We are excited to announce a new service called Fiber IQ™. Fiber IQ helps service providers build highly accurate broadband expansion plans quickly. Fiber IQ is powered by two solutions – Pole IQ™ and Geology IQ™ – that utilize AI to provide crucial insights into aerial and underground broadband deployment options and their respective cost implications without sending teams into the field for visual inspections. This more granular insight, early in the planning process, enables service providers to determine the most effective construction methodology, deploy resources faster, and enjoy significant time-to-market benefits and consistency of return on investment projections.
Fiber IQ can deliver an average 20 percent improvement in capital budget efficiency and save months of man hours. Accurately assessing the viability of utility poles for aerial deployments and analyzing soil and rock hardness for a 1000-mile fiber deployment typically requires three to four months for field assessment, plus the cost of personnel. Fiber IQ delivers accurate insights in less than three weeks without sending a single person into the field.
“In today’s highly competitive environment, service providers must move quickly to capitalize on funding opportunities while at the same time accurately assessing costs so they can submit accurate bids. This is critical so they don’t miss opportunities by overestimating costs or withdraw from successful bids after discovering that the estimated budget was too low,” said Raj Singh, VCTI’s CEO. “Traditionally, achieving accuracy meant sending field technicians to visually inspect utility poles and terrain, a time-consuming and expensive process. But with Fiber IQ, there is no need to choose between speed and deeper insight. Service providers and their outside plant partners can quickly get accurate information about aerial deployment viability and underground construction costs without sending anyone into the field. In addition, it enables service providers to accelerate the permitting and construction planning processes with those partners.”
Pole IQ geo-locates and delivers a high-level assessment of the usability of each utility pole on the proposed network, including the possibility of space and location for the installation of new wiring. The outputs enable service providers to quickly identify and quantify route possibilities, enhancing presales activity and focusing permitting and detailed inspection resources on only the routes with the highest viability for aerial. The data enables construction partners to accelerate their tasks, potentially eliminating weeks, if not months, of the plan to design a construction process at a fraction of the cost.
Geology IQ maps the geological layer along the planned network route to a depth of up to six feet and provides the relevant construction implications. With more precise insight, the data enables service providers to field the correct crew and avoid delays, building faster to market while providing 20 – 30 percent more accurate estimates than industry-standard assumptions.
One US service provider recently came to VCTI for help planning a new network build-out in Texas. The new service would bring broadband to more than 7000 homes. VCTI identified more than four weeks of man-hours and $100,000+ in physical inspection costs using Fiber IQ. In addition, the solution found that more than 20 percent of the deployment could be done aerially than originally thought, delivering construction savings of more than $2 million.