21712 - SCTE Broadband Nov2022 COMPLETE v1

31 Vol. 44 No. 4 - November 2022 Issue Alex: We bring in Gillian and she tells us what’s wrong and fixes it! We don’t expect it to work like Microsoft Office - it can be idiosyncratic and things can surprise you. Geography is irregular - it’s the nature of the beast. We manage to fix things by ourselves and within our arrangement there are three other support systems available to us to fix. Gillian: Alex is right! We come in, we analyse things. We architect it, we troubleshoot and solve the problem. Each link in the chain does something different. IQgeo and GE provide the products. We are the service team. IQgeo and GE don’t provide the service. Do you ever have issues with access as far as your lease agreement with Openreach is concerned? Gillian: We write the product - the API - we are the ongoing developer of the software. We provide the means with which the PIA, the access agreement data is located. Alex: We access PIA as an API through the Small World platform. The PIA service is provided by Openreach. People have negative things to say about Openreach but I don’t; I think they do a cracking job under the circumstances. Their software was never designed to be shared, they were forced into it by regulation. I am a big supporter of Openreach; I have worked on that side of the fence for many years so I have a lot of respect for what they do. Colin: This is more Alex’s area, but GE Digital have a close integration to the Openreach PIA portal – but this is just one part of the overall leasing process – knowing what you have leased and plan to lease is all stored in the GE solution so managing all of the leased assets is stored in a single location. The process of wayleaves can be laborious and slow moving, while you’re under pressure to get things done quickly of course. Does that mean you three are under massive pressure to keep customers happy? How does this part work? Alex: The process would be easier if it were somehow different, but it is what it is. Is it a complete barrier to our business? No. You have to respect private property, there has to be a process to protect it. The history of wayleaves goes back centuries. Our biggest issue is multiple dwelling units - tower blocks and so on; we have to persuade the landlord that installing broadband would be a good idea. Locating the landlord can be really difficult, and persuading him to let us drill holes et cetera it is more tedious than it could be. Landlords don’t always act in the best interest of their tenants. That would be a nice thing to change. Finally, what will you all do when the roll out is complete? Alex: Retire! Consolidation is occurring already. That means upsides for some, not for others. As a regional player we might become a consolidator but it will be dependent on the market conditions at the time. We might take this overseas. This software is adaptable, we could look at other sectors. Who knows. We won’t be bored, that’s for sure. Kelly: Celebrate the success story! Colin: But after the party, that’s when the real work starts – the move from ‘build’ into ‘operation and maintenance’ is when we have to shift focus to growing the users of the network (new customers) whilst ensuring service is maintained for existing customers. One example is the provision capabilities of the GE Digital Solution to support outage management, so if there is a fault on the network, we have the capabilities to identify where the fault is and then identify who is affected. When you fire up your laptop expecting superfast broadband you don’t think about all the synergies behind the scenes negotiating with landlords, designing architecture, troubleshooting software and training engineers that enabled that to happen. What an inspiring team the IQGEO, GE, Upp and Real World Systems are. We wish them all the best. For more information, visit www.iqgeo.com from the industry