Comprehensive Access Network Transformation Planning with Jibe
By Luc Absillis and Sudheer Dharanikota
The ever-increasing customer appetite for higher bandwidth services is magnified with impending introduction of new technologies, such as: 5G, high speed fixed wireless access, and 10 Gbps fiber to the home. Customer demand plus disruptive competitive services are forcing cable service providers to spend in their access network infrastructure up to 90% of their yearly capital investment. This makes the telecommunications industry one of the most capital-intensive (~20% capital intensity ratio[1]) industries.
In such a capital-intensive environment, the challenge is to maintain profitability by introducing new access technologies and reducing the cost per bit.
Planning is the Key
Regrettable strategy, regrettable investment, regrettable time… These regrets are very expensive when you consider hundreds of millions to even billions of dollars spent in an increasingly competitive environment.
A network transformation path that is not finely tuned can waste millions and increase churn with looming 5G competition. Having a comprehensive and flexible long-term transformation plan is mission critical in such a cut throat world. While long-term planning is important for the complete end to end network, focusing first on the access network (where you are spending ~90% of yearly capex) is a no-brainer.
The access network is directly impacted by growing customer demand, budgetary limitations, and the availability of next generation access technologies. Creating a strategic transformation requires a highly efficient capital investment plan with many iterations of what-if scenarios. This is a multidimensional problem of balancing demand drivers and introducing right access technologies with budgetary and operational constraints. This planning is influenced by customer broadband needs, capacity constraints, corporate strategy, current and emerging competition, operational expense minimization, and technology innovation. Such a complex plan should be conducted at a node level while keeping end to end strategic integrity.
Given the high level of uncertainty on the input (such as demand growth, competitive strategies, etc.), developing an optimal access transformation plan is a methodical process of creating, analyzing, and refining multiple viable deployment strategies to facilitate a collective decision with the company stakeholders.
The access transformation planning is a significant strategic decision, so the more viable refined alternatives you can analyze, the more likely you develop the best plan for the company. Hence the key to success is creating and evaluating accurate complex network transformation options quickly.
Introducing Jibe
Jibe is a breakthrough Interactive Planning Toolset used to generate and analyze multi-year access network transformation plans, which fulfills growth requirements, strategic objectives, and operational (financial and execution) constraints. The flexibility and speedy execution of Jibe gives you the opportunity to create and refine various deployment strategies, resource requirements, and financial impact analysis across the entire footprint of your network.
Creating and refining a deployment strategy is an iterative approach that starts with a snapshot of the node level network state followed by a cycle of:
- Scenario configuration
- Deployment scenario calculation
- Analyzing results and
- Refining inputs
The definition of a scenario includes inputting technology specifications, node transformation options, and business rules into Jibe to drive the tool’s algorithms. After network state and scenario creation, the user can build the network wide transformation plan with a single click, all in less than a minute.
The user can refine the scenario by going through cycles of analyzing the results, adjusting input parameters and, re-running the analysis until the final results satisfy the stakeholders. The detailed Jibe output also enables for comprehensive visualization to facilitate results analysis.
The ease of running and evaluating scenarios combined with the speed of execution makes running what-if analysis a breeze. Jibe uniquely enables an operator to explore more alternatives than they thought are possible.
Example Use Cases
Suppose you want to introduce FTTH in 2019, in certain markets, for business customers. With Jibe it is easy to separate residential and business households passed, create independent residential and business growth profiles with different network transformation rules. The Jibe analysis views will show you, in the blink of an eye, the footprint, costs, construction activities, and resource needs across the entire footprint. Additionally, the Jibe error view will reveal, down to the individual access network level, if any of the critical parameters could not be met.
Let’s say you want to compare the financial, resource and footprint impact of an aggressive fiber deep versus a targeted fiber deep strategy. With Jibe you can quickly create two variations of business rules by adjusting the dynamic input parameters. Run the scenarios individually. Then you can easily compare both the scenarios for the cost, resource needs and footprint impact.
Tired of just in time capacity upgrades and want to explore strategic deployments reflecting long term vision? With Jibe you can easily steer upgrades of individual nodes or groups of nodes while still executing the network wide transformation plan calculation.
Planning is Everything — Act Now!
Having a multiyear network transformation plan with node level granularity is a mission critical requirement in this fast-changing industry. Without Jibe, it is like trying to choose the best route to your destination with only a few streets visible on your map.
Jibe makes all the options visible and lets you make an educated decision, not an educated guess!
The details provided by the Jibe network transformation planning tool can be the input to various business tools, such as: operational workflow management, budget planning, and inventory management.
With all stakeholders starting from the same transformation plan, created by Jibe, the chance for corporate wide buy-in increases exponentially.
Is Jibe for you?
Jibe is for you if you are a corporate strategist, network planner, financial wizard, procurement lead, operational champion, or more. We can show you how to effectively use Jibe to solve your problem and sell your solution to your leaders.
You can reach us at contact@fpinno.com
or +1-919-444-2270
Check us out at http://www.fpinno.com
Luc Absillis, PhD COO
First Principles Innovations
luc@fpinno.com
Luc has more than 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry as a CTO, solution team lead, architect, product line manager and fundamental researcher. Luc earned his PhD and MS in computer science from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium.
Sudheer Dharanikota
Managing Partner and CEO
First Principles Innovations
Sudheer@fpinno.com
Sudheer has more than 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry as a strategist, product line manager, architect, development lead, and standards contributor. Sudheer earned his MS in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, PhD in computer science from Old Dominion University, and Executive MBA from Duke University.
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