We’re bringing the good fibes!

The demand for ultra high-speed wireless access in the home has never been greater. Major operators are rushing to deploy fiber to apartment buildings, townhouses, and residential areas around the world to satisfy the public’s appetite for breakneck internet speeds.

At iBwave we recognized this demand and recently launched FiberPass, an innovative design solution for fiber deployments in multi-dwelling units.

What exactly is FiberPass? It’s the go-to solution to dramatically accelerate design and deployment for Fiber‑to‑the‑Home (FTTH) network projects.

Developed with FTTH design principles in mind, and with input from major telecommunications operators, FiberPass has simplified the entire fiber deployment lifecycle – from initial design to follow up maintenance.

Previously, the process for designing and deploying a FTTH network was cumbersome and time consuming. With go-aheads required from different project managers – from operators to property supervisors – past FTTH design projects spent months in limbo waiting for approval.

Property managers were concerned about the effect that FTTH deployment had on tenant disruption, building aesthetics, and time requirements. Each time a change was requested, a new approval was needed.

Before FiberPass, some buildings took up to nine months after initial design before the FTTH network was finally approved. Meanwhile, operators were sinking time and money into projects with no completion in sight.

To make matters worse, design software was also fragmented. Engineers were using a variety of programs and devices to perform site surveys and compile data. Without an all-in-one design solution, synchronizing, organizing and communicating project information posed a significant challenge.

To solve these issues, iBwave worked closely with operators and property managers to understand and ultimately come up with a solution. The result is FiberPass, a software solution that speeds up FTTH design time by 300%.

FiberPass changes the landscape of FTTH design in several ways, and the benefits start right from project conception.

When engineers use FiberPass on mobile to perform site surveys, they’re able to complete up to 80% of the design right on the tablet. With the ability to take photos and annotations while surveying, engineers can compile information for property managers about aesthetics, tenant impact, and unique challenges in a building’s design all in the same application. Best of all, FiberPass can generate beautiful 3D building plan virtualization, giving property managers a convenient and detailed look at the network design.

Once a site survey is completed, FiberPass can generate an electronic sign-off document to send directly to property managers for approval. If changes are requested, an engineer using FiberPass can often accommodate inquiries during the initial survey. That’s a dramatic change from previous design practices, where multiple surveys would need to be conducted before a project could move to approval and deployment.

That’s not the only way FiberPass saves time. There’s a host of built-in automated report generation tools to simplify FTTH design. The Bill of Materials, Approval Sign Off, and Equipment List reports can all be generated instantly to provide property managers with the information they need to validate a design. If an approver is offsite, iBwave Unity’s cloud connectivity ensures they’ll be still be able to immediately access any information shared by the engineer performing the site design.

Fiber networks often require specialized equipment, but with over 22, 000 vendor modelled parts and the option to add more as needed, iBwave’s component database has you covered. Being able to easily find the part needed to complete an FTTH design without leaving the application has a huge impact on efficiency and shortening design time.

How does all this time-saving add up? Since adopting FiberPass, operators have been able to:

• Remove 4 day backlogs after site surveys (From 4 days to 3 hours)
• Remove 6 day backlogs during Design process (From 6 days to 7.5 hours)
• Reduce time to approval from 15 hours to 3 hours

We’ve barely scratched the surface of all the great features included in Fiberpass. To learn more about all the things the software is capable of, check out the FiberPass product page.

Thanks for taking the time to learn more about FiberPass and FTTH. Let’s keep spreading the fibe!