Investing in fiber infrastructure has gained popularity among investors, resulting in many closed deals in recent years. The trend shows that there will be even more investments next year, especially in renewable energy and digital infrastructure areas.
The whitepaper presents three critical considerations for a successful fiber infrastructure investment:
– Securing Demand
– Controlling Costs
– Adapting Advanced Software Solutions
Read our whitepaper and reach out to learn more!
Network operators need to get a comprehensive overview of their network quickly. Our new tree view displays the statuses of different network elements in the system. It helps network operators visualize, locate, and troubleshoot any issues in their network quicker and more efficiently.
Our Provisioning Dashboard shows you the total count of ONTs (Optical Network Terminal) in your network and whether they are online or offline. From there, you can easily access the tree view that opens when you click on the network element widget:
The tree’s nodes are Technical Area, OLT, and port. The number of ONTs on each level is visible.
You also see if these ONTs are online or offline- information we gather from our many hardware vendor integrations, and that is displayed and easily available in the tree view.
You can click on the different nodes in the tree to get to the corresponding entity. By using this feature, a network operator can easily see if there is a problem on a specific OLT or port.
Hi, I am Åsa Broman. As you may guess from the strange letter in my name, I am Swedish, but I currently live with my family in Palo Alto, California. I lived and worked in the Bay Area about 10 years ago as well, and the US feels like a second home, so it feels great to be back! For almost 25 years, I have worked in telcos and other infrastructure-related companies in a wide range of roles. The common denominator for those roles has been to connect people and bridge the gaps where teams or companies have different perspectives or competences. And no matter what my title has been, I have always been close to the customer.
I was part of the big broadband and fiber rollout in Sweden, where the majority of the citizens got fiber access 10-20 years ago. Those investments have been crucial to reaching equal Internet access for everyone, including the possibility to take part in the digital transformation in all aspects of society. COS delivers a unique tool that can make this infrastructure improvement happen a lot faster and providing a better customer experience. With the current explosion of fiber rollouts in the US, I couldn’t resist joining the ride.
Full speed ahead – I am getting to know our customers through a number of implementation projects that we are running, and at the same time, getting familiar with the product and its (many) features. I am also looking forward to meeting my colleagues. We are spread out on three continents to support our customers in the best possible way.
Don’t hesitate to connect with me if you are interested in broadband rollout or for any other reason connected to the experience I have from different fields.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself.
I love traveling. Many years ago, before I started a family, I went on several backpacking trips on a shoestring around the world. During those travels, I experienced many odd and memorable situations. On our honeymoon, we were backpacking in India and went on a camel safari in the desert. The starry sky was supposed to be amazing and super romantic. This particular night, it got overcast and ended up pouring for the first time in four years. Traveling is a lot like life in general – unexpected things happen that totally can change the path you anticipated from the beginning. This actually makes both living, and traveling, an exciting adventure.
Billing is a very central part of telecommunications and of any fiber broadband network. Automated billing is key; cuts costs, ensures revenue, and saves time. COS Business Engine supports all possible business models no matter if you are an Internet Provider billing your subscribers directly or if you are an Open Access Network Operator who charges wholesale fees on a monthly basis.
In the latter case, COS Business Engine aggregates a billing report for every ISP on your network on a monthly basis, available on the COS Business Engine admin interface.
There are variations where the Operator is also billing the end customer, or where the Operator is billing the customer for all services on behalf of the ISPs. COS Business Engine facilitates and automates all these billing models, as well as the single-provider business model.
Are you ready to transform your fiber project? If you’re looking for a partner committed to automation, efficiency, and excellence, COS Systems is here to help.
Contact us today and discuss how our fiber network solutions can empower your business, bridging the digital divide and providing our communities with comprehensive FTTH coverage.
I highly recommend reading our whitepaper if you want to dive deeper into the topic.
Managing, planning and running your network has never been easier! COS Business Engine offers many features and allows you to stay on top of your network and its performance easily and at all times with tailored diagnostic data. There are two standard roles available:
Admin profile: Take control! Effortlessly allows you to update service assortment, prices, and terms.
Support profile: Gain access to a limited subset of data network diagnostics and information on how services are performing on the network.
Additionally, our latest update in COS Business Engine makes it easier to manage and communicate network outages. If a network element such as an OLT goes down you can create a disruption for that OLT and publish it on the marketplace; either visible for all subscribers or only those who are actually affected.
Say goodbye to chaos during network disruptions! Our latest update simplifies the process:
Instant Updates: Experience swift communication during outages. Using this function not only keeps your subscribers informed but also reduces the number of tickets that are created and reduces the workload for your support staff.
Prioritizing Information: If a subscriber calls in, the support staff immediately sees that they are affected by an ongoing disruption, and they are therefore able to provide the customer with accurate information right away.
Integration Benefits: If your NOC has monitors and automatically detects outages, our new Network Operations API can push that disruption into the Business Engine.
This disruption is visible to all system users, and they can choose to approve or edit the disruption message and publish it on the marketplace.
Are you ready to take the next step in transforming your fiber project? If you’re looking for a partner committed to automation, efficiency, and excellence, COS Systems is here to help.
Contact us today and discuss how our fiber network solutions can empower your business bridging the digital divide and providing our communities with comprehensive FTTH coverage.
If you want to dive deeper into the topic, I highly recommend reading our whitepaper.
How our software solutions can offer planning, building, monitoring and managing fiber networks. And how COS can help optimize performance and efficiency at different stages of the network lifecycle.
If you’re using automated provisioning via one of our partners, our provisioning dashboard gives you an overview of the status of the services on your network.
The integration with COS Business Engine keeps track of your network and the services that have been provisioned, should be provisioned, or should be canceled but haven’t been terminated yet.
For example, the dashboard lets you know quickly how many services are activated even though they are missing a contract or how many services are still active even though the service has been canceled.
Are you ready to take the next step in transforming your fiber project? If you’re looking for a partner committed to automation, efficiency, and excellence, COS Systems is here to help.
Contact us today and discuss how our fiber network solutions can empower your business, bridging the digital divide and providing our communities with comprehensive FTTH coverage.
If you want to dive deeper into the topic, I highly recommend reading our whitepaper.
The key to efficient network operations is self-service, and in order to make marketing to your subscribers as easy as possible for you as an ISP, COS Business Engine has an integrated online marketplace.
This marketplace can be tailored, (visually) adapted, and branded and enables customers to choose what they want when they want and no matter where they are – around the clock!
The filter function makes it easy to choose between different services (e.g. internet, phone, tv) and to compare offers from different providers. At a glance, the customer sees which providers offer the best price to what conditions.
Once they have made their choice, neither the operator nor the service provider needs to take any further action, thanks to the zero-touch service provisioning functionality of COS Business Engine: services are provisioned automatically and ready to be used at the customer’s address within minutes.
The online marketplace can essentially complete the tasks of an entire call center while eliminating human error.
Are you ready to take the next step in transforming your fiber project? If you’re looking for a partner committed to automation, efficiency, and excellence, COS Systems is here to help.
Contact us today and discuss how our fiber network solutions can empower your business bridging the digital divide and providing our communities with comprehensive FTTH coverage.
If you want to dive deeper into the topic, I highly recommend reading our whitepaper.
We are thrilled to announce the launch of our brand-new Admin Interface, a powerful enhancement designed to elevate your experience in managing and controlling Business Engine. With streamlined navigation, simplified workflows, and a clean design, your experience is now smoother than ever.
This new Admin Interface empowers you to manage Business Engine with greater efficiency, control, and confidence. Your feedback is invaluable to us, so please feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions as you explore the new look.
Follow the COS Christmas Calendar 2023 here to learn about new features, colleagues, win prizes and more!
Ten years ago, I was contacted by people on the board of a startup called COS Systems. They knew I had recently moved back to my hometown Umeå where they were headquartered, and asked if I was interested in becoming their CMO. I did two things. First, I googled the term CMO as I wanted to be sure I knew what it meant. I found out it was a role that encompassed both Sales and Marketing strategy and much more since keeping these parts of the customer acquisition process in tight sync is a good idea. On Wikipedia it also said that typically a CMO stays about three years, often because it’s a lot to manage both Sales and Marketing. But it sounded like something that could fit me, and as I’ve been at COS for ten years now, I assume it wasn’t that bad.
The second thing was to meet with the company and figure out what they were doing and if there was a market for them. They had two platforms: a BSS/OSS called COS Business Engine that was built for Open Access Networks and a new platform under development. I didn’t know then what a business and operations support system was, and Open Access I only knew from being a customer on the city network, where I could choose between multiple providers. It wasn’t hard to understand that a network where you have a choice as an end consumer would be more attractive than being “owned” by a monopoly, so I loved it.
The platform under development didn’t have a name yet, but the idea was to use the fiber sales tactics that had been used in Sweden for a long time and build an out-of-the-box SaaS platform around it. The idea was to split the area planned to be built out into several competing zones and let the people living there take surveys, then pre-sign up and try to reach the take-rate target set by the network builder to bring fiber to their home. Also, the customers would be kept informed throughout the process automatically by the software.
I was mesmerized! Aren’t there tons of platforms like this already? Isn’t every fiber builder in the world using this tactic? I couldn’t see how this shouldn’t sell like water in the desert. Fast forward, I decided to take the job, got a laptop and a ticket to a Broadband Communities show in the States, and got started. To our big surprise, while we were developing COS Service Zones, Google Fiber launched and used a similar tactic with their “Fiberhoods” ” which made it easier for us to explain what the platform was for. In the US, these pre-sales tactics got a name – Demand Aggregation – but it wasn’t us who came up with it. Does anyone want to take credit!?
The first customer to sign up was California-based ISP Sonic, and I will never forget when Dane Jasper asked me at our booth, “So, who is using this?” I thought for a second and then replied, “You’re the first one Dane!”. They had started building something similar on their own, but an entrepreneur at heart, I guess Dane was brave enough to jump on to something new. At COS, we are still grateful since that was really the start of our growth in the US. Big shoutout to @dane and the entire team at Sonic! Since then, we’ve done 200+ projects in the US alone and seen many networks built and expanded with subscriber commitment. Many of the first customers were small, privately owned ISPs and WISPs moving into fiber. I guess that if you’re spending your own money, you really want to make sure you spend it in the best possible way. We’ve also seen competitors pop up, and many network owners and ISPs have built similar features into their websites. All in all, I would say that some sort of gathering of customer interest and pre-signups is the norm today in Fiber network build-outs and is often mandatory when applying for grants.
Today, we have merged the survey and pre-signup functionality into our BSS/OSS platform COS Business Engine to create an even smoother transition into build-out and operations of the network.
So, back to the Open Access history. It was a big surprise to come to the US from Sweden, where fiber is not solely viewed as something that has to do with internet service but rather as an infrastructure. More or less the same as having electricity or water connected to your home. In Sweden people are not hard to convince to pay $2000-$4000 to get it installed. In the USA it was about lightning fast and Mbps and the Gig! Mentioning Open Access was like cursing in church. Some early failures had given the term a bad taste it felt like, and there were misconceptions about what it is (still today!). My personal view was that there were two main reasons for early failures.
We still managed to build a loyal customer base, and the next shout-out goes out to the awesome team at Kitsap PUD in Washington State for believing in us and sticking with us. Some of my best times in this industry have been with Angela Bennik and Paul Avis.
Today, we have expanded our BSS/OSS platform COS Business Engine to not only support Open Access Networks, but pretty much any business model. The Marketplace-driven Open Access model, of course, where you can choose between multiple providers on a network-provided marketplace. Pure wholesale networks where the ISP ties their Billing platform to our backend to front the customer on a network with a separate entity owning and operating it, but less obviously so to the end-customer. Traditional ISPs, where service provisioning and billing is automated from the Marketplace. And more. Some enhancements we are working on now are even better support for ISPs who want to remain the Internet service provider but invite other providers to sell additional services on a wholesale fee model and also sales of enterprise-type services like dark fiber, point-to-multipoint connections, and similar. Our BSS/OSS customer base is growing faster than ever, and our customers are building fiber to millions of homes and businesses on several continents. It feels great to be part of the solution for those who still lack good broadband.
When it comes to business models, I have no doubt that the infrastructure approach to fiber will dominate. Whether it’s called Open Access, wholesale, digital infrastructure, or something else doesn’t really matter. With big investors, such as Meridiam with their networks in the USA, Canada, and Europe, or Blackrock in their Gigapower venture with AT&T, stepping in with billions to fund infrastructure, they will not settle with selling internet services. They will focus on owning the infrastructure of the future and be able to use it for whatever use cases the future will hold.
When it comes to the tech stack for fiber operators, I also see a clear trend. Since I started traveling to the US in 2013, several new companies have grown to, in my opinion, lead the market. Digital fiber mapping tools such as Vetro Fibermap and IQGeo, Auto design tools like Comsof (now acquired by IQGeo) and Biarri, and digital construction management platforms like Vitruvi, Render, and Ocius-X. There are more examples, these are just a few. But what they all have in common is that they are built to digitize and automate processes of planning, building, and operating fiber networks. On the hardware side, all electronic vendors are focusing more and more on their software platforms and simplifying integrations to other systems, such as BSS/OSS platforms. The tech stack of future broadband network operators will be highly integrated and centered around one core platform holding the source of truth, ensuring real-time data you can trust and in turn, enabling a maximum degree of automation in all daily tasks of running a network. Just like COS Business Engine. It will not only be new operators choosing modern, integrated, and automated software stacks. Existing operators will migrate over to more modern alternatives to make their operations more efficient. Old clunky software has to adapt or become obsolete. Today, it’s not about fewer clicks. It’s about no clicks and preferably enabling the subscriber to drive everything!
Now, there are new operators popping up left and right to get their share of the market in the fiber race, especially in the USA and Canada. This is the right time. The window is now because once built it will be very hard to find a business case strong enough to support overbuilders. The next phase in some 3-5 years, will be a time of consolidation that will continue for quite some time. Smaller and failed networks will be acquired by those who win the race in the next few years.
For COS, the future looks brighter than ever. We have a great platform that fits well with the direction the market is evolving in. We have amazing partners in the industry that I’m very grateful for (you’re too many to mention, but we are grateful for each and every one of you). We’re growing the COS team and are having a lot of fun despite all the work that comes with this very exciting opportunity. I hope we can team up on this journey. Reach out!
The COS Team says hi and has gathered some old pictures of Isak – we hope you enjoy them 😉
We provide FTTH operators and network owners with software for automating and digitizing every aspect of their FTTH venture. From survey and demand aggregation, to sign up, deployment and billing – to help bridge the digital divide.