OpenVault is using data sets and analytics to give cable operators insights into subscriber data usage trends, with the goal of helping them right-size their broadband customer service tiers and drive incremental revenues.

The company’s newest offering, the cloud-based “Revenue Accelerator,” will be on display at NCTC’s Independent Show in Anaheim, Calif., later this month, along with OpenVault’s other latest technologies.  

OpenVault is currently collecting broadband usage data from more than 4 million subscribers, which it aggregates and then enriches with things like customer billing-type data to create data sets that can be leveraged so cable operators can target optimal subscribers for service tier upgrades or to better understand network congestion.

All of the company’s solutions are designed to help cable operators “either drive more revenues, reduce capex or plan better for capex, or extend the life of the network,” OpenVault CEO and founder Mark Trudeau said in an interview with CED. “While all around helping maintain and grow the margins for the broadband business.”

OpenVault sends cable operators a set of commands to configure their cable modem termination systems (CMTS) to collect and send Internet Protocol Detail Record (IPDR) data to OpenVault’s cloud instance, without the need for any hardware installs inside the operator’s network. The cloud is where OpenVault’s collectors reside to turn raw IPDRs into useful data for consumption calculations.

“Our product is all cloud-based, and it’s very scalable up or down, so we can work with smaller operators that have a few thousand subscribers, or work with the largest operators with millions of subscribers,” Trudeau said.

As for the granularity of data, when it comes to network level congestion and capacity utilization, OpenVault collects data from every part of an operator’s network every five minutes, and collects subscriber-level data every 15 minutes to tell how much bandwidth each broadband subscriber is using. The company also utilizes subscriber-level data provided, usually daily, by the operator.

 “We’re unique in that we take data from multiple functional areas and we pull it together and it ends up providing a lot of really great insight that these operators, frankly, often have never seen before,” Trudeau said.  

With the data, for example, OpenVault can see which subscribers are constantly bumping up against the speed they’re provisioned for, indicating they may be a prime upgrade candidate, or can notify subscribers when they’re getting close to hitting their data cap if ones are in place. OpenVault can see how many devices are connected to the WiFi network in a household, providing information on how much bandwidth might be optimal. It can also identify power users and abusers on the network, slowing down a particular abuser’s speed without touching the operator’s provisioning system.

 Applying algorithms to all of the different data attributes enables the company to micro-target service tier upgrade candidates and give service providers a list of prime candidates for the purposes of outgoing campaigns.

“Having all of this data together all in one place, is somewhat unique and helps [operators] put forth much smarter, more targeted campaigns,” Trudeau said.

The Revenue Accelerator product can have a “massive impact” on operator’s broadband margins, according to Trudeau, who noted that OpenVault has customers this year that are on track to upgrade 18 percent of their customer base using the data provided.

OpenVault has worked with operators including Vyve Broadband, Wow!, Atlantic Broadband and Vodafone.