Watch here what a great partnership like ours between COS Systems, Lit Communities and Calix can look like and achieve!
BG Communications, an emerging network operator, is working closely with a large number of municipalities in Austria to build Open Access FTTH. Since 2021, they, with their subsidiary regioHELP, have been using COS Service Zones to capture customer interest and the COS Business Engine for operations. Automated provisioning is supported by COS’ partnership with Nokia.
In Austria, fibre penetration is not even 10% and especially in many rural regions it is a challenge to participate in the modern digital world. Erwin Moser, co-founder of RegioHELP, is a passionate advocate of projects oriented towards the common good. He was instrumental in the construction of a municipal wind farm as well as a area-wide fibre optic network in his hometown of Munderfing. After seeing the massive local support and benefits of the fibre network, he and his partner Willem Brinkert, co-founder and CEO of regioHELP and BG Communications, started looking for ways to roll out fibre on a larger scale and for the benefit of the region.
“After the expansion of the area-wide community network in Munderfing, my team and I were convinced that this could also be done in larger regions and even more efficiently. It was a matter of finding a model that benefits the regions and the citizens and makes sense from a financial point of view. That’s how we came up with our model. We work closely with the municipalities and the ownership rights are transferred to the municipalities in the long term. But initially we will take on all the work to get the network built and operational. By doing this on a large scale in several regions, we can be much more effective than one municipality could be alone,” Erwin Moser comments.
“To make this model work, we understood we needed an operations platform, a BSS/OSS, tailor built for Open Access and with a proven track record of enabling cost efficient and scalable operations. With COS Systems end-to-end platform, we found what we needed. With everything from the initial interest survey to pre-signups and zero-touch provisioning of services from multiple providers in one platform our operations are streamlined. We can simply do more with less people and scale faster”, says Willem Brinkert.
“We are honored to be supporting RegioHELP in their efforts to bring Open Access fiber to residents in these unserved and underserved regions. It aligns very well with our company mission to help connect the unconnected. We believe our software and knowledge within this space will help regiohelp scale faster and provide affordable high-speed broadband to more people sooner!”, says COS Systems CEO Mikael Philipsson.
About BG Communications:
BG Communications is a young innovative company that builds a nationwide fibre infrastructure for municipalities. As a disruptive player in the German-speaking fibre optic infrastructure scene, BG Communications relies on a cooperative model and thus direct cooperation with the municipalities. With the subsidiaries regioHELP eG and Glasfaser Spezial-Bau GmbH, a multitude of tasks are mapped “in-house”, allowing processes to be optimised and synergy effects to be used to enable efficient fibre optic expansion.
About COS Systems:
COS SYSTEMS provides Fiber to the Home operators and network owners all around the world with software for automating and digitizing every aspect of their Broadband venture. The COS software has a strong focus to support the end-to-end process and Open Access for best-in-class ROI and scalability in fiber to the home projects.
Learn more about COS Systems on www.cossystems.com.
A small budget, long distances and low population density surely does not sound like the best prerequisites for a fiber network buildout. By working in a structured, but still creative way and with a good dialogue with the local community it is still feasible. It has been proven over the last six years since Kitsap PUD started to work with COS to build demand for and operate their Open Access fiber network.
To understand how this success story began, we must jump back all the way to 2003. As members of NoaNet (Northwest Open Access Network), another customer of COS, Kitsap Public Utility District (KPUD) got access to the fiber backbone that was built throughout the rural parts of Washington State. In 2003 KPUD started building a middle mile network, branching off from the NoaNet fiber ring and connected their first community anchor tenants; schools, libraries, navy facilities, but also a number of businesses. Being a water utility and not having the big budgets as some of the electric utilities in Washington State have, it was a slow but steady buildout that generated a small, but positive cash flow. An excellent starting point for any community wishing to initiate a fiber project as not only costs can be lowered to the anchor institutes, but that the revenue from those fiber connections will also stay local.
Over the coming years, the incumbent telecom companies didn’t improve their presence in the county much and not only businesses, but also residents started to ask if KPUD could expand their fiber network to reach them, as some other PUD’s in the state had done. KPUD decided to find a way to determine if there was a big interest for this and that is when they started working with COS Service Zones. Within just a few days from launching the site, the response was overwhelming with over 2000 completed surveys. The lack of high speed and quality broadband in the county was clear.
KPUD is running their network on an Open Access model and is operating it using COS Business Engine. This means they are not themselves providing the retail services but invite private sector providers to do so. Already from the start several Service providers saw the benefit of being able to reach new customers without any investments in infrastructure, even though the numbers were initially small.
So, without a big budget how were they able to expand their networks in these rural areas? The secret recipe is called LUD:s (Local Utility Districts). While the middle mile network is expanded by a mix of cash flow revenue, tax dollars and grants, the last mile connections to the homes are paid by the homeowners, but it is not a one-by-one thing. Instead, in neighborhoods or areas where KPUD has identified a high demand with COS Service Zones the total cost for the buildout is calculated and the cost per household is determined. Residents will decide if they want to participate or not and high participation obviously leads to a lower cost. Residents have the option to pay upfront, but many choose to spread the cost out over time through one of the partnerships KPUD has established with local banks that will allow a long term loan with a fixed interest rate and a lean on the property. Even if these costs can in some less densely populated areas be quite substantial, people are willing to sign up knowing it will not only provide a better internet service, but also increase their property value. Just recently the very last homeowner who didn’t opt-in initially in one of the first LUD’s decided to connect – effectively a 100% take-rate in that neighborhood, even though the last mile connection has to be paid by the homeowner. Another rural COS Open Access customer, neighboring Mason PUD3, is also using a model where customers can pay off their installation over time with a $25 monthly construction adder to the cost of their service for 12 years.
Angela Bennink, Telecom Director at KPUD, explains that the Open Access model is a big proponent of the network and the choice it offers make people more willing to sign up and connect. Subscribers know that the competition between multiple providers will ensure a good quality of service and reasonable prices. And switching between providers is made extremely easy by the self-service broadband Marketplace provided with the COS Business Engine operations platform.
“Our biggest challenge now is keeping up with demand,” says Bennink.
Especially during this Covid-19 pandemic the need for broadband has been extreme. The proximity to Seattle, across the water also makes the population grow at a rapid pace. 100 000 new residents are expected in the coming three years and KPUD is working with developers to make sure they put in conduit for fibers as they build.
“We have slowly and steadily grown and we will add close to 500 new customers this year and as many next year. We have found a model that really works with our prerequisites and the functionality to streamline the capture of interest and the operations of our Open Access network provided by COS System’s platforms has been a part of that success,” says Bennink.
“It’s been an absolute honor to have been part of KPUD’s journey from the first survey responses coming in, to the successful growth they are showing today. They have proved that with a strong localized strategy and perseverance rural fiber is possible,” says Isak Finer, Chief Revenue Manager at COS Systems.
Fiber network deployments can be separated into two distinct phases – Distribution network buildout and customer connections, often referred to as “drops”. COS Business Engine has always automated the activation of the ONT to validate and document the connection between the service location and the installed equipment to guarantee correct service provisioning. With the latest release of COS Business Engine we’ve launched a full workflow solution for managing and documenting customer connections.
Once you’ve got fiber built to the street, connecting a new customer to your network may sound to some like an easy task. “Just send the crew out and get it done!” Well, this is another one of those things in running a fiber network that are easier said than done. If you start to break down all the work of getting a customer installed into smaller tasks, you will quickly realize that it requires an almost overwhelming amount of planning, coordination, information sharing and documentation to avoid problems.
A typical workflow could look like this:
1. A customer has signed up and you’ve decided it’s time to connect their home.
2. Drop design. A fiber drop assignment must be made from the connection point in the street to the house. It requires information about where the fiber terminal is, what it looks like at the location, which building and where on that building the fiber should be connected, etc.
3. Staging the drop. As the fiber drop design is complete a person has to access that information to know what equipment has to be prepared for the installation crew as they go out to do the installation. What length of drop cable is to be used? Which type of ONT? What kind of enclosure?
4. Build the drop. A crew will take the prepared material and drive out to the home to connect and bury/hang the drop fiber cable from the fiber terminal in the street to the wall of the house to connect. It’s key that the correct material has been prepared and that fiber drop information is easily accessible.
5. Install the network interface unit. This is where the fiber drop cable terminates at the outer wall of the house.
6. Install the ONT/CPE. This is the final step, before the subscriber can go live with their service. The in-home installation crew will drill through the outer wall and pull a fiber through to the inside of the house and install the ONT where the customer has chosen to put it. It includes the activation and confirmation that the correct ONT is installed at the correct location. If this is not correct, service orders from one customer could be provisioned to the neighbor! Such errors can be incredibly time consuming to resolve since you may have to come into customers’ homes.
7. Configure the service and test the connection port is performing as expected.
All these tasks must be coordinated, and every person/crew involved must know for sure that the previous step was successfully completed. Imagine if a crew has an appointment to make the final installations in the customer’s home, then meeting up with the customer who has stayed home from work excited to start using their new service, and then finding out the fiber drop to the house has not yet been completed. That’s a huge waste of time and that subscriber will in a matter of seconds go from excited to extremely disappointed. This might be the worst possible scenario, but lack of control in this rather complex process will be extremely costly.
It’s also extremely valuable to have good documentation of how the work has been performed. Not only to continuously verify that installation crews/subcontractors are doing quality work, but also for future support and maintenance.
This screenshot shows the installer’s view of the installation workflow. The customer and service location information is there and also the status of each and every task in the installation workflow.
With the new customer installation workflow in COS Business Engine we’ve solved all of these potential pitfalls. As soon as a new customer location is created, either manually or by an import, but most likely through the integration to our demand aggregation platform COS Service Zones, a complete installation work order is created. This work order includes a set of predefined tasks that can then be assigned to the appropriate installer responsible to execute it. Each person will have a user profile set up in COS Business Engine where they will be able to access all the relevant information about the task to be performed on their own device. An installer will have all their work orders and tasks listed on their overview page as they log into their installer view in COS Business Engine.
Any files, be it drawings, signed contracts or pictures taken in the field, will be available to not only the admin user, but also every installer with tasks to perform in that specific customer connection. With real-time access and updates there is no need to distribute papers and manually confirm work performed using phone or email.
This new functionality is part of the standard set of features delivered with the COS Business Engine and we’re excited to receive feedback from our existing and new customers as they start using it.
Finally, a special shout-out to the great team at WideOpen Networks in Virginia who are using our full product suit to manage everything from initial interest surveys, to pre-signups in fiberhoods with take-rate targets, taking deposits, managing the customer connection workflows described in this blog post, to the Marketplace where subscribers can manage their own service orders on their Open Access network and finally billing. Their vast experience provided invaluable feedback in our development of this new functionality.
Brownsville, TX, has been on the list of the least connected US cities for the past few years. Oldham County is only a short drive from Kentucky’s largest city Louisville but does not have adequate access to broadband. Through a partnership with Lit Communities, COS Systems is part of the solution for both of these cities.
Lit Communities are helping municipalities build a plan for improved broadband access, as well as offering support in financing, constructing and operating networks. With the firm determination that it’s always feasible to find ways to deploy a future proof broadband infrastructure in every community, each project starts with an in-depth assessment of the unique conditions of the specific market. The result is a business case that outlines how a sustainable network can be built and operated.
Even though this kind of business case is incredibly complex to produce, it builds on getting answers to two questions that are simple to ask; What will it cost to build and operate the network, and what will the revenue be?
It is on the revenue side of the business case preparation that COS Service Zones comes into play. While the cost is calculated by producing network designs based on service locations to be connected and existing assets in the form of fiber, conduit, poles, etc. the revenue side is harder to estimate. It is determined by how many subscribers will sign up and what services they will buy. This is why Lit Communities are using COS Service Zones to perform what is known in the industry as Demand Aggregation.
Two recent projects where COS Service Zones have been launched are in Brownsville, TX and Oldham County, KY. Both of these projects are in the first phase of demand aggregation where residents and businesses are encouraged to go to their localized COS Service Zones sites to show their interest by taking a survey. In this survey they will be asked questions about their current service and provider, as well as indicating what service package they would be interested in and their likeliness to sign up. The survey also asks market specific questions to gather information valuable to building the plan for that community. After answering the short questionnaire, the respondents will also be asked to complete a speed test that will give them what download and upload speeds they are receiving from their current provider. The results will give a good picture of what speeds are available, where customers have access to high speeds already and which incumbent providers can provide proper broadband speeds. One particularly interesting question to answer is how many respondents actually reach the definition of broadband, which today is set at 25 Mbps download and 3Mbps upload – A definition most can agree is far too low with everything the internet is used for today.
By integrating to social media and allowing local residents to sign up as “Champions”, the COS Service Zones platform aims to build a grassroots word-of-mouth movement, where the local community will drive as many people as possible to show their interest. In most communities this works incredibly well, with hundreds and even thousands of survey responses in a just a few days. This is especially true in communities currently unserved or underserved, or where incumbent providers have used their monopoly position to keep the prices high and network upgrades to a minimum – unfortunately, something common in smaller cities and rural areas.
With access to this real-time data, captured from the same persons who would be the subscribers on the network, Lit Communities can accurately predict future take-rates and revenue. The data will also help to determine what service offerings and pricing would be optimal for ensuring high take-rates and network sustainability. With these results, it takes the guesswork out of play and creates an accurate business case for the municipality and investors.
Despite the value the survey produces, the major strengths of the comprehensive COS Service Zones platform are still to come into the play when the decision to move the project forward from planning to execution is taken. Now, knowing exactly where in the city demand is greatest and competition weakest, based on the survey responses, service zones –“fiberhoods”- can be created. These are neighborhoods that will have their own signup page where the number of households required to get on the construction list is highlighted. It is now up to the neighbors to come together and sign up. The best neighborhoods will be prioritized in the build-out, ensuring that the financials of the project are always intact, and that revenue can be optimized.
“With a dedication to close the digital divide for everyone, a vision we at COS share, Lit Communities’ ultimate goal is always to deploy a complete fiber based network to every home and business in the community and then operate it on a True Open Access model, allowing local as well as external service providers to offer services to the residents and business on their networks. It will offer local companies the opportunity to grow and an attractive assortment of services and providers to the subscribers. We hope and believe that this will become a reality in Brownsville and Oldham County, “says Isak Finer, CMO and VP North America at COS Systems.
About Lit Communities
Lit Communities is both a forward-thinking builder and operator of next-generation network infrastructure and a consultancy that guides communities across the country through the complicated process of deploying their own open application fiber optic utilities. Lit Communities believes that by separating the network infrastructure from the services provided on it, a more resilient and consumer-friendly environment is created. This approach makes otherwise prohibitively expensive networks feasible to build in communities of all sizes. Learn more at www.litcommunities.net
About COS Systems
COS SYSTEMS is a leading provider of software to plan, deploy and operate modern broadband networks that support services from one or more providers, using a powerful yet simple self-service interface. Specializing in True Open Access Networks, COS Systems takes customer needs and delivers innovative software solutions that streamline operations, accelerate revenue, and deliver more satisfied subscribers. Learn more about COS Systems at www.cossystems.com
For additional information, contact:
Isak Finer
CMO & VP North America
COS Systems
+1 (540) 988 3224
isak.finer@cossystems.com
www.cossystems.com
COS Systems delivers a cloud-based platform built for broadband operators, automating operations from demand generation through provisioning, billing, and field service. Operators run COS Business Engine for retail ISP operations or COS Wholesale Engine for multi-provider Open Access networks, with COS FSM and COS Prospector extending the platform for field service management and door-to-door sales.
