Fiber network planning & design: Scaling fiber builds without the chaos.

Welcome to Bite Size Fiber, the podcast where we break down the biggest challenges in fiber and telecom one bite at a time. I'm your host, Ellie Pulse. In Episode 2 of our Planning and Design series, we're talking about scaling fiber builds from small pilots to large rollouts without falling into chaos. Joining me are Stephen Baker and Jeroen Benhaberbaker, who share the realities of scaling projects. From the permitting hurdles that can delay builds for months, to challenges around aerial versus underground deployments and the shortage of skilled splicers. We'll also explore how operators of different markets are managing these challenges while maintaining efficiency. If your team is looking to grow its fiber rollout without unnecessary delays, this is one you'll want to hear. Let's get into it. Scaling up from small deployments to hundreds of thousands of homes, Scaling up from thousands of homes. That's not easy. What are some of the biggest struggles there that operators face when trying to grow efficiently? Well, there's a couple of things. The proper planning that we've already discussed previously. But depending on where you're building and what area here, at least I can speak to the US, I'm sure there's equal challenges in EMEA as well. If you're in California and you're going to build something new, well, your permitting process could be a So you're going to be a part of the entire concrete driveways. You're going to be a part of the entire concrete driveways and stuff like that. So very, very costly and late to construction time period. And then, if you look at other areas where there has been the broadband funding for this year, which has had a lot of fiber-bonded growth has occurred because of that. You're getting into areas that have been the same. So you're getting into areas that have been the broadband funding for this year. So you're getting into areas that have never had facilities like this, Bill. So you get out into rural areas and the poles are 35 foot tall and there's already power and there's already telephony on there. Now you attempt to put another telecommunications thing in that space and guess what? There's room on the pole. But you don't have the proper clearances where you have to have a certain distance between telephony and another type of medium. So then you get into having to replace poles. I got to pay the power company to put a 40-slip pole in. So that gets expensive. And then you're comparing that against the cost of, okay, if we don't want to spend it on aerial, then how much more is it going to cost us to do underground to where we can actually speed up the process? So there's quite a few challenges. There's probably even a lot more, you know, getting into operations and being able to support the infrastructure, being able to splice it. I mean, that's been one of the big challenges here in the U.S. across probably the last six to eight years is lack of qualified fiber splicers. They've had to go out and train an entire new workforce because those upgrades that we used to do every two to three years, you started including fiber in that into the 90s. So you got experienced fiber splicers. Well, when the upgrades quit, they're kind of out of jobs. So that skill set went away and had to be rebuilt. That's interesting. And so Jeroen, we've got two different markets here, U.S. and then Europe. How is some of that different? Or do you see some of those same challenges? Yeah, well, I definitely recognize the lack of experienced fiber splices or the fact that you need to have quite a lot of people having that capability. And especially in the beginning of a new fiber rollout, it's quite hard to get those people trained and to get the right number of splicers that you have. Now, I must say in the typical European markets, fiber rollout has been ongoing for quite a couple of years. So there is a certain amount of critical mass in the number of splicers available. And I think that translates in the fact that in the European market, we see more splice solutions. And from the U.S. market, Steve, I guess you see quite a lot of connectorized solutions like MPTs and items that are more plug and play in the field rather than needing splicers every time. It's a mixed bag here in the U.S. as far as what technologies are getting used, but it definitely is connectorized. It does go ahead and get built and connected during construction here in the U.S. because you're trying to turn a customer on immediately, your content provider. Or EMEA is one company owns the infrastructure and then you just let other providers come along and provide services. And then they have to get the connectivity in place at that time. Yeah, that is correct. From a deployment point of view, I think also the typical American market will have more aerial fiber, especially in the more spread out rural communities. Whereas Europe has quite a lot of cities that have more of an underground deployment. Of course, there are aerial deployments. I think in general, it's more cities that are being constructed in Europe. Maybe returning to the previous question that you asked, Ellie, in terms of scaling up a fiber rollout. In my experience, it's always worth looking into a small proof of concept or a small area, a couple of streets, to do the first fiber construction. And validate that all the techniques that you want to use, all the equipments, the splicers, as we've just been talking about. That all of this makes sense and can be deployed easily before scaling up. Because choices you make at the beginning have quite a large impact the further along you get in the fiber rollout. Because typically you start with, this is the vendor, this is the equipment, these are the kawas and ducts that we'll be using. And especially for the first couple of months or years, you will be using that before re-evaluating, is this the right decision or do we want to go around the rate? So it does make sense to validate that early on. What would you say some of the best practices are to keep everything in check, have good data, proper planning, set yourself up for success? Data is the starting point. And then I think it's really important to have a good workflow to try and make sort of a well-oiled engine, cutting up the focus area that you have in different parts of the network, a couple of blocks or a couple of streets, depending on how you look at it. And then apply a single workflow to that. So planning and design, talking to subcontractors, identifying who wants to build in that area, making sure you have the permits, as Steve already mentioned. So for me, the goal is to try and break it down into atomized parts, your whole network rollout, and then defining a workflow and applying that over and over again to the same size data.