Resources

6th Oct 2022 0

Why Data-Driven Design is the Key to Fiber Network Design Success

When designing a fibre network all stakeholder’s understanding of data can make or break the project. It’s crucial therefore to elevate the importance of data, and to consider data throughout the end-to-end lifecycle of a network design project. There are several benefits to taking a data-driven approach.

Data-driven design reduces obstacles.

In the past, designing a fibre optic network was a cumbersome process. Engineers had to manually plot out the route of the network, considering obstacles like buildings, railways, rivers and lakes. This process was not only costly, but it was also prone to errors. Thanks to advances in data analysis, it is now possible to design a fibre network using data-driven methods.

From a design perspective it is key to understand what customers want as a final deliverable, and as such make sure the right input data is made available at the start of the project.

Data-driven design reduces time to value

By taking a data-driven approach, project managers can shorten timescales, and avoid key obstacles from vision and feasibility through to delivery. Having data as a guiding point from start to finish and pre-empting some of the issues that the data will throw up along the way will enable companies to not only break ground quicker but also to achieve time to value quicker.

Data-driven design helps you to future-proof your network

With a thorough knowledge of data, your design team can create a digital twin. Think of a digital twin as a copy of a city landscape.

Therefore, should you need to make any changes during construction you can do so. Equally, once the network is built you can go back to the plans in the future if needed and know exactly what is in place.

Design experts should be data experts

Design experts need to be also experts in designing end-to-end data flows. A good fibre design team will be able to take demographic data, subscriber demand data, address points data, buildings and cell sites, existing infrastructure information, land parcels and other geographic information (GIS) and bring it all together into a risk-free, future-proofed fibre design. And because they’re experts in data, they’ll be able to do this at pace.

Patrik Lowenborg, VP of Network Design at NetPMD says, “Our design and installation process runs through six key stages. Along the way, there are data considerations we need to address. Only data-driven design teams will know how to approach that and the importance of it. I’m proud that we’re all data-driven here at NetPMD.”

From Planning a network into operational design and beyond

Planning any fibre network is no easy feat and often takes a long time depending on how mature the market is, costs to build, return on investments (ROI), and architecture to name a few. Whether you start with due diligence or pre-study of a network area, once it has been decided what solution, deployment method and architecture will be used data will need to be acquired to start any design.

For this reason, it is essential at an early stage to identify not only what architecture, choice or material, and deployment methods, but also what system or tools the entire process will be built on.

NetPMD is a data-driven fibre design and integration company who are not geographically bound, so whether based in the UK, Europe or across the globe, they can deliver. Their experience in the United States means they are perfectly placed to share this learning with companies in the UK and beyond to add value and speed up projects.