Video Partners
Whether you’re blazing new trails with IPTV & OTT, or still struggling with analog, we’ve automated just about every form of video delivery, all directly from our BroadHub customer management and billing platform.
Uncategorized
Cloud-Based Billing
BroadHub® in the Cloud
Want BroadHub® Without the Hardware? No Problem!
GLDS has been offering a cloud-based version of BroadHub for years and operators report that it saves time, saves money and is just plain easier to use. More than 80 operators worldwide use BroadHub (and predecessor products) every day, all virtually from our data center in Carlsbad, California, USA. A thin client is installed on each workstation, a little configuration, and you’re off and running. As long as you have an internet connection, you have BroadHub, anywhere, anytime – you can even access BroadHub from a simple browser when not in the office. Call it cloud-based, call it SaaS, it’s BroadHub wherever you want it.
GLDS’ Cloud-based environment offers:
- Fully redundant hardware for BroadHub, SuperController and all needed modules. Meticulously maintained, fast equipment that provides top performance.
- Redundant power supplies, backed up by two natural gas generators that provide up-times consistently greater than 99.8%.
- Nightly backups, replicated to our facilities in Wisconsin, ensure you’re never at a loss for data.
- Fully redundant fiber optic connections with automatic cut-over ensure maximum up-time.
- We perform BroadHub version upgrades and all system maintenance leaving you to focus on running your business.
- GLDS has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware and Citrix infrastructure to bring virtual access to BroadHub from any location you can find an internet connection.
Whether you’re a current GLDS customer looking to mitigate risk, or a new customer hoping to get ramped up with GLDS more quickly, BroadHub in the Cloud is just one more way GLDS partners with its customers to provide easy access to our best-of-suite solutions.
Contact us to learn more about BroadHub in the Cloud.
Customer Management and Billing
BroadHub®
Looking for end-to-end customer management and billing? BroadHub is designed to give you all the key functionality you need, without a lot of extra (expensive) features you won’t use. Whether it’s customer management, billing, self-care, workforce management or other features you’ve come to expect from tier-one systems, we offer a best-of-suite approach with pre-integrating solutions that deliver the most value, without the need for systems integrators.
Since 1980, GLDS has provided leading billing and subscriber management systems for small to medium-sized broadband services providers. Backed by a team of professionals with decades of broadband operations experience, our flagship product, BroadHub®, has been developed from the ground up as both a native Windows and Linux application-unlike competitive solutions which merely lay a shell over outdated, legacy architecture. No AS-400 or mainframe needed!
The results? BroadHub is the solution that is more intuitive, offers greater operational control and is less restrictive than other systems available – all at a price up to 80% less than competing platforms. It’s the broadband billing and subscriber management system preferred by operators with 300 to 300,000 customers.
Best-of-Suite
While some companies focus on only one discipline and expect broadband service providers to hire a company to integrate these disciplines into a custom solution, GLDS believes this approach is inefficient and unnecessary, and results in a bloated, integrator-dependent solution. Instead, GLDS offers a purpose-built suite of solutions that are pre-integrated, and work to deliver a seamless operator and customer experience.
Standard vs. Enterprise
GLDS offers two versions of its BroadHub platform, each with its own functional focus. The Standard version is designed to meet the needs of operators with up to about 20,000 subscribers. Operators with more than 20,000 subscribers find that the additional features and performance standards available in our Enterprise version are a great compliment to an already broad system. The following list highlights the additional features of the Enterprise platform. Upgrades available for Standard BroadHub customers.
Additional enterprise features
- Linux server operating system provides an approximate 30% performance boost over the standard version.
- Up to 28 billing cycles
- Support for multi-company financial reporting
- Ability to relate/attach files to customer accounts
Regardless of which version you use, you’ll find that BroadHub provides all of the features you’d expect from an enterprise customer management and billing system, without the enterprise price.
Stand-Alone vs. Cloud
Whether it’s our lite DSB platform, or our feature-rich BroadHub Enterprise platform, GLDS Hosting gives you all the billing, customer management and provisioning tools you need, without having to manage any of the infrastructure. All you need is an Internet connection and you’re off and running.
The Digital Service Bureau is a web-hosted digital control and billing platform that’s accessed through the Internet. This no-frills system’s low startup cost and ability to run on your existing Windows® PC and Internet connection make it an excellent solution for smaller systems, or for larger ones looking to add new digital services or Pay-Per-View.
Wrap GLDS hosting services around BroadHub and you have the leading customer management system of it’s kind, all from the convenience of a virtual, cloud-based session. GLDS provides and maintains all related hardware, all system maintenance, back-ups, restores, PPV loads, etc. and all system upgrades for all products allowing you to focus on meeting the needs of your customers.
Pre/Post-Paid Billing
Attract a new segment of customers with flexible payment options that eliminate bad debt
GLDS supports flexible billing options including more the traditional broadband model of advance billing of subscription services and post-pay for usage, as well as more recent models which allow you to charge for all services in advance of delivery – prepaid. No money in a customer’s prepaid account means no service for your customer and no bad debt for you.
- In addition to traditional operators can now offer an additional billing and payment channel for existing customers – all within the same
- Turn NPD customers into prepaid customers and increase overall revenues.
- Offer an unlimited number of prepaid “buckets” and tie a single, or group of services to each bucket.
- Supports both transaction (VoIP and VOD usage) and traditional subscription based (subscription video or data) models, each with their own prepaid buckets.
- Real-time charging for usage-based services. If there’s no money in their prepaid account, they don’t receive service.
Whether you’re a start-up looking for a cost-effective way to get going, or a seasoned broadband service provider looking to improve your infrastructure, BroadHub offers the most value of any solution of its kind.
Want a demo? Reach out and let us know and we’d be happy to provide a video overview, or a one-on-one tour of our solutions.
Workforce Management API
BroadHub Tech™ gateway
Already have a workforce management solution?
Link it to BroadHub® through GLDS’ BroadHub Tech gateway.
BroadHub Tech from GLDS connects your mobile workforce management solution to your BroadHub billing and subscriber management system, enabling your organization to work faster, smarter and more cost effectively. BroadHub Tech gateway can provide seamless integration between BroadHub and any internet-enabled workforce management device in the field, significantly enhancing the functionality of both systems. While not as robust as our own BroadHub Tech platform, the BroadHub Tech gateway connection eliminates the need for follow-on paperwork and calls to dispatch for field work including changing equipment, refreshing boxes, noting changes to customer accounts and finalizing work orders.
Think your workforce management partner is good? You should see GLDS’ BroadHub Tech!
Current BroadHub Tech gateway integration partners can be viewed here.
BroadHub/WinCable Outgoing Envelopes [TOP FEED/FLAP]
Outgoing envelope used with 3-Message BroadHub/WinCable statements. This is the envelope used to send all mailed items. Works with top-feed insertion machines.
Voice Partners
GLDS offers fully-integrated provisioning of voice-related services and devices, directly from our BroadHub customer management and billing platform.
Voice & Internet Provisioning
Automated VoIP and Internet Service Delivery
Once considered cutting edge, advanced Internet Protocol (IP) services are a growing part of everyday broadband product portfolios. As technologies like broadband Internet and VoIP expand, so do the challenges of administering and billing for them.
WinProv™
GLDS has empowered operators with a broad suite of tools for IP service management. We were the first cable billing vendor to offer a fully integrated DOCSIS cable modem provisioning system, in early 2003. The product, named WinProv, allows operators to automate activation, deactivation and parameter changes directly from the billing system. To date, GLDS remains the only subscriber management system vendor to offer this type of fully-integrated, direct provisioning.
Service Provisioning Gateway™ (SPG)
Internet services have evolved over the years, along with the need for more complex tools to manage them. Email servers, web servers, access control systems, media terminal adapters (VoIP MTA’s), soft switches, gateways, and the like, have complicated the service management landscape. As a result, IP service provisioning has grown into a product category all its own. In response to these needs, GLDS introduced the SPG for both voice and Internet management.
Designed to provide advanced service management, SPG facilitates activation of advanced services via third-party IP Service Provisioning platforms. It does this by passing vital subscriber and service-related data to the provisioning system, which then interprets the data and configures all of the elements involved in the delivery of service to the end subscriber. The result is single-entry provisioning – directly from the billing system.
Want to see who we’ve integrated with?
Want to bill for voice usage? We do that too!
Customer Self-Care
Web-Based
MyBroadbandAccount™: Web-Based Customer Self-Care, Available 24 x 365!
MyBroadbandAccount™ is tightly integrated with your BroadHub® billing and SuperController™ service delivery software to provide the best customer self-care solution available. Customers can instantly upgrade to new premium services, view their bill and pay it by credit card or bank draft, sign-up for recurring billing, view payment history, order Pay-Per-View, view PPV Order History, view Call Detail Records and report problems. Your customers have their own login and password to ensure their billing data remains secure.
GLDS hosts the platform, maintains security certificates and PA-DSS (PCI) compliance requirements. The platform is visually integrated into your existing website so that your customers never know they are dealing with it. You control the whole site from your web browser. Custom configure your layout, color scheme and fonts. Add your complete channel lineup, and list any current specials you might offer.
Want to see a demo? Just ask.
MyBroadbandMarket™: Web-Based Shopping and Self-Subscription Portal
MyBroadbandMarket™ takes integration and automation to a new level as it digs even deeper into your BroadHub® customer management and billing system to provide your customers with real-time, house-specific product availability, and pricing. No more generic bundles and prices on your website. No more “give us your information and we’ll call you” type web forms.
Customers can view available product bundles, or create their own dynamically from an unlimited number of voice, video and Internet options, all while shopping on their schedule, 24×365. Reduce phone calls from window-shoppers, and yet give your website visitors all the tools they need to make decisions.
Not just a tool for customers ‘checking things out,’ MyBroadbandMarket powers the entire sales cycle from product bundling, to equipment selection, and even offers the customer the ability to schedule their installation based on available resources managed within BroadHub – it’s like you added an unlimited number of CSR’s with an unlimited capacity to serve customers.
GLDS hosts the platform, maintains security certificates, and ensures PA-DSS compliance requirements. The platform is visually integrated into your existing website so that your customers never know they aren’t working directly with you. It’s even responsive so it performs well regardless of whether your customer is at a desktop, or mobile. You’ve got the ability to configure many of the platform’s features from a web browser. Create new products and bundle them within BroadHub then launch them immediately on MyBroadbandMarket. It’s the most powerful marketing tool we’ve introduced to date.
Want to see a demo? Just ask.
Phone-Based
Audio Response Unit: Phone-Based Self-Care, 24 Hours a Day, 365 Days a Year!
GLDS offers a fully integrated ARU for full-time, unattended account balance inquiry, bill payment and even PPV event ordering. Additional blind features allow technicians to close work orders remotely and send a refresh to equipment. Operators can also use the ARU for outbound dialing to remind customers of upcoming appointments, advise them of the next big PPV event or even notify them of a pending disconnect. It’s a complete telephone-based communication tool.
The GLDS ARU is a PC-based system that will simultaneously answer 4, 8 or 12 phone lines. The ARU utilizes industry standard speech cards from Dialogic, the most respected name in voice processing hardware. The GLDS software provides reliable, low cost automated customer support – It’s easy to use and easy for you to monitor. Our ARU is compatible with most analog and digital addressable controllers and conditional access systems. No need to worry about shopping for new hardware — it’s included with the GLDS ARU.
The GLDS ARU is fully integrated with the GLDS BroadHub® Billing and Customer Management System and SuperController™ automated provisioning platform. No additional interfaces, batch processing, or manual tasks are required — it’s all automatic!
GLDS’ ARU offers a customizable implementation to meet your specific functional requirements.
Choose from these options:
- Phone port capacity of up to 12 ports
- Box hit (addressable refresh from a “blind” tech menu)
- Work Order Close (from “blind” tech menu)
- Balance Inquiry (speaks last bill amount, last payment amount, and current account balance)
- Pay by Credit Card (requires WinPay license and license of Balance Inquiry.)
- ANI/CallerID account pass-through
- Outbound dialing for appointment or past-due reminders
