MARLIN DIGITAL TWIN INTEGRATES WITH COMSOF FIBER
May 6, 2022
Marlin Digital Twin integrates with COMSOF Fiber to increase the efficiency in the mass rollout of fiber-to-the-home
The goal of Marlin Digital Twin (MarlinDT) is to provide the most accurate, up-to-date, and complete network inventory system able to provide operational efficiency for both the engineering and the daily operations of any telecom network. The current mass rollouts of fiber bring many challenges for all contributing actors, and the time between engineering a network, building the network and updating the network inventory can take months. Every day the inventory is not up-to-date, results in delays for both greenfield and brownfield rollouts. An inaccurate inventory will also highly increase the risks of cable-cuts, provide erroneous information to the sales department, and create many more internal frustrations and invisible costs. The combination of MarlinDT and COMSOF Fiber dramatically reduces the time between building the network and updating the asset inventory thus improving your time-to-market, optimising your cost and improving the end-to-end process.
When rolling out fiber for millions of subscribers, speed and cost-savings have a big impact on the business case. COMSOF Fiber supports operators and engineering companies with a faster and cost-efficient planning and design process. Nevertheless, your system tools must support the complete process, which means it provide value long after the construction of the network has been completed. This will allow for a smoother operation and maintenance of your newly built infrastructure and reduce OPEX. Marlin guides the user in the design process with powerful concurrent Edit Sessions: gathering data to support the design of the network, testing various network design choices, all without impacting the operational network inventory. The build process requires accurate and detailed to-build plans with splicing diagrams, welding schemes and bill-of-materials.
As soon as the build process is completed, any as-built changes need to be synced to the operational network inventory: MarlinDT and COMSOF both streamline those processes.
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Benefits of an integrated workflow
The benefits of this tight integration are clear. First, the toolset at the operator is simplified. The workflow integration of MarlinDT and COMSOF Fiber empowers users in the creation of optimal design plans, without the need of complex ETL processing back-and-forth that only leads to a quality challenge. Secondly, the infrastructure asset inventory is always up to date. Thanks to this close integration, the time between building the network and updating the inventory can be reduced to hours, minimising the risk of cable-cuts and providing a single source of truth to all stakeholders.
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“The speed and cost-savings of COMSOF Fiber to generate plans and designs for large FTTx projects is unparalleled. Their worldwide expertise in FTTx designs, will support our MarlinDT customers in their rollouts” tells Luc De Heyn, Chief Commercial Officer at Merkator.
As Jonas Verstuyft, Product Manager of COMSOF explains: “A Digital Twin is only useful if its data is reliable. MarlinDT discovers a lot of data to represent the network, but passive cable routing cannot be discovered: it needs to be imported. This integration will ensure that the data integrity is maintained, to support the engineering, operations, the NOC and more.”
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For more info, please visit: www.merkator.com www.marlindt.com
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Belgium Fiber Innovations
COMSOF nv and Merkator nv are two successful Belgium organisations. They are both heavily involved in the fast rollout of FTTH in Belgium and abroad. Fusing the COMSOF fiber expertise for Planning and Design with the Merkator expertise in Engineering and Operations will impact fiber projects not only in Belgium but all over the world.
About Comsof:
Comsof is the world leader in creating intelligent network planning and design software.
With 20 years of experience in GIS-based network optimization, we have deployed our solutions in over 50 countries. Network designers can make designs cheaper and faster, and get more reliable results and figures with Comsof.
About Merkator:
Merkator provides software and services for network operators and smart cities. Marlin Digital Twin supports the Engineering and Operations of Telecom Network Operators with High-Quality asset inventory, providing clear network insights and higher productivity by bridging the gap between a logical/active network inventory with a physical/passive network inventory.
