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 Bols.
In today's episode,
we're wrapping up our planning and
design series by tackling a hot topic,
manual versus automated design workflows and fiber planning.
Joining me again are Stephen Baker and Jeroen van Haberbeke,
who have both spent years helping operators and fiber planning.
use automation to accelerate and improve their fiber rollouts.
We dig into what really happens when you compare
traditional manual designs with automated tools
like Comsof Fiber that can churn out consistent,
optimized designs in minutes.
We'll explore real-world examples of how automation
can cut design times from hours to minutes,
ensure consistency,
and even save 10% on build costs,
while also acknowledging where manual adjustments
still matter for local expertise and field validation.
If you're wondering when to trust the
machine and when to lean on your team,
this episode is for you.
Let's get into it.
So,
Steve,
based on your experience designing nearly a million miles,
what would you say is the number one mistake you
see in network planning that operators should avoid?
The biggest is probably not ensuring that
data is up to date before they start.
If you're not preparing the data before you start,
then prepare to fail.
We've spoken about the fact that quality is essential to avoid
redesigns and making sure that you have the right design first.
But I think automation is also a very important
point there because with the right JS data,
even if you need to connect everything manually,
that really throws a spanner in wheels.
If you have the right automation system,
like console fiber,
for example,
to churn out new designs at the click of a button,
that's really a way that you can get to a very fast
first version of the design and then
iterate on it with field surveys,
partners,
or whoever needs to have eyes on that.
But the fact that in any design workflow,
you need to have automation as soon
as possible and as much as possible,
that's something that I definitely recommend
in increasing the speed of a rollout.
That's interesting.
And Irina,
across your career,
have you had to do some of these processes manually?
And now how has that changed with having these more automated tools?
There was definitely one case where we want to
validate the results of a console fiber calculation.
And we were talking to a very friendly client who actually made
sure that we had three network planners on a single day available.
And each of these made a network design for a certain area.
And then console fiber did the same thing.
So we had four designs that were created.
The console fiber automation was quickest
because that was a couple of minutes of work.
I think the planners took about two to
three hours to come to a network design.
And there was quite a big variation in
the results that these three guys made.
So that was the first observation.
If you ask three different manual planners to make a design,
they will roughly follow the same guidelines,
but definitely not the exact same choices every time.
Whereas if you have a software solution,
there are algorithms built in there that will
make the decision the same way every single time.
So your network results will be more uniform.
So that was one interesting observation.
And another one was that the actual cost of the resulting network,
there was about 10% variation between the different designs.
So between the most expensive one and the cheapest one.
And the cheapest one was created by the console fiber
solution because that's an automation tool that will
minimize the total cost involved in your network.
So depending on the planner we chose on that day,
we could save 10% or lose 10% of the investment for that small area.
That's huge.
Yeah.
And then thinking about all the time saved across a year,
if that was done in a day and saved,
you know,
eight hours or so.
Very cool.
