The WOW! Buzz

The next group, I had the pleasure to interview, is another “ behind the scenes” department, here at WOW!  It is the Network Operations Center. This group does not interact with the external customers directly but what they do is definitely customer affecting.

I spoke to one of our Senior NOC ( Network Operations Center) Technicians, Paul, and here is what he had to say:

Tell me what a typical day in the life of WOW! Network Operations Technician is like?

Paul – After a NOC technician logs into multiple servers and tools, our WOW! life becomes an adventure: fast paced and action packed. The Network Operations work environment can change from calm to catastrophic, in a heartbeat!

What are the tools you have available to do your job?

Paul – NOC technicians have approximately 40 resource tools available. Primary resource tools which are displayed at all times on the NOC video wall are:
MRTG (multi router traffic grapher), Big Brother (hobbit), HP Open View (star topology graph), Avaya phone call stats and earth Google Doppler radar.

What’s the most rewarding part of your job?

Paul – Providing quality professional service to all our internal customers, from upper management to Video, Network and Head End Engineers, Maintenance and Install Technicians, Call Center Resource Managers and all of our call center representatives because great service will always filter down positively to our external customers! Addressing an issue before it becomes customer affecting is very rewarding as well.

What training do you have to go through to do your job?

Paul – When I was hired, as one of the few technicians back in 2002, there wasn’t any formal internal or external training. I had a lot of on-the-job training (OTJ).
As the growth continued, new equipment and services were implemented. Training at that time was provided internally by Engineers or Vendors.

What’s the most asked question you get?

Paul – Being that I monitor and adjust the climate in the NOC, the most asked question I get is “can you turn the air up, it’s too cold in here”!
Seriously, one of the most common questions we get today is troubleshooting wireless cable modems.

  There is so much that goes on behind the scenes at WOW! . I hope this helps show that there is more to the operations then just the phone interaction.