Powertrust.com warms hearts of consumers with free ISP
PowerTrust.com (www.powertrust.com), an Internet-based energy company that offers energy services for homeowners and small businesses, just announced a new partnership with MillionEyes.com that makes it among the first online energy companies to offer free Internet access to current and potential customers in the U.S. PowerTrust.com offers “beyond-the-meter benefits,” such as free Internet access, domestic long-distance telephone rates for a flat fee, satellite TV service, and discounts on other home products and services.
The house that intelligence built
About 13,000 homes in Southern California will be built with structured wiring and broadband access, and at the center of these networks will be Cisco’s Internet Home Gateway (iHG), a residential gateway offering, which will distribute the content and services coming in over the broadband pipe to all the networked devices in the home. Cisco stated that networks for the new homes in the community would cost on average about $1,500, but custom-built systems could cost as much as $100,000. In the existing home market, Cisco estimated costs for the iHG to be $500.
edocs opens its doors to open up standards
edocs, Inc., an Internet billing and customer management software and services provider, recently announced its membership in the Customer Profile EXchange (CPExchange). The CPExchange Network, which is dedicated to developing an open standard to facilitate the exchange of privacy-enabled customer information across enterprise applications, offers a vendor-neutral, open standard for facilitating the privacy-enabled interchange of customer information. edocs claims it is the first Internet billing and customer management software provider to be named to this organization, which is dedicated to enabling e-businesses to leverage customer information while providing a framework for privacy safeguards.
Multiple-market billing solution from ‘Down Under’
Australia-based Hansen Corporation recently announced the release of its multiple-market billing solution, hub (Hansen Unified Billing), which integrates utilities and telecommunications billing data into a consolidated bill. hub has been implemented into BT Belgium and several of Hansen Corporation’s existing clients are in the process of upgrading existing Hansen billing systems to take advantage of the new technology the product offers.
ENERGYguide.com gives live customer chat for online shoppers
ENERGYguide, a Web site that offers electricity and natural gas comparison shopping tools and enables consumers to sign up for energy offers online, just added real-time customer assistance in an effort to help consumers comparison shop for energy providers. Consumers will receive one-on-one, real-time assistance from representatives through live chat capabilities powered by LivePerson (Nasdaq: LSPN), a company that provides technology to facilitate real-time sales and customer service for Web sites.
“Powering Up” e-transactions in Pennsylvania
USPowerSolutions is enabling electronic transactions between distribution companies, customer acquisition portals, product vendors and ESPs through its PowerUp-G application, which was selected by Advanced Energy to provide EDI over the Internet in the Pennsylvania electric market.
Breaking records in EBPP adoption
Solant, Inc., a provider of Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) solutions, just announced that its Rapid Adoption Program has enabled TriVergent Communications, a South Carolina-based communications provider, to achieve record-breaking results in signing up customers for EBPP-an adoption rate has exceeded 18 percent during May and June. That’s an increase of 450 percent above the industry standard of 1 percent to 4 percent. Since 1998, the company has received over $2.6 million in e-payments (represents 36,000 customer payment transactions), saving $50,000 or more in customer service, bill processing and payment costs.
Sierra & Open-c deliver Open-cIS
Sierra Systems, a provider of CIS integration services, and Open-c Solutions, an application provider, are teaming up to offer Open-cIS, a customer information services system to both regulated and unregulated energy companies.
National warning: switching games hurt consumers
The nonprofit United Homeowners Association (UHA) warned consumers across the U.S. that cost savings under energy deregulation may be denied to them by former utility monopolies that are exploiting their still-powerful status by playing “switching games” designed to frustrate homeowners seeking to use lower-cost competitors, including online energy companies. UHA’s consumer warning is based on an analysis of natural gas deregulation at work in two major U.S. markets: Atlanta and Washington, D.C. In D.C., UHA found evidence that as many as three out of four Washington Gas and Light customers seeking to switch to alternative energy companies are hit with unreasonable delays, many of which result in long-stymied consumers giving up out of frustration. By contrast, UHA determined that fewer than one in 10 customers of Atlanta Gas and Light (AGL) in Georgia face such switching delays when they opt for a competitor.
