Put your Fibre on the Fast Lane with the Fibre Design Framework (FDF) and get deliverables right the first time

As per Research & Market, the global Fibre-to-the-Home/Building (FTTH/B) market is projected to reach US$29.7 B by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 13.1%. Considering such enormous growth and demand for fibre, efficient and commercially viable fibre planning and design is becoming incredibly important.

However, fibre operators face several challenges in Plan and Design phase that lead to budget overruns, missed deadlines, and loss of competitive edge. Here are some challenges:

• Skill shortage: Slows down the fibre rollout
• Manual work: Takes longer duration due to multiple hand-offs and paperwork in the High-level Design (HLD) and Low-level Design (LLD) stages
• Unstandardized designs: Leads to quality/consistency issues in templates and documents
• Unstructured work culture: Generates incorrect/missed field inputs

To overcome these challenges, fibre operators must consider ways to automate the key fibre design processes. The Fibre Design Framework (FDF) discussed in this Insight can bring high levels of automation in the fibre design process, and accelerate rollout time by 2X. The framework encompasses key components such as –

• Automated HLD generator: Create an automated high-level design with defined design standards and parameters
• Task Collaborator: Manage workflows digitally, collaborating tasks across multiple teams, and systems
• Field Navigator: Capture video-enabled field inputs across existing and planned design network elements
• Quality Gateways: Integrate quality management gates at crucial junctures

Embed a Value Driven Continuous Improvement (VDCI) function in your operations organization for superior customer experience and operational efficiency

There is fierce competition between fibre operators to acquire the top spot. And one way to remain competitive is to constantly improve or advance their operations while keeping costs in check and ensuring a seamless customer experience.

However, 60% of all corporate six sigma initiatives fail. Talking specifically about fibre operators, we observed that they still rely on traditional operations improvement activities performed on a one-time or on-demand basis translating to a limited-time benefit only. Also, these activities need to catch up with the fast-changing fibre environment.

As a result, fibre operators suffer from various challenges, like the inability to meet coverage targets on time, overshooting budget, and delays in service delivery. Despite a lean operating model, they fail to sustain continuous improvement, resulting in poor customer experience, huge investments, and unsustainable strategies

The need of the hour for fibre operators is a massive shift in their culture towards continuous improvement. They must embed a Value-Driven Continuous Improvement (VDCI) function into their organization’s structure to instill a culture of constant advancement, reduce OpEx and stay ahead of the competition. The critical stages of the VDCI function are Discovery, Formulation, Execution, and Evaluation.

Leverage process orchestration framework to achieve faster integration with partner service providers and improve operational efficiency

Businesses in the Connectedness industry are actively looking to expand their roots into the untapped fiber market. And to do so, most of them prefer to go with off-net services, i.e., leasing network infrastructure from a partner service provider. It enables quick and cost-efficient customer acquisition for establishing a larger footprint.

As per the annual report of a leading full fiber operator in the UK, off-net revenues account for 50% of their total revenue. Therefore, service providers must overcome the challenges that hinder them from supporting lean off-net operations and improving customer satisfaction.

Service providers in the off-net space face the following challenges:

• Integration with multiple partner service providers is complex, time-consuming (18+ months for each integration), and expensive
• Lack of visibility into the partner service provider’s network leading to disjointed operations
• Lack of transparency across E2E process management, leading to multiple follow-ups
• Increase in Tail order processing cycle time (i.e., order processing time by partner service provider)
• Significant manual processes owing to the dependency on the partner service provider
• Lack of standardized processes and a unified way of handling the orders/cases

The above challenges call for a complete transformation of the off-net services. Use the off-net process orchestration framework that acts as a central orchestrator to bridge the gap between service providers and partner service providers. It reduces operation costs by 56% while providing better control and visibility into E2E processes. Experience 3X faster integration with partner service providers using the framework.

The key ingredients of the framework are:

• Simple interface aggregation: Use an interface aggregation platform to enable quick integration with the partner service provider and accelerate fiber adoption
• Unified task orchestration: Create an end-to-end process flow map to get a complete view of the order and issue status
• Point-to-point ticketing: Integrate customer self-service with automated troubleshooting. Use bots to raise tickets directly with the partner service providers
• Off-net SLA governance and reporting: Drive partner service provider-specific SLAs with automated follow-ups and real-time reports on aging and penalty metrics