident.

All of this technology doesn’t mean anything if customers aren’t pleased, and YRT2 can point to satisfied customers throughout the Carolinas. As one satisfied customer said, “Everyone at YRT2 was very helpful during the orientation and after we moved in, and the most unique aspect of our YRT2 experience has been the people we have dealt with. All service issues were handled with courtesy, whether it was the person on the phone, or the service rep that came to the house…everyone was super! We never had to wait, and the response to every issue was handled immediately.”

As one might expect, with that type of customer experience, YRT2 has had a great response to its service offerings and “lights up” multiple new communities each quarter. The future continues to look bright as they light up one happy customer at a time.

Call our Access Solutions Team at 864-433-8072.