When the power company that supplies the electricity to your home decides to cut the cord, customers are bound to take notice. In this case, however, Boston Edison, the major electricity distributor in the Boston metropolitan area, has decided to cut the telephone cord and rely on Mobitex for wireless data communications. This move has significantly improved communications with field sales and service representatives and increased the reliability of electricity supplies to homes and businesses.

Boston Edison - the power company that cut the cord

Ensuring customer satisfaction
Deregulation of the energy market started in the U.S, and like many monopolistic public utilities in Europe, Boston Edison is now facing increasingly stiff competition. Customers want service. Although few residential customers as yet have a choice of suppliers, interruption of service or dissatisfaction among customers creates opportunities for competitors and is bad business for Boston Edison.

For Boston Edison, Mobitex is part of the solution for ensuring customer satisfaction and maintaining profitability in an increasingly competitive market With Mobitex, Boston Edison sales and service representatives can respond more quickly to customer calls. Mobile workers are always in touch with the office, even when fighting traffic on their way to the next customer call.

Off-the-shelf solution
The Boston Edison application is actually an off-the-shelf solution based on Lotus cc:Mail Remote, an IBM-compatible portable PC, the Ericsson Mobidem M2090 radio modem and the RAM Mobile Data USA Mobitex network. Boston Edison was already a cc:Mail user, with a 1.750-user site license, so the Mobitex cc:Mail Remote solution was a natural choice.

"Installing cc:Mail over the RAM Network took us about 15 minutes," reports Boston Edison's AJ Petras. "It was almost too easy. And the best thing was that our users didn't need to learn any new software."

Currently only eight users can be connected simultaneously to the cc:Mail host. However, Boston Edison is so satisfied with the wireless system that the company has already decided to expand this capacity. The company also plans to install a leased-line connection to the RAM Network.

Customers impressed
Boston Edison employees are impressed with the ease of use and convenience of the new system. Now they no longer need to find a phone to contact the office. They also feel pride in using leading-edge technology and are eager to demonstrate it for customers.

Customers are very surprised to see that sales personnel can send messages, and receive a reply while sitting with the customer. This obviously creates a perception on the part of the customer that the Boston Edison sales organization is responsive and supported by the latest technology. These are important benefits.