Combining GIS and deployment operations management systems is a win for fiber companies – and their customers

By Michael Morrissey / Sitetracker

GIS mapping solutions are mainstays of fiber-optic network development and operations. The same is increasingly accurate for cloud-based deployment operations management systems, which can shorten fiber-development timelines by roughly 33% by combining project planning, project management, and work management capabilities across hundreds of critical infrastructure deployments.

Until recently, the integration of the two has been lacking – a combination that promises to tighten the connections between design, development, operations, and sales and marketing to increase efficiency, speed fiber deployment, and boost revenues.

Global fiber growth accelerates

Given the dynamics and competitive pressures of the global fiber market, maximizing speed and optimizing the execution of fiber deployment has never been more critical. Fiber has become the overwhelmingly dominant delivery vehicle for fixed broadband wherever you look. U.S. fiber broadband passings rose 13% in 2022 on top of similar growth the year before, and the Fiber Broadband Association expects federal funding programs such as Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD), Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), ReConnect, and others further to boost fiber-to-the-home deployments in the next five years.

In Europe, the data confirms that “fiber rollout is steadily advancing at an increasingly fast pace,” as Eric Festraets, president of the FTTH Council Europe, recently put it. “We can confidently say that we are on the right track to meet the EU’s ambitious connectivity targets set out by Gigabit Society 2025 and Digital Compass 2030 strategies.”

While the specifics may vary, the same theme holds in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In short, where there are people, there will be fiber—sooner rather than later.

GIS fiber deployment limits

It’s no secret that fiber is a highly competitive market with significant first-mover advantages. The telecom industry is racing to meet demand. Hence, there is a need for deployment speed and precision, which combining GIS and deployment operations management can bring fiber operators and their contractors.

GIS’s advantages are familiar to fiber operators. It helps designers and engineers visualize the network as they plan, build, operate, and maintain it. That informs everything from troubleshooting network-ops problems to planning for future growth. It can help spot excess capacity along existing routes to indicate where sales teams might best focus their energies.

But GIS also has its limitations. It can’t discern soil types or buried boulders that may block a line’s ideal route. It can’t see problematic rights of way, expired permits, or shared ducting in which there’s no space available. These are the details that the ground truths captured by deployment operations management systems can quickly deliver.

These systems manage mass deployments with templates embodying best practices across the arc of design, build, operations, and maintenance—templates honed through the lessons of thousands of fiber deployments. Those templates and other tools standardize highly repeatable elements while enabling site-by-site variation based on equipment, accessibility, priority, staffing, material availability, etc. They apply machine learning to help managers refine forecasts and schedule more strategically. They harness mobile apps to bring field crews and subcontractors into the fold.

Because deployment operations management systems help those crews do their jobs better, workers use them, which means the information is current. Being cloud-based, these systems provide real-time visibility into the state of a fiber rollout and its ongoing operations throughout the organization. Field techs have a far more vivid understanding of the ground truths associated with a particular job, and senior managers can grasp the big picture with much greater clarity than previously possible.

Closing the fiber design-build loop

So, by integrating GIS with deployment operations management solutions, you enable what amounts to a constantly updated as-built drawing of your network as it grows. That feedback loop drastically shrinks the typical gulf between design and development. It has significant implications in a land-grab environment such as the one in which so much of the global fiber industry now finds itself.

Consider an example of a GIS map that shows 1,000 homes to be passed by running fiber through a new area of a given city. Surveying crews note obstacles that drop that number to 800. During digging, other hindrances cut it to 700. Typically, the designer is none the wiser – this part of town is one of many neighborhoods, and the fiber operator is expanding to many cities and towns. Those updates trickle back through spreadsheets, emails, or paper forms. It may be weeks before someone updates the GIS map.

Yet sales and marketing are basing their efforts on that original GIS-based design. They’re wasting their time pitching a fiber upgrade to 300 households who, should they bite, won’t have access to your service anyway. And you’ve invested in piquing an interest in fiber that your competitors might decide to serve at your expense.

A potent combination

That only illustrates what combining GIS and deployment operations management systems can yield. Automating these functionalities in a way that’s seamless across the business lets teams collaborate on one continually updated, reliable workflow. They can design and redesign it, assign work, and see the results as teams progress on a given job. On the operations side, managers can, for example, use ODTR readings that field techs enter directly into deployment operations management systems’ mobile apps to determine precisely where cable issues are happening and then assign the right crews to repair them.

Integrating GIS mapping with deployment operations management systems connects service providers, engineers, construction crews, subcontractors, local municipalities, and investors into one secure, real-time, collaborative tool enhanced by GIS network visualization. This simplifies fiber operators’ ability to receive GIS-based work plans, organize and schedule work, accurately capture production progress, create reports, and—perhaps most notably in the relentlessly competitive fiber market—pitch high-speed data service to the right customers at the right time.