Cellular South Finds 1,001 Uses for MapInfo Technology

Pictures, symbols and even sign language are great tools for communicating between groups with different native tongues, such as marketing and engineering. But not everyone is a sketch artist nor are all good at charades, so technologies like MapInfo Professional from Pitney Bowes are essential to keeping everyone in an organization such as Cellular South on the same page.

Pitney Bowes MapInfo is a provider of what broadly are called location intelligence solutions. It provides mapping and analysis tools for wireline, wireless and cable providers looking for a visual representation of their network, topology and demographic environment. It is one of those solutions that once users get to know it, they find creative ways to apply.

Cellular South is one such user. Along with other plug-in tools, Cellular South used MapInfo Professional to:

• Take snapshot views of the network
• Build coverage maps for its engineers
• Create an online interactive coverage map for customers
• Manage the network
• Conduct fault management
• Respond to calls into the call center about coverage issues
• Determine patterns such as the average distance users are from cell sites
• Provide thematic maps to marketing and other departments
• Help in emergency situations such as Hurricane Katrina during which they were able to track working sites
• Virtually fly through elevation or terrain maps
• Plan an on-going wireless broadband buildout

“We don’t use it as much as we could,” said David Smith, director of engineering for Cellular South. “But we do use it to get our point across.”

MapInfo is the data-crunching engine that overlays a visual representation of just about any data set a company can provide, onto a map. It could be demographic, performance related or coverage related. “It gives us a realistic view for both the customer and for us to use internal to build our towers and place our stores,” said Jim Richmond, director of corporate communications for Cellular South.

While it has 1,001 uses, MapInfo isn’t intuitive, Smith said. “You can’t just pick it up and use it. There is training involved,” he said. “It is a very powerful tool for crunching numbers and looking at data to compare and manipulate in a way to give you visuals that tell a story.”

Sometimes it tells a story the customer may not want to hear, such as when they use it to find out why they can’t make a call from certain locations. “It’s not always a good conversation, but we pride ourselves in telling the facts as they are,” Smith said. “In the old days ... if competitors had a single cell tower in a county, they’d color that in as if they had the whole county covered. We chose not to go that route because that is deceiving customers.”

Cellular South has been in business for 20 years now. It is the largest family owned wireless operation in the country, so the strategy must work.

Cellular South isn’t yet using it, but Pitney Bowes recently released its latest version (9.5) of MapInfo Professional, which features a big jump in interoperability. It offers support for Microsoft.NET and Web services interfaces that allow users, particularly smaller telco or other service providers, to acquire small data sets for specific geographic areas.

“The changes are fundamental but very important to the communications industry. Data access is important ... and it is important to make sure databases like Oracle 11g and Microsoft SQL 2008 and other standards are able to work flawlessly with our capability,” said Chris Cherry, director of communication vertical strategy at Pitney Bowes.

Other new enhancements include improved data creation and editing, which let customers create geographic data for better asset management and improved analysis. It allows multiple users to share customizable files, including custom symbols and thematic templates, making cross-department collaboration a reality. Improved vector translucency allows users to create better-looking maps for more detailed analysis.

Standards support is always a plus with complex tools such as this and the new version has increased support for industry standards and access to Open Geospatial Consortium’s Web Feature Service.

“Everyday we find new areas that location intelligence and analysis can help service providers. We have scratched the surface but there is still an awful lot of value in the industry we are uncovering,” Cherry said.

The company hopes service providers also will find value in the CAD capabilities MapInfo added and that it now allows service providers to download and use their own network element icons. “They can use symbols that mean something to them rather than having to use the ones we give them,” Cherry said.

The company is hoping the Web services capability and the software-as-a-service capability it offers will be attractive to smaller providers. The enhancements in the latest version will have an impact on other vertical markets as well. Jeff Vining, government research vice president at Gartner, said with the new database integration capabilities, improved collaboration functionality and greater ease of use, businesses and government agencies likely will become more reliant on location intelligence tools in strategic planning and analysis.

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