On a recent fourth quarter earnings call, Nokia CEO, Rajeev Suri, warned investors of a slow start to 2019 due to staggered 5G network rollouts.

After tallying a fourth quarter net profit of $852M, Nokia’s stock dropped 7% as a result of Suri’s comments. The company’s performance, however, is expected to pick-up, in the back half of the year.

Qualifying development opportunities quickly is incredibly important when trying to win business in the fiber network space. Sales professionals need to be able to estimate project costs with relative ease without relying on the help and expertise of network engineers.

With the release of OSPInsight Edit 8.5, we’ve launched a powerful set of work order management tools that will help clients more effectively plan and design their fiber optic networks.

Users can now build task lists, estimate costs, and organize materials related to potential future developments, all within our software-based platform. In this article, we provide a brief overview of how we now support work order management through a single consolidated experience.

This past week, CableLabs, Cable Europe, and The Internet & Television Association revealed the next evolution of broadband Internet service at the Consumer Electrics Show in Las Vegas.

The vision - deliver groundbreaking 10 gigabit networks to U.S. consumers and beyond starting in 2020. With a large cohort of cable operators on board and a vast broadband infrastructure already in place, 10G has the potential to transform many industries, services, and applications all across the world.

On November 24th, millions of people in Seoul, South Korea lost all phone, internet, and television service after a fire destroyed the building of one of the country’s largest telecommunication companies, KT. In the following days, the company’s total subscriber count fell by more than 1,500 and the country’s minister of Science and ICT asked the CEOs of the three largest telecommunications providers to discuss how they would address future network issues.

In order to manage a fiber optic network effectively, you must have a comprehensive view of connectivity across all network elements.

With OSPInsight, network managers are able to easily maintain and troubleshoot connectivity issues through an integrated suite of software-based solutions. Our tools help users understand how data flows through termination panels, cable spans, and splice points, three critical junctures in any fiber network.

As fiber networks grow, maintaining a track record of cable splices becomes more and more challenging. Without an effective way to organize splicing information, network developers and field technicians are left in the dark when it comes to making changes or updates to existing cables.

What Is Operations Support?

Even after fiber networks have been designed and installed, they require ongoing care and management. Much like how gardens need careful attention, fiber networks need to be actively maintained in order to flourish. Without a clear understanding of the current-state of affairs, it’s difficult to manage existing operations and plan for future growth.

Recently, OSPInsight rolled out the Route Schematic tool which helps fiber network managers visualize key characteristics about their existing cable routes. Although all of the information contained in route schematics are available through other reporting tools, there is no cleaner way to see and share how fibers are being utilized.

There are myriad of stories where fiber optic cables are broken and resources are marshalled to find the location of the break and fix the fiber.  In the United States over a 9 month period monitoring a Google Alerts feed there were over 120 reported fiber optic cable breaks. Since most breaks never get reported it can be assumed that this is only a small fraction.