Fiber Solutions

The News

Central Service Association has been billing for broadband services for over 15 years, but recent changes in the industry like the widespread adoption of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks encouraged us to expand our offering. Through a working partnership with FiberRise Communication, LLC CSA has taken the Virtuoso WorkCenter™ operational support system (OSS) and married it to CSA’s Orbit™ Customer Management and Billing (Orbit CMB) solution to provide members with comprehensive operational management of fiber-based smart grid and broadband networks.This comprehensive Utility Grade Broadband Solution, dubbed Orbit CMB+Fiber, will be supported by Central Service Association’s renowned customer support team.

 

The Features

In addition to the features contained in the standard version of Orbit CMB, with Orbit CMB+Fiber utilities get an integrated operations environment. Marketing and the tight integration of operational workflows is key to achieving revenue goals for the broadband network. The middleware software platform unifies multiple business support system (BSS) functionality with operational support system (OSS) components to deliver a highly efficient operational environment. This functionality provides:

  • marketing/demand generation
  • construction management
  • billing account management
  • provisioning
  • workforce management/scheduling
  • customer support
  • accurate and coherent record maintenance
  • asset management
  • automation

Automation is paramount in maintaining the coherency and accuracy of the network while reducing the manual interaction with the system. Ultimately, humans do the work but are also error prone, so an OSS that minimizes the frequency of errors is a requirement in the administration of the utility grade broadband network.

 

This OSS offering simplifies and unifies organizational data and operations. Designed with the entire organization in mind, from CEO to CSR, employees will work with greater efficiency and accuracy in an environment of simplicity, visibility and self-care by providing additional features like:

  • Support for smart metering and grid management with unsurpassed speed and reliability.
  • Passive optical network (PON) technology with the suite of operations management tools simplify the turn-up, redundancy, maintenance and comprehensive real-time data for the entire operation.
  • Automation and network discovery techniques reduce the hands-on time and attention needed to achieve desired outcomes.
  • An integrated Software-Defined Redundant Passive Optical Network (SD RPON) offers a diverse path architecture in gigabit passive optical networks (GPON) that improves the reliability and availability of your fiber network tenfold - achieving the greatest economies of scale possible with this technology by automatically switching based on configurable thresholds and events.

 

Additional Optional Solution

In addition to billing and operational support software, CSA also offers UtiliCom as a mapping solution for fiber networks. As a stand-alone product or in coordination with UtiliTrak, CSA’s GIS and mapping solution for utilities, UtiliCom is a GIS-based application that maps and models the physical characteristics of a utility’s fiber network including both outside and inside network components.

 

UtiliCom helps manage fiber service issues and resource utilization by maintaining the information for provisioned circuits across the network. This allows a utility to identify the route of an individual customer’s circuit and the network components used to provide service to that customer. UtiliCom also helps with the management of WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) by allowing users to track the channels routed across network components and view the provisioned circuits associated with the channels.

 

UtiliCom manages network connectivity at the fiber level and provides for different types of network traces including:

  • Network connectivity for an individual port/fiber
  • OTDR (Optical Time-Domain Reflectometer)
  • Optical path loss
  • Wavelength

 

The most efficient time to map and document a fiber network is during the buildout so changes made during construction that aren’t included in the design documentation can be captured as these changes are likely to be forgotten if not documented when they are made.