A long-time user of Telcordia’s Network Engineer planning solution, Portugal’s Sonaecom, has incorporated its fiber-to-the-home rollout into the platform and expanded its usage.
Sonaecom is Portugal’s leading provider in the telecommunications, broadband and media market. It has selected Telcordia suite of planning and engineering solution for a national FTTH rollout that will reach more than 1 million homes.
Telcordia’s Network Engineer is a geospatial network management system that enables comprehensive design, documentation and management of the physical network and its associated inventory. Sonaecom initially deployed Telcordia Network Engineer in 2001 and will use it to support its $354 million FTTH network expansion, which will be completed by 2011. Through Network Engineer, Sonaecom will track network inventory all the way to the customer residence, eliminating the time and cost of performing those tasks separately in a computer-aided-design (CAD) system.
Eliminating redundant CAD systems is just one of the ways that CSPs use Telcordia Network Engineer to support major network transformation projects. For example, in another FTTH rollout, a European company reduced planning time by 80 percent by using Network Engineer to automate network design and connection tasks.
Bill Wanke, president of operations solutions at Telcordia, said that by providing deep, actionable insights into their network inventory and its capabilities, Telcordia gives CSPs the measurable performance improvements that are must-haves at a time when competition and access to capital are tougher than ever.
“Smart service providers realize that an economic slump can be the best time to invest in the technologies that will determine their financial and competitive positions long after the recession has ended,” said Vince Vittore, principal analyst for Yankee Group. “That is why operators such as AT&T, Free and Telefónica Spain, as well as the governments of Australia, Greece and the United States, are each investing billions in aggressive broadband build-outs that will reshape their companies and countries for the next decade. Operators must learn from prior mistakes in the broadband market where they didn't have enough capacity to support rapid uptake.”
Laurie Spiegel, director of product marketing at Telcordia, said that this type of deployment is part of what she calls managed evolution in that service providers are taking advantage of existing network and software assets to extend into new markets and new services. “We’re glad they have seen enough benefits from using our software to continue using it for their network expansion,” she said.
Spiegel added that Sonaecom also will use Network Engineer to manage its mobile base stations. “So we are seeing demand in access services, both fixed and mobile. They also have plans to roll out fiber services to other carriers like mobile operators and become a wholesale access provider. We feel Network Engineer is the foundation for them to understand where their fiber inventory is and to help them manage the buildout in an efficient way,” she said.
Sonaecom relies on contractors to engineer its FTTH build, who were previously using cumbersome CAD drawings to input network information. The Network Engineer Solution allows flexibility to go back to make changes and update the plan, Spiegel said.
