This exclusive IQGeo customer webinar.

Hello everyone, welcome and thank you for taking the time to join us today for our webinar on how to cut project costs with automated fiber planning and design. I'm Kelly Barford, Digital Marketing Director at IQGeo and I will be helping with some of the logistics for today's session. The presentation will be around 30 to 45 minutes with time for questions at the end. So please type them into the question box throughout the webinar that you'll see in your GoToWebinar side panel. My colleague Crawford will be going through the questions and selecting some to ask our presenters. And we'll try to get through as many as we can and if we don't get through to yours during today's live session, we will follow up with you afterwards. Also, we do have a few poll questions that you can vote on and it would be great to have your input. So keep an eye out for those popping up throughout the webinar. I will now hand over to our hosts. So over to you, James and Jonas. Okay, thanks very much Kelly. Good afternoon, good morning everyone. Thanks for joining us on this webinar. So I'm James Wheatley, I'm the Head of Product Management for IQGeo and I'm joined by Jonas. I'll let Jonas introduce himself. Hi everybody, my name is Jonas Versteft and I'm the Product Manager for Comsof Fiber and NRO. Alright, so just a very quick introduction from myself and then I'm going to hand over to Jonas. He's going to do the majority of the hard work on today's webinar. So just at a very high level, IQGeo, I'm sure you're familiar. We're all about building better networks. So providing a single integrated solution, both for telecoms and utilities as well, right across that plan, build, sell, operate lifecycle. So providing the ability to create better, safer and more efficient networks. And if we look at that network lifecycle in a bit more detail, what we're really about is saving time and cost to accelerate the workflows. So actually in many cases, it's the little arrows between the different stages of the workflow by providing capability right across that lifecycle. And we can smooth that transition and accelerate things in there. So in today's webinar, what we're going to focus on is that planning and design stage. That's our primary focus there. And I think to get us rolling, we've got the first poll question. And so we'd like to just understand and explore, you know, how you manage your workflows related to the planning and design process. So that Kelly will be able to launch the poll for us. There we go. So if you can just vote on what you see. I just give people a few seconds longer to vote. Okay. Thanks, everyone. I will close the poll and share the results. Okay. Okay. So quite interesting. 67% with completely manual tools and processes. So you've very much come to the right place since that's what we're going to talk about today is how we can look to to automate some of that process. And I think it's very important to point out that there's always a place for the planner and the designer. So what we're not trying to do here is utilize chat GPT or anything like that and just press a huge magic button. This is about automating the process such that the planner, the designer can put their intelligence into the process, but remove some of the manual steps that take the time and the effort and eliminate those opportunities to make simple mistakes and allow the computer, if you like, to do the heavy lifting. So that's the kind of key focus there. I'll hand over to Jonas and you can run us through some of the challenges that you may experience and then how we can address some of those challenges. All right. Thank you, James. Yeah. So what I'll mainly be talking about today is for the planning stage and the design stage, what the main goal is, what the challenges are and how we can solve that with IQgeo and how we can help the planners. Yeah, make their life a bit more easier, give them some extra opportunities to tackle those challenges in a better way. So first off, I'm going to start with the planning stage. So the main goal of the planning stage is determining the rollout strategy for deploying a new fiber network or extending a fiber network. So you really need to identify where you want to spend your budget, how much budget you need and what the best way is to tackle your target regions. So for this, what you may need is accurate cost insights, accurate cost estimates need to be as close as possible to the eventual cost of the build to limit the risk of your project. We see that, yeah, for a couple of operators, this is looking at a very large potential footprint, hundreds of thousands or millions of potential homes that could be connected with a fiber network. And you're typically under a lot of time pressure. So you need to come up with that plan in a short timeframe, doing this manually using, using, using manual design. It's not possible to look at that large potential footprint. Doing a complete design manually would give you more accurate cost estimates, but there's not that time. And you don't want to spend that cost upfront to, to, to do this. So you're reverting to other, other methods, some extrapolation, some simple spreadsheet calculations to, to, to, yeah, make sure that you get that estimate within time. But that's putting a lot of risk on, on the project. So what I want to talk about today is some different ways that, yeah, we can overcome these challenges with, with IQgeo. But first off, just want to launch another poll question about the biggest challenges that you're seeing during the, the planning process. So of the ones that I've listed and then an additional one. Hey, I've launched that poll. So we'll give people a few seconds to vote. Okay, let's take a look at the results. An interesting, so no one has any issues with, with visualizing the results. That's quite interesting, interesting feedback as well. The, but accuracy of estimates, that's at, at, at, more than just exactly half. So that's quite interesting. And that's, and, and then an even split with time to come, obtain the estimates and looking at multiple scenarios. So I think that that shows that there's some challenges across the board there with, with the planning process. So be interesting to see how we can tackle those as well. Yeah. Yeah. Mainly that, that accuracy of the estimates, that's the biggest risk risk in, in the project. Of course, if, if the estimates are, are off by, by, yeah. By, by, by, by a large margin, then you're really putting your, your project at risk. So. Yeah. Ways to, to tackle this is by. Yeah. Making sure that you get, get a planning result that's as accurate as possible. And a way to do that is by, yeah. Using automated software to calculate the network design in a lot of detail. So, um, so using automatic routing, automatic clustering of homes, central placement and equipment selections, like, uh, really planning, uh, cables and ducts, um, and, and yeah, all of the closures and cabinets that you would need to serve a particular home. That gives you a lot of, uh, detailed information, um, and, and really gives that, that confidence, uh, that you can build, uh, the network according to the design. Uh, for this, you need to be able to specify. Yeah. Your design rules, your architecture, your cost information in a, a very detailed way, uh, for this, uh, this, this, this, yeah, planning estimate or, or plan network to be, uh, as close as possible to how you're, uh, building it. So you need to be able to, uh, configure, uh, the types of cables that you're using, the type of ducts that you're using and really, uh, detailed cost information. Uh, detailed cost information on, uh, all of the civil works and the equipment that, that you're using. Um, if you're able to do that, uh, so with, with an automated calculation, you will be able to handle those large areas. You will be able to get, uh, accurate cost insights. Um, and this just helps the planners to speed up that, that whole planning process. Now, uh, a second way to increase that accuracy is it, this needs to be driven by, by GIS data. Um, so, uh, if you can use all the geographic data that you have available for, uh, for an area, um, all of the address information, street information, um, existing infrastructure. So if there's pole infrastructure or, uh, existing ducts and, and manholes that you can reuse. Then that information needs to be used already in, uh, in a planning stage. This increases the accuracy of your, your cost estimates, um, and, and gets you closer to the eventual, uh, build cost of the, of the network. Then, uh, what we're able to do with, with, uh, yeah, our, our automated planning and design solution is generate a detailed bill of material. Uh, this will list all of the equipment that you need to build a network. So based on, uh, the design that was created. So all of the cables, the ducts, civil work splices, uh, all the closures splitters that are needed, uh, that are, that the work rated in the design are, uh, uh, listed in a design. Uh, listed in a detailed bill of material. This allows you to analyze this in a lot of detail, maybe spot, uh, spot some, some, um, some factors that have a big impact on the costs so that you're able to, uh, create alternative, uh, scenarios or, uh, revisit the architecture. So really, again, here, uh, the planner is, is really in a driving seat, uh, to, to use this information, uh, in, in the best possible way. And, um, giving insight in this detailed, uh, bill of material, this detailed list of the, the equipment and the costs. Uh, this increases the confidence again that, um, yeah, you're, you're, you will be able to build a network based on, uh, on this cost estimates. Then, uh, what's, what we see is also really important. And, and this was not, uh, you know, maybe one of the challenges, but, uh, if you have already control over that design within a planning stage. Uh, so being able to control cabinet serving areas, cabinet location, feeder serving areas, uh, that's, uh, yeah, that, that, that can be really, really important. And it's not something that you can do when you're doing a manual design. This allows you to go in, fine tune your planning estimates, increase that accuracy even further. Um, and as you'll see in the demo, this can be done in a very intuitive way, very fast way. So you're not spending time, um, yeah, redesigning all of the cables, all of the ducts. So you're not losing time in that way. You can really spend your time in a, in a, in a better way by, by inspecting the area and let the, the software do the heavy lifting here. Then, um, yeah, one point that it didn't score, uh, the high in the, in the, or I think there was no score for it. Um, but what we see often with, with customers is that within the planning stage, if they get a visual layout of the network already. So they can see, uh, what the plan network, uh, could look like. This is, yeah, not based on a, uh, uh, spreadsheet calculation. Uh, yeah, based on spreadsheet sheet calculation, but really on a plan network, on a real network layout. That this is, that this increases, uh, confidence a lot. So if you can offer this to, uh, yeah. Top management or, uh, to your, uh, to your, to your customer, if you're working, uh, for, for external, uh, company. Then, um, yeah, this, this just boost, uh, the confidence that, uh, that the plans, uh, can be, uh, can be realized. So, um, something that's being enabled by all of this as well. Uh, so like I said, uh, the automation, the, um, the insights in the bill of material, you will be able to analyze different scenarios quite easily. So, uh, there's a very detailed, um, yeah. Engine behind it. Uh, the, the detailed rules, uh, configurator rate and configure different network architect. You can, um, specify the different equipment that you can use. Um, so with the detailed cost insights, probably build a material. You can play around, uh, with, with different network architectures. Uh, you can really easily look at different regions, uh, with the automation. It's, it's, it's possible to do that. Uh, maybe look at more regions that, then you would be able to, uh, if you need to do everything, uh, everything manually. So this just allows you to identify new opportunities, uh, to roll out your network, new architectures, um, and, and, and really, um, yeah. Puts, uh, puts power in the hands of the, of the planner, uh, to, to run this. All right. So, um, these are some ways we can help tackle the challenges in a planning stage. And after planning is done, you have decided, uh, which areas you want to roll out, which parts of a region you want to roll out. Then the next stage is you need to come up with a design. So you need to define, uh, how the network needs to be built. You need a complete network layout, uh, and this needs to be ready to go to, uh, to construction. The main challenges that come in this stage is that the designs that you create need to be cost effective. Um, building out a network is very costly, uh, especially the civil works. So you need to make sure that the network you're designing is, um, is done in, in a cost effective way, but, and, and it's still, and it's following the, the correct architecture. So there's a certain set of design guidelines that you will need to follow. Um, it needs to, yeah, the designs that you create need to, uh, follow this to make the deployment easier, to make the maintenance of the network easier, to make sure that you have, uh, the right equipment, uh, available. Uh, available to roll out this type of network. But, uh, most importantly, uh, there shouldn't be any errors in the designs that, that you create because errors can be very, very costly. Um, if they're discovered in, uh, construction stage, uh, you might need to go back to the design stage, make some tweaks or make decisions on the spot, uh, during construction, which can be very costly. Uh, even worse, uh, these errors could be discovered during activation stage. So when the ground is already, uh, filled, um, and, and the, the, the ducks are in the ground, uh, you might discover that, um, certain homes cannot be connected because there's no cable available or there's no cable space available in the ducks. These, these, these can be very costly, costly errors and need to be, uh, avoided at all costs. Uh, and thirdly, um, again, that, that time pressure will be here as well. And the design stage, um, competitors are, are, are moving in. Um, so there, there's really, yeah, a need to, to move fast to make sure that, uh, yeah, the construction teams can continue their, their, uh, work, uh, and that you can activate customers as, as soon as possible. And, uh, this brings us to the third, uh, poll question, uh, so related to the design process, uh, we'd like to ask you what, what you see as your biggest challenges during, uh, during this process, during this stage. I've just launched that poll, so we'll give people a few seconds to vote. Okay. Okay. A few more seconds and then I'll close the poll and we can check out the results. Um, interesting, uh, fairly even ish split, uh, across there in terms of what, uh, what the challenges are faced. So that's quite interesting. Um, uh, there, uh, you know, any, um, observations related to that. Um, yeah, I, I think it's a bit the same, um, result as, as the second poll question. So really focus on, um, on the cost of the network. So, uh, identifying that errors can be very costly and that, yeah, just need cost-effective, uh, cost-effective designs. Um, also yeah, people looking, yeah, towards that, that next stage. And that's also something that we'll, uh, we'll be talking about is going to low level design, going to, uh, going to construction. So, uh, yeah, quite, quite interesting results. Yeah. All right. Then, um, let's talk a bit about how we can, uh, yeah, tackle the, the challenges within the design stage. So, um, I think first of all, some things are, are, yeah, there's a similar way to tackle these, these challenges compared to the planning stage. Uh, so by making sure that you can automate as much as possible, automating the calculations, automating, uh, creation of the bill of material, this needs to be, uh, GIs driven as well. Uh, this design stage, even at a more detailed level, um, you really need to know what the design stage is. Um, you really need to know exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Where, uh, you need to connect each, uh, each building, how many homes there are inside of each, uh, each building. If there's, uh, if there's any obstacles in the way, um, this information needs to be known at this stage. So you really need the tools to, uh, to control the design in, uh, in a more detailed, in a detailed manner. Um, and you need to be able to feed it, uh, the GIs, uh, information, uh, in a more detailed manner. Uh, in a, in a, in a very detailed way. Now. One thing that's, uh, that, that, that will help in the design stage to get to, uh, cost effective designs is, uh, the algorithms that we have available, uh, within comps of fiber. Um, so this is driving, uh, the automatic clustering, the automatic routing. Uh, this is driven by the detailed cost information that's available by the, uh, equipment and the constraints of the equipment that is configured in our design rules. Like capacity of, of, of duds capacity of, of closures and, and manholes and so forth. So all of this information goes into, uh, into the different, uh, algorithms. And, uh, this is then, then used to come up with, uh, yeah, with a cost effective, uh, cost effective design in a way that, yeah. It's not possible for, for a human to, uh, to make a certain decision. So it's really, really helping, uh, helping the planners, uh, to, yeah, focus on the things that matter, uh, and let the, let the software, uh, focus on that, uh, uh, yeah. On the routing and the equipment, uh, decisions, but, uh, with, uh, with the design control to make tweaks wherever, uh, wherever necessary as a planner. Then, uh, so one thing that was, was indicated as well in the poll. Is, uh, having access to the, the low level design to the, to the details of, uh, of a network, uh, design. So with the, with the solution on, on IQ geo, um, yeah. When you do an automated calculation, you get access to a fiber level connectivity information. So you will be able to trace easily, uh, through the network. All of the, uh, connectivity information is there. All of the equipment is there, uh, to then use the, the IQ geo tools, uh, to inspect the, uh, the design and move it forward in the, in the process. And, um, all the information will be there ready to, uh, to, to build a network. Um, so, uh, that is, uh, that's, that's very important at this stage. Then, uh, of course, as, as most of you know, uh, you're working within a, a very intuitive platform, uh, working within a SaaS, uh, environment, web-based environment. Um, and that enables you to collaborate, uh, very easily with, uh, you know, with the different people on a single project. Within the office, but also, uh, on the field. So, uh, having access to the design in the field, making sure that you can, uh, yeah. Make, uh, do your field service and make the necessary updates and take that back into, into the design, uh, to, to do a new, uh, new iteration. So avoiding swivel sharing, avoiding, uh, sending data from one platform to the other and just in general accelerating that, uh, that whole workflow in that way. All right. Uh, so that was some, uh, general information about, uh, yeah, the different challenges within the planning and design stage, how we could, yeah, how we solve those, uh, those challenges with our solution. Uh, I just want to walk you through, uh, yeah, what that looks like within, uh, within AcuGeo. So, uh, first of all, what I'm going to show is, yeah, how to start a new, uh, network design or planning project. So very easily can create a new design, define your, uh, boundary, your area, uh, for which you want to create that, uh, design. What you're seeing here is, um, in, in this area, there's, uh, yeah, a number of address locations. And I just want to make a design for a subset of these. I give it a name, set it to designing state. Um, and then I'm going to create a, uh, yeah, new, a new workspace or a new design iteration. I'm going to start a new design iteration for, uh, for this area. I can create a, uh, rule set. Uh, so I can select a rule set, uh, that I want to use, uh, for this area. So we can have a number of different architectures and, and rule sets, uh, set up, uh, before, uh, I'm, I'm starting, uh, I'm starting the project. Um, so I can choose which one I want to apply in, uh, in, in this region. So what's happening now is that it's, uh, populating my workspace. It make, it's making that selection of, uh, uh, yeah, selection of the, um, uh, of the data within the area. So based on the boundary that I've, uh, that I have created. So it's only using that information for my, uh, my design. And then it's just preparing, uh, preparing the area. This takes, uh, yeah, bit under a minute, um, to, uh, to prepare. Just gonna quickly skip that a bit forward. Uh, and so what you see that that has been created is, uh, a network of, uh, possible routes that can be used. So this will be the, uh, starting point for a, um, uh, for design calculations. So you see the, the potential lead ins that are created, uh, all of the, uh, street side edges and, and potential crossing locations that can be used then by the software to create, uh, create a design. Now, the, the second step here is configuring the rules. So I'm gonna show you quickly, um, how to access the rules and, uh, just an overview of the different rules and, um, settings that can be configured. So I'm going here on the left to open the rules file. And, uh, then it's showing me, yeah, no review of some common rules. So I have my, my splitter settings here. Uh, so you can indicate whether you're using a cascaded split or a distribute, uh, split, uh, for example, or centralized split, for example, can enter all of the costs for, uh, for those splitters. Um, there's a lot of information on equipment and civil works that can go into the software, into the, uh, calculation engine. Um, there's, uh, yeah, a lot of different costs as well that can be, can be specified and constraints that can be specified here. And the more accurate that these are specified, the, the more accurate the design will be. And, um, yeah, the better the, the algorithms will, uh, will perform. So, uh, you can specify some general parameters like, uh, cable deployment, whether it's a shared cable or three M branch type structure or direct cable. Or start topology or ring topology. Um, and then, uh, you can also specify the different cables again with the cost, again with the constraints. Uh, so the capacity of the cables and the ducts, uh, can be, can be all configured layer per layer. Uh, and this will then be used for the, uh, the network, uh, design and the calculation. So next I'm gonna go in and make some, uh, changes, uh, to the, uh, potential network. So I can go in here, I can make tweaks to, to the lead in. So that should be the, there's been a field survey. Um, and, and these, these changes can, can be made in, in the field as well to change the lead in, uh, to change, uh, address point location or, um, yeah, indicate that certain streets cannot be crossed. This information can be completely controlled, uh, by, by, uh, by the planner. So, uh, the software shows what will be used for a calculation and the planner can go in and make, uh, changes to it. Uh, however, they, uh, they, they would want, uh, they would want to do. So after making, uh, some, some tweaks to the input data, then the, the actual, um, calculation is being done. Again, this takes, uh, around a minute here. Just gonna skip forward. Um, so what comes out of the, uh, the, the calculation is a, um, yeah, is a network design. So what you're seeing here is, uh, the different clusters of, uh, that, that have been created based on, um, cut of distance and maximum, uh, distance that was configured based on, uh, the maximum capacity of a, of a, of a cluster. So the different cabinet areas can be seen here. It automatically decides as well on the routing, uh, as you can see on the colored lines, uh, and, um, yeah, the cables and the ducts are, are here as well. As we'll, uh, we'll, we'll, we'll see, uh, later, but this is not just a, um, visual, uh, layout of, of the routing, but this contains really all of the equipment, uh, equipment as well. Now, next off is, um, example of, uh, how we give control to the designer. So this is something that's possible in a planning stage or in a design stage. So, uh, you can go in, make a change to a cluster. Uh, so you can indicate that, uh, certain demand points or, or certain drop box, uh, needs to be served by a different cabinet. Uh, it's as simple as going in, making a change to a polygon and, uh, locking that, uh, locking that cluster and recalculating. Uh, so what you're seeing is that, uh, at the moment, the, um, yeah, the green cluster was feeding this, uh, drop box with, uh, number 56. We've excluded it and included in a, uh, different polygon. Uh, the route was coming from the top. If we now jump a bit forward after the calculation is done. So then area, the, the, the, yeah, the view is automatically refreshed. We see that the route from the top is no longer there. It's now being fed from the bottom from a cabinet in that, uh, orange polygon. All of the cables, all of the ducts, the routing is redone to, um, re-optimize that this point needs to be fed by this cabinet. So it's, it's re-evaluating completely for that cluster, how, uh, it wants to, uh, wants to serve it and which equipment it needs, uh, to, to serve it. So doing these iterations are, are really, really fast. Um, and yeah, as a planner, you still have, uh, control over, uh, over the design, but, uh, yeah, the tedious work to, uh, yeah, change, um, change all of the equipment and then also change the bill of material, uh, based on the design changes. That's, uh, that's being, uh, yeah, that's where the software can, can really assist and, and shine. And then, uh, this is really, uh, some insights in the bill of material. So for each, uh, design calculation, a bill of material is created here. I'm opening that, uh, the bill of material, it gives you some general information over, uh, of the design, um, might be, uh, useful in a, in a planning stage. Just quickly go back. Um, so per layer, give some insights and what the costs are for each layer, give some information on the area. So this is an 800 home, uh, home area. The total cost cost per home, uh, is all, uh, present in the bill of material. And what's really interesting is that detailed breakdown. So again, this is automatically calculated and it's showing you, for example, the amount of drop boxes that you need, uh, the amount of cables that you need on the feeder layer. So very detailed, uh, cost insights are provided here in, uh, in this, uh, in this bill of material. This is also generated for each, uh, cabinet area for each central office area. If you're looking at a, in a wider region, this can be really interesting to, to do that evaluation, uh, between, uh, between different scenarios, between different regions. Uh, this is, uh, there's a lot of detailed, um, information that's, that's really useful in a, in a planning stage. Um, and that detailed, but the materials, of course, very useful in a design stage when you're, yeah, you're ready to go to construction and order the material. And then finally, um, yeah, tracing capabilities. So the network that's being designed, like I said, it's not just lines on a map. There's a lot of detailed information here. Uh, so what I'm doing here is, um, I'm just looking at a building that surf and, uh, yeah, I'm tracing. Uh, through the network back to my central office. So you can really see here on the left. The cables that are being passed, the splices that are being passed, but there's, uh, as well. Um, so there's a lot of detailed information and all of that connectivity information is available, uh, in the design and, uh, in, uh, network manager. So that, uh, all of the tracing capabilities, uh, and other functionality can be used. Uh, so I'm, I'm just, uh, simply looking here at a schematic view of this, uh, of this network trace. And it's showing you, yeah, which cables that are being passed, uh, splitter at which location, uh, is being, is being utilized. So all of that, that, uh, yeah, detailed connectivity information is then, uh, available to you. All right. And with that, uh, the demos are, uh, over and I'm gonna hand it back to James. All right. Thanks very much. It's a very insightful. Thank you. Um, so yes, what comes next? So obviously now we've, uh, we've done the design. I'm just gonna take a couple of minutes just to give you an overview of, uh, where we go next in the, uh, lifecycle. So we've looked at planning and design and I'll just step through the other areas very briefly. So if we look at, uh, construction, um, we're all about providing, uh, predictable, um, rollouts. So being able to take what was created in design, um, automatically generate tasks from that, um, assign those tasks to different field teams, field crews. Um, a key part of this obviously is a lot of build is contracted out. So we need to be able to make sure that that supports contractors and we can work with contracts in a very flexible way. Um, and put in the hands of the contractor, the tools to allow them to be able to update the progress of the construction work that they've been working on, feed that back to, to you as the, uh, as the operator. So you can understand, uh, the status of work, um, and then clearly, you know, handle that as built update and inspections and closeouts that, uh, that are required to complete, uh, the construction process. So once we've, um, designed it, we've built it. Now we want to sell it. We actually want to make some money on this network that we've just invested, uh, heavily to, uh, to create. So obviously in the context of an FTTH network, that's a fairly, um, I'll say straightforward process in the fact that when we get to the end of the as built, we hand over the, um, addresses that are now ready for service. And that populates, uh, you know, provisioning system, assignment system that can then pick those up based on, uh, on customer requests and trigger the various processes. But an important, um, revenue stream is small to medium size enterprises. So those business to business connections, um, uh, are a little bit different. They maybe require some additional, uh, network construction. And you might get requests that are all over the place in terms of geography and not every one of those is going to be, uh, profitable for you. So you want to very quickly, um, be able to identify the not profitable ones, uh, and weed them out so that you don't waste time and resources looking at those. But equally for the ones that look like they could be, uh, profitable, you want to be able to provide a response to prospective customers very quickly. It's a highly competitive, uh, market out there. Um, and those opportunities will look elsewhere very quickly if they don't see the, uh, the response they're looking for. So that's what we want to be able to do for those, um, individual business to business quotes, package that up quickly. Look at the data that we've, uh, we've got there, uh, be able to generate the, you know, the shortest path to be able to connect that to the network, whether that's, uh, on net customers or off net customers. Look at different ways of doing that. Um, and, and, and clearly in many cases that's integrated with a CRM system as well. So that kind of, uh, capability to support that, um, sales process as well. And then the final stage is, uh, is clearly operations and maintenance. Um, the network needs some, um, maintenance to make sure it keeps running smoothly. Uh, there will always be things that, uh, that go wrong as well. So teams will need to be able to be, uh, out in the field, making changes to, uh, to, to address operational issues. And in that context, it's all about, um, increasing the efficiencies of those teams. And that means giving them the information they need to, uh, to do the job at the time they need to do that. Um, so that's where the concept of a single pane of glass, um, gives you that view of the network. Uh, you can bring data in from all the, uh, operational systems so that the field team have access to that information, a combination of data from different systems to give them, uh, the view of what they're trying to, uh, to achieve. That can hook into ticket management as well. So that could be from, from the point of view of, uh, you know, a workforce management system we're scheduling and dispatching so that, uh, that's handling that side of things. IQ GO is managing the, uh, the network side of things. And that also might relate to, you know, where there's activity that needs to be followed on, uh, to, uh, to trigger some additional, uh, uh, orders or, uh, additional work later in the, uh, the process. So it's all around trying to provide that single view of the network and the work related to that network for the teams in the field. And indeed, um, you know, the, the office staff as well. So they've got that same view of the network and can understand, uh, the current state of affairs. So that just gives you a quick flavor. I'll, I'll hand back to Jonas just to, uh, to, to wrap it up. All right. Thank you, James. Uh, yeah. So I just want to go over some key takeaways, uh, of this, uh, of this webinar. So, um, yeah, what I wanted to show is, uh, how, um, automated planning automated, uh, estimating, uh, can really help you, uh, build a stronger, uh, business case in that. In that, uh, in a planning stage, um, how with, uh, yeah, with automation as well, uh, automatic design and, uh, automating, um, the, uh, creation of, uh, build materials and so on, uh, how we can accelerate, uh, the network design, uh, process. Um, but by giving, uh, that, that, uh, control as well, that design control, uh, that's also a way to accelerate, um, uh, the network design. network design and make sure that you get a feasible design that can actually be built wanted to show how we can help to reduce the cost of builds by avoiding errors making sure that the architecture is fault that yeah there's there's no way to make any any mistakes in in for seeing the right equipment and and just by the the algorithms that we have in place to make sure that cost-effective designs are created and then in general how we can facilitate collaboration across teams across teams within the office but also from the office to the field and to further stages in the in the network lifecycle I think that's also one of the key takeaways so with that I want to thank everybody for yeah for attending the webinar and I think we'll have time for for some questions thanks Jonas thanks James I think we've had quite a few questions come in so I will hand over to Crawford to go through those now thank you Kelly yes we have had some come in so Jonas and James I will just kind of go in order here for both of you the first is how can the solution be used to plan and optimize fiber splicing and the person asked specifically for decision making when determining the fiber strand to use to get from a to z something similar to the find route tool but for available fiber strands and and but for available fiber strands okay perhaps that's one for me to answer so I think that that's probably a slightly different use case to to what we've presented here so that sounds more like more like a kind of point to point and you know trying to find a route through the fiber network and that's actually a capability that we're introducing in the next release of network manager that the engineering team are literally just finishing up that work and and that will be released towards the end of May it's just going to go through its testing phase that's that I think that's probably more related to the question I'd be happy to to follow up with with that in a bit more detail all right thank you and next question is how configurable is the network architecture and a couple of examples are can you support ring architecture or redundant scenarios yeah I'll take that one so yeah the we support a number of different types of cable deployment strategies or architectures ring topologies is is supported and there's a number of parameters that can be configured there so whether you're using a closed ring architecture or open ring architecture there's some specific settings on on the branching on rings and so on and there's also yeah some assisted ring designs that that's possible in the in the software where you can specify how the the ring should pick up the different locations and then the software automatically routes routes the cables and determines the cables and the ducts to serve all of the points and so yeah this is this is something that are supported in the software great thanks next question is this looks like a desktop solution can you speak to how the solution can be used in the field absolutely can be used in the field yes so just for ease you know Jonas was demonstrating it in running in a browser but yet we can take that out in the field and so work there's obviously some constraints what you can do but because we can run the connected app quite happily in a browser on a tablet then then you can take that into the field as well so yeah that's certainly something you can do alright and for the customers who are using the solution already where are they seeing the greatest savings and can you speak to the scope of the savings so there's the there's two main areas really one is in the speed to do the to do the to do the design and that can be up to 90% faster than doing it manually as you kind of get the flavor from what Jonas presented there and the second area is in the in the cost though of the construction so literally you can put less plant in the ground and particularly for your underground networks that's where the high cost comes in and that can be as much as 10% of the network which while a small which while a smaller percentage probably represents a significantly bigger monetary saving because that's obviously the expensive part of any network deployment is the actual construction aspect to it so if we can save some percentage points there then that can make a significant difference to the overall business case and in turn the return on investment. Okay thank you I think we have time for one more and this was just a general comment so maybe you guys can speak to this we asked a poll question about what the biggest challenges were one of those was visualization issues but this person says really all of those challenges are options or things that are you know challenging for them and their networks so if you can maybe speak to to all of those maybe how the solution works and how the solution works and how the solution works and how the solution works is that. Yeah I guess I suppose that we were just trying to provide some a little bit of focus and context there I guess our point of view would be that we attempt to solve many of those challenges you know with the solution the combination of combination of Comsoft and IQGA network manager and you know looks to address all of those challenges I don't know Jonas if there's anything you wanted to add to that. Yeah not really I hope it I mean it's difficult I think to make make a choice in the different challenges one yeah will probably always stand out like we saw in the results it's maybe the driven by the financials and the cost aspect but yeah visualizing visualizing the network and building up that confidence I hope it was clear from the from the from the demos that this is something that we can support with the new integrated solution. And yeah that it provides an answer and I'm happy to follow up further to get some some more examples. Great thank you it looks like we had one more come in so maybe we'll address that and then move on. It's talking about what what you demoed that's great being great for residential but they receive physical addresses or a list of latitude longitude sites where they're trying to plan routes off their existing networks so they could be all over a metro area. Can they import a list of those addresses for planning and design. Yeah yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If we mean if you have the latitude longitude information you know the location and this can be loaded into yeah loaded into the software. We can leverage existing infrastructure to get to those locations. Of course I want to want to state that yeah the main advantage of the solution is coming from larger network deployments. So yeah looking at hundreds of thousands of homes within an area that that need to be need to be deployed and new neighborhoods that need to be deployed. But it's definitely possible to load in these locations and look for the best way to connect them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Thank you. We promised you 45 minutes for a few minutes past so I'm going to turn it back over to Kelly to close out. Thanks Crawford and thank you to our host James and Jonas and thank you to all of you for taking the time to join us today. We have recorded the webinar so we will make that available for you to view on demand and also share with any colleagues that were unable to make it. So I'll make sure you get the link to that shortly. Keep an eye out for future webinars. We have more coming up over the next few months and we'll make sure that you get the invite to those. Thanks again everyone. Thanks a lot. Cheers. Thank you.