TelUC Bits & Bytes Newsletter - July 2024

SpatialNinja

News & Updates

Esri UC 2024 Highlights

Plenary

Year in and year out, the Esri User Conference plenary sets the tone for the rest of the week, and this year's plenary was jam packed with ArcGIS product updates, user presentation demos, and keynote talks. Here were some of the highlights, but you can view all the moments from the plenary here.

The Rapid Evolution of Artificial Intelligence

Miami-Dade County, Florida

Marriott International: Where Can We Take You?

Telecom Kick-off & Demo Theater Tech Session

The telecom kick-off session provided valuable insights into the direction of GIS within the telecommunications industry. Some of the challenges mentioned during the session included network modernization and expansion, sustainability, limited resources, and resilience. To address these challenges, ArcGIS, as an enterprise system, is supporting telecom organizations and helping them overcome these obstacles. During the session, Randall Rene, Director of Telecommunications Solutions, and Stacia Canaday, Telecom Business Development Lead, outlined how ArcGIS is enabling telecom organizations to tackle these challenges.

Additionally, Patrick Ryan and Eileen Kelsey, Esri Solution Engineers, demonstrated a few examples of ArcGIS in action for building broadband networks. If you missed the demo theater tech session that followed the kick-off, don't worry! You can still check out the StoryMap to get a glimpse of the showcased capabilities of ArcGIS in the telecom industry.

Demo Theater.gif

Telecom Paper Sessions

Born digital: Transforming utility infrastructure with digital twins - Tom Aicklen and Anthony Mastroianni of Infrastructure Ontario

The deployment of utility infrastructure projects worldwide is undergoing a transformative shift with digital twins, smart grids, IoT, data analytics, cloud computing, and mobile technology. This digital transformation offers multiple benefits to the energy ecosystem, fostering collaboration and synergy among utilities, governments, private sector partners, and communities.

Mapping Equipment Damages of the French Fibre Network with computer vision - Thomas Thuillier of Deepomatic with Richard Relyea and Catherine Gerdts of GHD

The French fibre network, with close to 30m homes connected, is seeing noticeable wear on shared equipments such as street cabinets. Altice, in collaboration with Deepomatic, employed computer vision to address these problems. Technicians photograph equipment during home connections, and real-time analysis identifies issues from loose cables to damaged panels. Integrated into ArcGIS, a live damage map is generated, enhancing maintenance strategies and collaboration with infrastructure stakeholders and the French Telecommunications regulator, elevating network oversight standards.

Navigating the fiber maze: Using GIS for effective fiber network management - Mohammed Al Maktoumi from Oman Broadband and Andrew Wright of 3-GIS

Fiber has become essential in our increasingly connected world. As demand for high-speed, widely accessible internet continues to grow, network operators face a myriad of challenges in efficiently managing these intricate networks. This presentation explores those challenges, from network expansion to optimization, and the pivotal role that GIS plays in overcoming them. Leave with a deeper understanding of the relationship between network management and GIS, and gain practical insights into implementing Esri solutions to enhance network efficiency, reliability, and sustainability.

mPower's FiberPro leverages ArcPro and the CUNF advances fiber management of OSP - Jason Brown of mPower Innovations, Heath Vileta of Algona Municipal Utilities , and Cory Eicher of EICHCORP

The need to map and manage rapidly expanding, complicated networks is made for GIS. mPower will showcase how FiberPro was deployed by a new ArcGIS Enterprise customer. Then, smaller communities and utilities that started as phone and cable providers will be examined. Utilities that are managers of sophisticated networks are often in need of a solution that supports Hybrid, Cu and Coax. ArcPro and FiberPro immediately advance a customer’s ability to memorialize existing maps and data of their OSP, better design new infrastructure, manage splicing, trace and trouble shoot with OTD.

Using GIS and Business Metrics to Rank Areas for Optimum Fiber Overbuild - Adam Barrs HTC inc. (Horry Telephone Cooperative)

HTC, an internet service provider in SC, has a network comprised of copper, coax, and fiber. They wanted to be 100% fiber while expanding to new areas and needed to create a priority order to make efficient use of their resources. The GIS team created a Report Card using their GIS data populated with pertinent business metrics. They analyzed small segments of their service area and determined those with highest potential for ROI. Once identified, the team was able to utilize CrescentLink software to carry projects from concept to as built.

Location Analytics: leveraging GIS for fiber rollouts & network expansions - Tarik Dixon of Digicel Group.

Tarik’s presentation divulged how utilizing GIS to analyze spatial data housed within a telco's OSS & BSS, can help to facilitate making commercial data driven business decisions relating to investments in fiber. His session also highlighted how GIS is used within the organization to help lower the cost of fiber rollouts via standardization, improved efficiency, track adherence of design rules and enforce network standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Improving time-to-market for telecom insights using ArcGIS Online Hosted Layers - Kevin Hasley and Andrea Vlassis-Zahn from Ookla

Real-world network performance data is essential for identifying communities that lack reliable broadband access. As the provider of the world’s largest collection of network connectivity insights, Ookla needed a turnkey solution to make terabytes of spatial data easily accessible. Using Esri’s GeoAnalytics Engine and ArcGIS, Ookla was able to seamlessly aggregate and share millions of records with governments and ISPs through hosted layers – reducing months of processing time to a day and providing the comprehensive insights needed to inform public policy and improve connectivity for all.

Delivering More Fiber Projects Faster through AI in Planning and Permitting - David Morczinek from AirWorks

Leveraging technology in planning, permitting, and design can speed up fiber delivery and increase market growth. By combining commercially available geospatial data with AI drafting, providers can create fast, automated, and accurate plans that are ready to enter the permitting process sooner. Meanwhile, teams can focus resources on more thought-driven tasks and new projects, with the ultimate benefit of delivering more projects on time and maintaining funding.

City of Loveland Rapid Broadband Growth - Paige Richardson from the City of Loveland and Jon Fairchild from Schneider Electric

The City of Loveland has a good problem: their Pulse fiber-to-the-home network is seeing rapid adoption. This also created a challenge: trying to keep the GIS current for new service installations using limited staff. The Loveland team answered by automating data collection and processing with a combination of ArcGIS, ArcFM, and Python tools. Now they are seeing more consistency in collected data along with near elimination of backlog for GIS updates - and their users are seeing the benefit of more accurate data.

Telecom SIG and User Community Meetups

Throughout the week, the Telecom User Community had numerous opportunities for networking and knowledge sharing. Members of the GIS community in the telecommunications industry gathered for the Telecom Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting, where they engaged in discussions and exchanged insights. The conversations continued at the infrastructure social and TelUC meetup, providing further opportunities for learning and collaboration. If you're interested in participating in future TelUC meetups, be sure to keep an eye out for the Q3 and Q4 events. These meetups offer a valuable platform for connecting with industry professionals and staying updated on the latest developments in GIS for telecommunications.

Product Updates:

Basemap Releases Include Over 180 New and Updated Communities

What's New in World Imagery (July 2024)

What's new in ArcGIS StoryMaps (July 2024)

Recent TGI5s

View all TGI5s

Meetups & Events

If you were not able to attend UC this year, be sure to register for the upcoming virtual meetup. This meetup is focused on ArcGIS 2024 and is for the Esri Telecom User Community. This is your chance to discover technical updates, talk with Esri staff, learn from other members of the community, and stay informed.

TGI60 - ArcGIS 2024 - Virtual Meetup

Telecom Insights

FCC Broadband Data Collection – December 2023 Update in ArcGIS Living Atlas

The December 2023 Broadband Data Collection (BDC) is now available within ArcGIS Living Atlas. This ready-to-use layer shows fixed broadband availability for every Census Block and H3 Resolution-8 hexagonal area in the U.S. and outlying territories. The layer summarizes the December 2023 BDC data showing the number of served, underserved, and unserved Broadband Serviceable Locations (BSLs) by transmission technology in a given geography. It is a composite of six sublayers – State, County, Tract, Block Group, Block, and H3 Resolution-8 hexagons – each with a related table listing all Internet Service Provider (ISP) offerings by technology and speed tier. Continue reading.

For more insights, be sure to sign up for the Telecom News newsletter at esri.com/telecom.

TelUC Bits & Bytes Newsletter - July 2024

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