ALLTEL’s Successful AM/FM Program

Abstract
ALLTEL’s communications businesses provides local telephone, long distance, and wireless services to more than 2.7 million customers in 14 states (November 1997). Our local telephone outside plant engineering and assignment groups consist of about 500 people in 94 locations. Our AM/FM program was approved in 1989 and currently supports our wireline (local telephone) outside plant records. The landbase is completely digitized, outside plant records associated with 1 million customer lines (at year end 1996) are also complete. The plant records conversion is anticipated to be completed by year end 1998. ALLTEL started with a VAX based system and 56k networking. We moved to workstations with Clipper technology and are currently deploying Windows NT. On a corporate level we have a dedicated Administrative Manager and a Technical Manager. Our Administrative Manager negotiates support and procurement contracts, system practices, training documents and overall coordination. Our Technical Manager maintains the rulebase and database structure, validation software, and connectivity to legacy systems. At year end 1997 we had four database servers. Each of the server locations has a staff of three or four people that support 103 engineering/records software licenses at 27 engineering sites. We also have 147 copies of records viewing software at 15 locations.

Introduction
ALLTEL was formed in 1983 with the merger of the Allied Telephone Company and Mid-Continent Telephone Corporation. In 1983 the new company’s customer (wireline) lines totaled 847,000 operating in 19 states. ALLTEL has expanded beyond an operating telephone company, at year end 1997 we will have about 1.8 million wireline and .9 million wireless customers. We currently operate wireline exchanges in 14 states. Our wireline assignments and outside plant groups currently consist of about 500 people in 94 locations. This paper will deal primarily with our wireline efforts.

How we started
In 1985 our Vice President of Corporate Network Services established an adhoc in-house committee to review (the then current) automated drafting offerings. During 1985 this group made visits to other telephone companies, hardware and software equipment suppliers, AM/FM conferences, and conversion vendors. They made numerous phone calls and reviewed industry journals. They recommended that a dedicated team be established to perform an in-depth study. Acting on that recommendation, a formal focus group was established in 1986. The adhoc committee had successfully demonstrated to senior management that paper based engineering records should be eliminated. This goal was agreed to by ALLTEL’s Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and other key Senior Management. The focus group worked for about one year gathering more data, interviewing additional users, meeting with hardware and software vendors and selecting a conversion partner. At the conclusion of their efforts a presentation and business plan recommending a pilot program was given to management.