FOND Planner:

We’ve been a bit quiet since our last update on aerial pole and strand editing, but have no fear, a lot has been happening behind the scenes.

As many people may be aware FOND is a powerful platform for automatically generating optimized network designs. Contrary to what you might be thinking our main focus isn’t just to just continue improving our algorithms month after month. While smarter and faster algorithms are always something we strive for, our key challenge now is to provide you ways of instructing or influencing FOND so that you can generate a design that is not only optimal, but is a design you can construct.

Over the last few months we’ve been working closely with FOND users, customers and talking to the industry around what’s really important. This feedback is essential to FOND and we’re always looking for people to let us know what they think.

So, here it goes.

Controlling equipment positioning

After generating an initial design in FOND, you now have the option to indicate changes you would like to make to your equipment positions.

Don’t like that cabinet being so close to a major intersection? Just drag it further away.

Wish a closure was placed on the opposite side of the road? Easily done in a click or two.

After doing this, FOND will automatically re-generate an optimal design in minutes, taking into account the new positions you have selected.

Controlling Fiber Cable Preferences

There are many reasons you may wish to have input on cable paths.

Perhaps you’re aware of a permitting issue that may arise along a certain street and want to avoid it if possible.

Maybe you would like to follow the path of existing infrastructure where it makes sense.

You can now indicate to FOND that you wish to favor or avoid any underground or aerial path. Any designs that FOND generates will now take these preferences into account.

Customer Spotlight: Finley Engineering USA

We get really excited when we hear back from FOND users and Biarri Networks customers on what they’re able to achieve. No matter what we say about FOND, nothing is better than a happy customer that’s truly innovating across the FTTx broadband industry.

So, a big shout out to Andy Heins, Director of Strategy and Operations at Finley Engineering USA.

On a recent project for the design of a fiber network serving 2,900 homes, Andy used FOND to save 50% of the time required to typically complete the initial design work.

This allowed Finley Engineering USA to deliver an accurate preliminary build cost estimate to their customers sooner. In a few months, they generated designs reaching 8,500 homes to carry out initial cost estimates and feasibility studies.

They’ve then used those initial design as the basis for more detailed final network design work and ultimately project field staking.

Anything else to report?

More is better… right!? We’ve now increased the design limit from 5,000 to 10,000 premises.

And, speaking of growth, as our number of customers grows so must our tech. We are continually working to ensure our software and servers scale as they should. Recently we made some major enhancements to ensure FOND remains fast and reliable with our increasing user base.

What’s next?

One of our most requested features is the ability to create and modify your own network architectures without having to request it from us. I’m pleased to say the team is hard at work on this and will have something to show you soon!

The way we usually get you started is through a quick demo. In that time we try to better understand your FTTx projects by discussing things like data, your architecture and OSP rules, who is involved across your projects and more!

If you’re keen to have a play around without any help we’re also happy to give you free reign.