Brightspeed share their strategies for accelerating time to market and creating a reliable view of their fiber network.

Hello everyone. Thank you for attending today's webinar, Building a Technology Platform for the Fiber Lifecycle presented by IQGeo. I'm Jenna and I'll be moderating this webinar. Our speakers today are Sherry Hessenthaler, Vice President and Head of Operations Strategy at BrightSpeed, Nilesh Schroff, Network, Field and Customer Care Technology at BrightSpeed, and Jay Kadman, Senior Vice President at IQGeo. You can read their full bio, videos on the left side of your window by selecting the speakers tab. Just a few technical notes before we begin. If you'd like to download the slide deck, please click the handouts tab button on the left side of your screen. The webcast is being streamed through your computer so there is no dial in number. For the best audio quality, please make sure your volume is up. This webinar is being recorded and will be available on demand within 24 hours after the event. Time permitting, we will follow the presentations with a Q&A session. Please submit your questions using the questions and answers tab on the left side of your screen. Okay, let's begin. Jay, please go ahead. Thank you. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to listen to the webinar today. I'm very pleased to be doing the webinar with one of our key customers, BrightSpeed. Just a few notes about IQGeo, just for people who haven't heard of us. We started building geospatial network inventory software about 10 years ago. And really, from our perspective, the big gap in the telecom industry was twofold. It was a mobile first approach to field solutions and driving that from the field into the office. And then secondly, it was a real focus on a rich network model and a workflow engine in order to digitize and automate business processes. So initially, we started in the operations space, working with cable customers. Then we moved back into the planning and design space, including the acquisition of ComSoft and adding that to our portfolio a little over 12 months ago. And then moving downstream into the sales and revenue generation side. About two years ago, we were approached by, well, at the time, we didn't know they were such a large startup, but by BrightSpeed, with one of the most ambitious plans we've ever seen in the geospatial industry in terms of how they wanted to go to market. How they wanted to have a single common platform for network inventory and drastically reduce the number of platforms used, the integrations, and try and streamline every process they could with regards to a fiber rollout. So today, rather than hear from Ikegeo, you're going to hear from BrightSpeed themselves in terms of the things that they've gone through, in terms of their thought processes, their integrations, the things that they kind of key on in terms of rolling out different types of business processes, and the lessons learned, you know, as you go through such a large endeavor. So very pleased to hand this off to Sherry next, and Sherry will give you an overview of BrightSpeed, and then we'll cover as much details as we can in terms of the project and the aspirations going forwards. Sherry? Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks, Jay. Appreciate the handoff. As Jay had mentioned, you know, BrightSpeed has been, you know, a newly formed company and been a key strategic partner with IQgeo to support what we are looking to do as part of a very aggressive fiber build program. A little bit about myself and about BrightSpeed. So I actually, internal to BrightSpeed, have responsibility for our network design, planning, engineering, construction types of functions. From that perspective, I've been with the acquisition since the early part of January of 2021, actually, through the full acquisition, due diligence, and company stand-up, and now operation phase of the company. So a little bit about BrightSpeed itself. We were established in October of 2022, so we're a little bit over a year old at this point in time, and we were a 20-state facility acquisition from Lumen that is private equity funded from the Apollo Management Funds. So kind of gives you a little bit of framework of, even though we were acquired facility assets that already existed, primarily heavy copper, minimal fiber types of passings at this point in time. We have attributes of a conveyed acquisition in the communication industry, but a lot of aspects of us are very startup-oriented, especially related to kind of systems, corporate processes, et cetera. Right now, we're right around 4,200 employees. That was a base of about 3,300 employees that were conveyed as part of the acquisition, frontline types of positions, along with employees that we have acquired in our business, both pre-close and since our actual establishment date in October of 2022. If you think about our turf, we actually have a potential customer base of households of about 6.5 million. I'll talk a little bit about that. We have a customer base right now. It was right around a little bit over a million customers. We're headquartered in Charlotte, and our whole strategic focus is really not only the acquisition of the business, but then an infusion in the business of a $2 billion investment to build out fiber across the 20-state footprint that we're in to over 3 million homes. We've already been very active in the subsidy market from that perspective of not only looking to build out this fiber and do a fiber-to-the-prem deployment with private subsidization, but also with public subsidization opportunities, both in various state-county funding opportunities. We've already secured over $100 million in subsidized grants and continuing to pursue those grants where they make sense for us in our overall strategy. A little bit more about our operations. As I mentioned, we operate in 20 states. Most of those states, we are in what I'd categorize as a Tier 2, Tier 3 city and rural type of environment. So, you know, think about it as different types of elements of the geography within those 20 states. We have a higher presence in five large states, North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin, Texas, from that perspective, have some larger presence than some of the other states in which we operate. We do have current customers that we serve that are over a million. And our plan as we go through and do our fiber deployment, at least at this point in time, is we've actively started that deployment in 17 of the 20 states that we operate. So, you know, our focus was to, you know, close the deal, stand up, you know, the company, and then very quickly and aggressively start our fiber deployment across the various footprint that we operate. And as I mentioned, primarily Tier 2, Tier 3 cities. Think about a lot of what we do is in that rural nature. What are we doing from a technology perspective? We are doing something that's a little bit different. And if you've been following us in, you know, any of the public type of forums, you know, we have and do have a strategic partnership with Corning that we are using their distributed TAP architecture. It's their Evolve and Pushlock way felt that it was the right architecture and network architecture for what we're attempting to do. We have, you know, we're not doing a whole lot of build in some very heavy, dense areas. A lot of, you know, based upon our turf is in what I would consider maybe a lesser dense architecture is that we felt the plug and play technology of the Evolve and Pushlock was a good fit for us from a network architecture perspective. So that's really our fiber to the prem deployment, utilizing XGS PON as the network technology and, you know, a CPE type of focus that includes Wi-Fi 6 type of technology in the customer's home. So it kind of gives you some framework from that perspective of at least the technology that we're placing in. A lot of what we're doing across that technology, along with our infrastructure systems, is all very cloud-based and putting it in very cloud-based platforms to really provide kind of a lot of the end-to-end workflow that, you know, we're supporting and standing up as part of our framework on our infrastructure in which we're operating. Just a little bit about the build plan. I touched on a little bit of this. Our footprint spans 20 states. You can kind of see the geography there. Some of the major, you know, I would say tier three cities on the map in which we operate. We've kind of divided our operations into an east, a south, and a north geography of those states based upon their continuous nature. We have already started build in 17 of those 20 states as we work through our deployment process and, you know, really kind of focusing on, you know, various different markets in there where in those states as we can begin to work through the deployment to those 3 million primes that we're targeting as part of our initial build perspective. I'm going to turn it over now to Nailash. He's going to talk a little bit. I gave you a little bit of framework of the company and what we're doing from a build perspective, both on architectural and kind of the where's and kind of what our footprint looks like. I'm going to turn it over to Nailash. He's going to talk a little bit more about the process and the infrastructure that we put in place with IQ.Geo from a system perspective that supports that. So Nailash, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, Sherry. And thanks for the for passing on. So before we go into what we are doing, right, a little bit about myself. I've been in the telco industry for essentially providing systems and technology support in the telco space for more than two decades. I joined Brightspeed, I would say somewhere around October of 21 prior to the the I would say the day one for Brightspeed, which was in 22. So since then, we have been trying to look at a lot of the stuff to say, hey, how do we get not only our network, but our entire operations to be. In the in the in the technology space, be in the cloud, right? So I just wanted to kind of take a step back and say. When we embarked in Brightspeed, we have an opportunity of aligning our entire fiber build on a very simplified platform, 100 percent cloud based tech stack. Typically, a lot of the telcos after the fact are still thriving to be in the cloud because of all the flexibility that cloud provides of scalability and a reduced, I would say, overhead or operational cost. At the same time, the flexibility to scale up and down as per the business demands. So we saw this as a unique opportunity to go 100 percent cloud native from the fiber build sales operation standpoint. Right. And as you can see, we have as of right now, our entire OSS BSS stack is cloud native. Right. So that is the key part. Now, our entire stack starts from building the fiber. Then it goes into the whole making the prims available for sales and the entire sales flow, the billing flow, the provisioning service assurance, the whole cash to code part and the whole customer lifecycle is entirely cloud based. So I'll double click on the fiber build part of our discussion today. And basically how IQgeo plays plays a very pivotal role in the fiber build from the technology stack. So Sherry did cover a very ambitious goal that we are we are embarking on. Right. That in a in a span of a few years, we wanted to kind of expand to three plus million prims, which is a humongous task by itself. So what we did was we basically said, how can we leverage IQgeo from end to end? Right. Now, typically anybody who has been in the network build, there is a lot of things that happens in the planning stage, project management, which are managed in multiple systems, including spreadsheets. We do the design in some other tools. Then the designs are handed off to the field, which could be vendors, which could be employees, which could be anybody who is in the construction business. So there's a lot of survey and permitting and all that stuff that is tracked in a myriad of systems. And then when we come to the actual construction, there's a lot of redlining that happens there. A lot of the statuses on the construction build itself. And then finally, obviously, the invoicing. And the last part is the physical inventory of all the bill that happened. And typically, I would say in this space, what you see from left to right in a traditional telco, this could be a series of anywhere from 15 on a conservative side to 40 and sometimes even north of 40 in larger telcos, because there is no one solution that goes end to end. And essentially, there's a lot of handoffs. There's a lot of fallout. There's a lot of manual follow up from each one of the steps from one step to the other and the back and forth. So what we basically started out with IQgeo, we started IQgeo initially as an automated design tool. And it had some flavors of project management, bid management, the mobility part of it, the workflow management. What we have embarked on is a journey of how can we manage this whole thing into it? And this is where a lot of the partnership with IQgeo comes in play. Because when we started off, I would say we had around 55 to 60 percent of the functionality for this whole end to end flow. And since then, we have partnered very heavily with IQgeo to say, how can we accomplish this? Where now we can, we don't have to do a lot of this handoffs between the multiple steps of the entire flow and the process that we have. And how do we build on what exists and we enhance the platform itself? We have built quite a bit of a custom stuff that is what Brightspeed wanted on top of the platform that IQgeo provides. And it's still a work in progress. There's still quite a few things that are still that we are working through. But it is a huge jumpstart. And this is where Brightspeed is essentially taking our whole design, where the entire integrated workflow platform, where we start the project, the whole network engineering project or the build project. We go all the way to the invoices. We basically have links back into the supply chain systems, the financial systems and the inventory systems. And that is another key part that I think we have worked with IQgeo and enhancing is instead of holding our physical inventory in another system and having this back and forth between construction, because after the build is done, there's going to be always some maintenance and the ongoing network management that will continue. So the thought process is, can we keep the inventory, the physical inventory within IQgeo? So that way it's easier for us to manage our network and then link it into the upstream OSS PSS stack. So that is our design. I can jump to the next slide just to give a little bit of a color on some of the things that we are still working through. And I would say that there are quite a few, I would say, functionality that is work in progress right now on the planning side, some additional functionality on the budgeting, the asset management, and some vendor management and procurement. So we had some, I would say we had a basic set of interfaces and functionality in some of these areas. We are working to enhance it a lot. Some of these are custom interfaces. Some of them are part of the platform, but a lot of work and partnership going on here from that standpoint. The ambitious amount of functionality that BrightSpeed wanted. There's no one solution in the marketplace that had covered this kind of breadth of solution. So we're still adding in new functionality as we go. And as with any large telecom, not everyone does everything the same, even though the core roots of building a fiber network is essentially the same across the industry. There's always differences once you get into the large two-to-one solutions. Some of the key things we've been working on to provide is providing contractors with an easy-to-use interface that enables them to go through and complete their work in a streamlined process and get automatic sign-offs from BrightSpeed. So obviously part of our customer is BrightSpeed themselves, but a huge part of any implementation of something which is doing the project management and construction side of a large system is the contractors in the market. And I'm sure we have a number of contractors here on the webinar. And quite frankly, some of our most demanding customers as well, because efficiency is the key to their business. So we work very hard going out in the field, listening to the contractors, whilst also balancing the requirements of BrightSpeed in terms of how we deliver solutions that both expedite the work in the field, but also don't break the backend systems that are built in order to get things ordered, shipped, and paid as we go through. So there's a lot of work continuing to be done throughout the systems. There's a lot of integration work happening as well. Another major step forward we're making at the moment is previously we've been really focused on fiber networks. We never actually imagined that we would produce both a copper module and a coax module. Both of those are released actually in the next day or so. So part of the migration for a system that is as complex as BrightSpeed is also having an integrated copper network management system as well. And the aim is to we'll have that produced and then we'll be migrating the legacy copper assets into that system as well over the next nine months. And in that way, what that enables BrightSpeed to do is have a single network inventory for all of their network assets and integrations as required from the copper network. As that gets still will still be utilized throughout the BrightSpeed footprint together with the fiber network. So that's going to be that's a big effort that we're now jumping into together with the continuous demands from from Sherry, Nilesh and the BrightSpeed team in terms of refining the system. Once you have something in place now, now the trick is how do we automate it and how do we take as much as many of the steps out as as possible as we progress. And then obviously in the telecom market, things don't slow down. So things change. As Sherry mentioned, there's obviously additional funding and expansion that BrightSpeed is getting through the different funding mechanisms. And those requirements need to be fed into the system and delivered at a kind of expedited pace to keep up with BrightSpeed's move. So it's not done by any means, let's say that, but the basis is in place for the plan, design and construction process together with the billing that's so essential in terms of getting contractors paid and having a healthy ecosystem as we progress. So I'm going to just jump on to the next slide. One thing I did want to mention is what we get asked quite a lot is obviously there's there's tremendous amount of work going on in the plan, build, operate aspect of what we do with BrightSpeed. But what we get asked and I'm actually in London at the moment, one of our larger investors and we had investor meetings today. And the question we get asked is what's next? Now, Nalash and Sherry would scream at me if I said there was anything other than making sure that everything we have in place continues to work and expand and streamlining that as possible. But we also have to look at what are the next things that we see in the marketplace in the tier one through to the tier two, three and four Internet service providers. The big expansion we anticipate in terms of the next phase of really interesting systems that are going to deliver comprehensive value is in what we call integrated revenue generation. And so once you have a comprehensive model of your fiber network and that's generated through BrightSpeed is obviously building the vast majority of their fiber network and has the opportunity to have an accurately documented connectivity model, physical infrastructure in terms of what it's connected to and where it is. You can then start some more ambitious plans in terms of how to capture revenue. And ultimately for the ISPs, that's that's why we're here. So obviously minimizing churn, but capturing that revenue in the first place. So we have a analytics and automation team based out of Belgium from from from from our Comsoft team. And that's what they're starting to look at now is is how do you not only model your physical network assets and obviously that services that carried on them. But how do you model the revenue aspect of your network? And then how can we help BrightSpeed and other customers capture as much of that revenue as possible as we go forward? So that that's where we see some of the most some of the more interesting expansion in terms of this area of network inventory is into revenue modeling, assisting our customers in terms of revenue generation. And really, how do we provide a kind of living, breathing model of of what revenue is from the advanced networks that people like BrightSpeed are building? So I wanted to mention that together with obviously the blocking and tackling that we're doing in terms of assisting our customers to build the networks. So with that, what I wanted to do, I think I now hand off and we can do any questions and answers. Obviously, there's a huge amount of detail behind the comprehensive suite of applications that BrightSpeed have rolled out. And I hope there's some good challenging questions for for Sherry and Nilesh as we go through. Yes. So now we will move on to the Q&A. There is still time to submit your questions using the Q&A tab to the left of your screen. We have lots of great questions already today, so we will try to get to as many as possible. First up, we have is BrightSpeed able to comment at all on their use of any pre-designed features? For example, a new market is being deployed and what planning may be done within the system? Yeah, I probably can take that. So we are using the IQ Geo network planning module to do our actual think about that as our desktop. You know, what you may traditionally know is maybe more of a desktop engineering design from that perspective. We basically have utilized the module with certain algorithmic types of elements of how we want to design. We're using two different design architectures, primarily the distributed tap that I talked about with the Corning Push Lock and Evolve Terminal. For some of our very, very rural builds, we are going to a splice terminal architecture. So we've kind of built both designs into the network planning module from that perspective and the logic around them. And utilizing that with, you know, all the GIS information of where our existing facilities are, et cetera, is what we basically use as input into the process. Doing some pre-design on assumptions of where we want to build, if we have certain information about a geography, other activity going on, on road move activity, et cetera. We're going to put information on, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then utilize the network planning module to provide us what we call an HLD or a high level design that comes out of that. That's really kind of the kickoff of our process. utilizing the IQ.GO tools. That's what we give then to a field engineer to start the process to basically do a verification of that design and then ultimately go into a capturing of all the information on a feet on the street survey to get all the information you may need for permit applications, et cetera. So hopefully that kind of addresses that pre-design kind of feature. I kind of categorize as the inputs into the process on what type of design architecture you want is really some of that framework that you include in the logic that you would build into the network planning module that's more specific to you and your company on the design architecture. Just one thing to add on to that, Sherry, is one of the things we've seen in the marketplace is a reticence to really cover all the build costs that are required. And so when we're asked in to customers, we tend to see between 15 to 30 percent underestimation of the cost of a build. And I don't know if that's because existing vendors or processes don't want to provide the bad news that it costs what it costs. But we very, very rarely see systems that are out there overestimating costs. We tend to see systems that are underestimating the cost of the build and obviously Brightspeed and others. You cannot make savvy economic decisions on your network build unless you get the most accurate things as possible. So that's the goal to deliver the good news and the bad news in terms of the cost infrastructures based on the network architecture decisions that are being made. Yeah. And Jay, I mean, I'll just add on to that. Just, you know, what we have partnered with IQ.GO in developing is for everybody in the industry, how you manage and measure your financials is a cost per prem metric. So we've built logic that takes our design from that initial design through every iteration that it will go through in the process. So we have a high level design. And from there, we get a cost per prem metric out of a cost per prem module that does that calculation. We look at it, we adjust that design, and we rerun the cost per prem, you know, so we have that type of attribute, we get to a point that we do final survey on the design, we relook at what the cost per prem is based upon that. So, you know, it has various different elements and it's, we track that through the process from a standpoint to have good visibility on what we estimate the cost will be. And obviously it includes inputs on your, you know, your own contractual material costs, your own contractual labor costs, or your cost assumptions for any in-house labor need to go into the process. But it is functionality that exists that we partnered with IQgeo in developing. So one thing that I wanted to add to what Sherry and Jay talked about is from the technical standpoint, in order to generate that output high level design, from the input standpoint, we have to input all the accurate addresses and the poll locations. So that way, when the IQgeo design is running, it is essentially taking all that stuff into account. And as everybody knows, if we, it's garbage in, garbage out, if you don't have the accurate poll information, or if you don't have the accurate addresses, the designs won't be as accurate. So that is something that we do from the technical that the data inputted for the addresses and the poll information that is going into as an input to IQgeo is as accurate as possible. And there's a whole process where we make sure that we are checking against multiple sources to ensure that some of this is accurate before we run the design from the system standpoint. So, so that's something that we do from the technical standpoint. And then Sherry kind of just, once the design comes up, there's a whole operations process that business takes over from that standpoint. So, yeah, but Nailash, that's a very good point for those of you listening. I mean, there is a very specific component to this that's really critical to make sure you have good GIS and facility information as a starting base. So, you know, we definitely had to invest some resource time and money and kind of scrubbing that to improve all of our infrastructure records. Because I think many of us have been through this when you, you take infrastructure records and you go through one system conversion to another when you have a lot of, you know, aged assets, which many of our outside plan assets are, you know, you definitely deal with issues in some of that GIS conversion activity that may have taken place. So it is definitely, you know, an area where we had to do some scrubbing and cleanup to start the process. Great. Thank you all. Our next question asks, how does your company manage procurement on these builds? So I can take that. I'm assuming procurement is really related to the material that we need on the builds. The design itself provides what many people might know as a material manifest. From the design, it produces an automatic material manifest. For the area, you can produce it by a wire center build. You can do a subsection of a wire center, however you want to design that. The way we operate is when we kind of lock down a design, we produce a material manifest off of that. It outlines every single element of material. We do have a, I would say, a more simplified SKU structure that we have used in our build. We've been trying to really keep the SKUs and the type of materials that we need to a minimal. But it produces that material manifest. That material manifest links directly in through SAP. It sends it from SAP directly to an EDI transaction through our logistics process for sourcing and shipment to our contractors or to wherever ship location you need from that perspective. But it, think about it. It goes from IQ.GO, material manifest, goes into SAP, and creates PO, you know, automatic flow right out to do the PO ordering process. Thank you. How do your historic engineering services vendors fit into this scheme? So I'll probably take that one also. So, two things. We do have designs that, you know, we are utilizing the IQ.GO network planning module to do designs in-house. We do have other things that we potentially may design from, you know, a traditional engineering contractor design work into IQ.GO. We're actually in the process of bringing all of our legacy engineering and construction work into this process. We will basically upload a traditional engineering design, whether it's a road move, whether, you know, you got to go out and replace a pole for make ready work, something like that. You know, it will have the capability to just upload that design and then manage it through the process via an uploaded engineering design. So you can still use all the attributes of your inventory, your invoicing, things like that, the construction management elements of the software from that perspective. Yeah, because now that we have this beautiful network inventory, we don't want data rot, you know, through all the other processes of how the network is managed over time. And a lot of time we're seeing with these big builds, that's what, you know, the main focus is on how do we get fiber out there as quickly as possible. But I do have to say that Sherry and the Leash and the BrightSpeed team are equally obsessed with making sure that the data stays current from a network operations side of things, because it's kind of the lifeblood of the field teams to make sure that things are in the right place and the connectivity is correct in the base system. And I do mean obsessed when I say the word obsessed, that was correct terminology. Excellent. Thank you. Our next question asks, can you track daily activities from the field team and report on that progress in IQ. Geo? I wouldn't say go ahead. Now, let me let me take this in a way where when we started, what we were able to do versus what we had to enhance. So there were two parts to this is one is when we are handing the work off to the vendors. We want vendors to use IQ. Geo. So they have real time work items that they can update directly. However, with some of the vendors, we were able to build a system to system interface, which I believe was an enhancement that we had to work on because not all the systems can get their entire or all the vendors can get all their technicians trained on IQ. Geo, because they may have their own system. So that was one part. The other part of it is when we started, we can track the progress at an individual work item level, right? However, what we were not able to do comprehensively is when you're talking to the vendor, we were not able to look at and say, okay, all the work items that this vendor is working on and all the statuses, right? So think about it, you can go one work item at a time and look up the statuses that can be updated and brought it back and forth. But when you're trying to do the build at a scale that we are embarking on, it was not very practical from that standpoint to otherwise we'll be sitting with the vendor all week long, going through line by line by line and jumping from one project to the other. So that was the part that we had to enhance where we can pivot from looking at an individual wire center or a work line item level to a more broader scope and a more easy way for you to look at all the different statuses from that standpoint, right? And I think Sherry, you can elaborate a lot more on this from the operational standpoint, where we started and some of this is still work in progress, but I think we are heading in that direction. Yeah, so I would tell you we built milestones into IQgeo for a project that, you know, think about milestones in it, it goes from a high level design into an engineering review to a field survey to we started the permitting process to we construction start and then work through the construction process. I think when you think about daily activity, I tend to think about either time reporting of in-house resources or I'll say widget-based placement if you're in a contracting model to say, hey, did I have a crew that did, you know, 10 feet of trenching today, 15 feet of trenching or a placement of fiber, etc. today. So we don't track at that level of detail in the system. Maybe Jay can comment whether any of his other clients do that. We have everything set up that's very ticket-based. So we take a project and we aggregate, you know, separate it out into very tickets-oriented. And then we track when it gets in, we track the milestones that I mentioned. It moves from design to engineering review to a survey process, you know, to reorder the material, you know, to that we're in the permitting process, permits completed, etc. And then when we get into the actual physical construction, it's ticket-based. So if you think about a fiber build, if I have a wire center and say that that wire center has three feeder routes that are going to come out of it and it has multiple distribution components that are going to come off that feeder, we would put each feeder route into a ticket. We'll put each element of distribution into a ticket. And therefore then we track, okay, is this feeder route done? Is this component of distribution that's associated with this group of households done? You know, and then we basically have it set up to monitor completion at that ticket level. We understand, we have visibility on what that ticket contains on facilities and premises. And we handle our invoicing activities related to at that ticket kind of level. So, you know, we don't go down to the issue of daily tracking to say, you know, how many feet of fiber were placed today or how many hours were worked on this project today. You know, we don't use it for time reporting or that level of detail of tracking. Just to add on, Sherry, our advice would be kind of as you stated, start practically. Try and use the minimum number of tickets possible and then you can add tickets over time. We talk to a lot of, tends to be some of the newer fiber companies and they want to track everything. And that's great. But there has to be a certain level of pragmatism in that. Additionally, as Nilesh mentioned, we came in with a kind of Nirvana approach of everyone uses our stuff for everything. And that's not always practical. There is time constraints, project constraints, labor constraints that you have to work around. And there's also certain things that we're not going to do from a software vendor. So pole loading calculations, for example, there's some fabulous tools out there already that we need to integrate to. So it's just from us, it's just the level of pragmatism in terms of what can you track, what should you track? And then over time, we collect, you know, gobs of data that we do want to analyze and get better to provide feedback to BrightSpeed and the contractors as to how we can save time. But we have a lot of things to work on before we get to that minutiae, if you see what I mean, in terms of analysis of business process. Okay. Thank you all. This next question is directed to Nilesh. It says, Nilesh, you said you are still working through the functionality. I know that you are using this for your drop work. When do you think you will roll it out for OSP construction? I'm sorry. Can you come again? Sure. Yes. It says, you said you're still working through the functionality and that you're using this for your drop work. When do you think you will roll it out for OSP construction? Roll it out for OSP construction. We already have. Yeah. Go ahead, Nilesh. We already have. Yeah. So this thing is already in production, right? So we are not waiting for all these capabilities to come in place. As a matter of fact, we have been using the system now for almost more than a year now that we have started working on this. We are adding a lot of this functionality as we go along. So I'll touch on this in a little bit different way. When we decided to work with IQGO and as you look at that slide that I was talking about previously, we made some very strategic choices. Typically, when in a telco space, we try to do the best of best in class for every component along the way. Right? We want to pick the best in class program management tool. We want to pick the best in class design tool. We want to pick a best in class vendor management tool, network management tool, inventory tool. That results in a lot of handoffs because as I think Jay, you mentioned earlier, no single tool does everything end to end that we need. So the trade off that we made was, hey, can we go with a tool which does a lot of the stuff which is 60-70 % there and we can work with a vendor who will essentially partner with us in building the rest of the functionality as opposed to going with all the best in the class tools and then trying to connect them together. Right? So that is something that we did and a lot of the work that we are doing, I mean, the construction is out there and we have been opening for sale a lot of the places as the constructions are getting completed. Right? So this process that we are describing has evolved a lot over the last couple of years, but we are not waiting for all the functionality to be there before we can start using it from that standpoint. Yeah, I'd echo that. And I would hope that anyone you speak to from from IK Geo will will echo that as well. There are certain things we feel we're well-classed at, you know, network modeling, mobility, things like that. There are other things we feel that we are good enough and the value of having an integrated in a system where there's, as Nilesh said, that there's not data handoffs, there's not double entry of data, there's not data loss, there's not data brought outweighs some of the bells and whistles that that you have in some of the other best in class systems for that. And that's just a decision you have to make as an organization when you go into these things. And, you know, I'm not going to say what the best solution we obviously feel the end to end solution is, it's outweighs the challenges with integrating and dealing with multiple vendors. Thank you all. This next question is for Jay. It says, will revenue planning and near net modeling be integrated into the base platform? Yes, I think that's, that's at the moment we have about five customers who are working with us in terms of that aspect. BrightSpeed is what is one of those customers can't disclose exactly what they're doing. So I think there might be some intellectual property that they, in terms of the algorithms they use and the evaluation they use as Sherry said. But yeah, it's the same kind of concept as the rest of the portfolio that we have, that it needs to work on the core, basically physical network digital twin. And that's the core asset for that we provide to our customers that is the kind of route of automation and workflow processes. So that was a long winded way to say yes, but yes. Thank you. Are you using the IQ Geo mobile app for as built reporting? Let me take that one. I think we use some of the reporting, but what we have built is our own reporting view of the data that we get. So, so that is how I see it. We use IQ Geo for the actual operations and the entire workflow, et cetera. There are certain views that we do use reporting views, but I would say a lot of them since our business needs it to be looked at certain way, or we want to focus or drill down a certain way. So we have built our own reporting dashboard view on top of it, because some of that even expands beyond IQ Geo. Like we want to see, hey, how much is open for sale? How much of that is available? How many orders did we get, et cetera, et cetera. So it's beyond just IQ Geo. So we feel that there's a lot more value of pulling the data out and then aligning the views to what makes sense for BrightSpeed. And I just want to add one thing on top of that. That's something we've learned, I think, over the last really 12 months is once you get up to the size and complexity and sophistication of a tier one like BrightSpeed. What we see is a lot of the data is extracted out and then combined with a bunch of other data sources into a corporate reporting platform. Now, whilst all the data is in an open source relational database, so it's easily accessible. And for our smaller customers, we do provide more of a kind of out of the box reporting package, access to data, export to data into our customers data warehouse that is then managed and customized and reported on. It seems to be the trend that we have seen repeated again and again in our large customers across the globe. Yeah, I'll just add a couple more on the ads built. I'm not really sure kind of the details and the question, but one of the things we have given to our contractor and engineering workforce access via a tablet mobile tool access to IQgeo. Again, really to reference designs, make potential modifications on when you say as built, you know, I got to move the facility on the design from A to B. The one thing though that is actually something in process that we're finding is a lot of the use of that is really dependent on cellular service in the area that you're actually in the field and using. So we're partnering with IQgeo to get us kind of an offline version of that from that perspective. So that is one of the things that's kind of in our roadmap. But any as built changes basically flow through the process and get me to the design in IQgeo, either directly from one of our approved contractors or for one of our field in-house field engineers. Great. I think we have time for just a couple more questions. This one asks, does Brightspeed complete all of your engineering work in-house or do you utilize business partners? If you partner, is there an avenue we can reach out to to discuss opportunities? So we do a couple of things with, you know, we're utilizing the network planning module to do some of our engineering. And that's kind of one of the advantages of the IQgeo tool. We do have other work that we do use, you know, outsource engineers for. I believe my contact information is probably available in the speakers access. And if not, I can make sure that it is available. You can feel free to reach out to me directly. Thank you. Just one thing to add on to the story. We are training more and more of our engineering design partners in our solutions. So our objective is to provide an ecosystem of trained people so that Sherry has a set of people that she can go out and have discussions with in terms of their trained and use our system. And that provides more choice for our customers. So that hasn't happened quite as quickly as the demands because we're inundated at the moment. But we have about 12 trained, different contractors trained right now. And we aim to at least double that in 2024 in the North American marketplace. Thank you. So this will be our final question. We had a lot of great questions today and we couldn't get to them all, but we will try our best to get back to everyone who has submitted personally after the webinar. So our last question says, will this eliminate the need to have contract engineering as well as CAD drawings, essentially going cloud-based for engineering and design and construction? I'll address it in two pieces. So the network planning module that we talked about and I referenced does take away, it really mechanizes the element of what I'd categorize the desktop engineering of a design. I mean, that's kind of one of the benefits that we have in the savings to the process. As it relates to CAD drawings, it doesn't specifically provide, the design doesn't specifically get to the point that it is a CAD drawing depending on some of the permitting offices and the municipal permitting authorities requirements. We do and sometimes need to take that design and pull it into a very specific CAD drawing that gets submitted with the permit application. So that is not functionality, that at least to that CAD level requirement that it includes with the permitting that we utilize the system for. All right. Well, thank you for attending this fierce telecom webinar and submitting so many great questions. I'd like to thank our speakers for participating and IQgeo and Brightspeed for presenting today's webinar. This webinar has been recorded. You will be able to access the recording within 24 hours using the same audience link that was sent to you earlier. Thank you again for joining and we look forward to seeing you at future events.