Summary
This telecommunications industry customer is one of the largest local and long-distance phone services and digital subscriber line providers in the United States, not to mention one of the largest wireless carriers.
The telecommunications company needed to share coverage maps and information quickly and effectively about network performance with its engineers and internal teams. Previously, accessing this information involved long processes and the creation of static maps which, once shared, were already out of date.
Korem developed a custom self-service mapping platform using Spectrum Spatial from Precisely. This customized platform now meets the company’s data centralization needs in managing network performance, stability, and deployment.
The client
This telecommunications industry customer is one of the largest local and long-distance phone services and digital subscriber line providers in the United States, and also one of the largest wireless carriers. Korem works with the mobility solutions group, the division that oversees cellphone wireless operations.
This group supports the engineering team by providing tools for network management, more specifically regarding its performance, stability, and deployment. The mobility solutions group is also dedicated to expanding network capacity, primarily in 5G deployment, which is a clear priority for the telecommunications industry at the moment.
The challenge
The telecommunications company needed to quickly share coverage maps and network information with its engineers, who had to go through a long chain of approval via email to obtain them. As a result, once the static maps were created and shared, they were already out of date and therefore became obsolete for the team. Although the mobility solutions group had implemented some internal tools to facilitate this process, they were not efficient or flexible.
Moreover, big data presented a major challenge for the company. Since the system had a wide variety of data sources, the volume could reach 15 terabytes at times. Therefore, the company was looking for a solution developed specifically to meet its needs, something to centralize its geospatial datasets by creating a common library for the engineering and mobility teams.
It also wanted to have the freedom to decide who would have access to this library—and at what level—and to be able to easily add data without having to completely redesign the platform each time.
The solution
Since no solution on the market met the company’s criteria, it turned to Korem to develop a platform tailored to its needs. This led to the creation of the self-service mapping platform, developed using Spectrum Spatial from Precisely, almost 14 years ago. Since then, this custom platform has met the company’s needs in data centralization, sharing, and extraction, thus speeding the resolution of network inefficiencies.
The company also employs the managed services of Korem’s solutions architect team. This means the mobility team benefits from ongoing support in the deployment of the solution in its internal infrastructure. Every two weeks, priorities and objectives are reevaluated based on user needs. As a result, the product and its features are constantly improving in accordance with the SCRUM methodology. This is an important element of the services offered by Korem, since it is critical for the engineers that the platform always runs smoothly.
Over the last year, the solution architects assisted the company in its modernization efforts by migrating the mapping platform to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. This includes product coordination and customer support to ensure that the mobility team benefits from a more modern infrastructure.
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Key Results
Successful
cloud migration
1000
unique users per day
3000
unique users per week
The results
By centralizing the terabytes of data in one single, easily accessible place, the company can share several hundreds of information layers, saving its teams considerable time. They can employ this central point to retrieve information quickly and autonomously, such as information about a cell tower having signal issues, rather than sending an email request and having to go through a long chain of approval.
Various use cases were made possible by the self-service platform. First, the platform is used to facilitate new cell tower planning and design. Next, it allows existing towers to be optimized by ensuring that the signal strength is adequate and that areas with insufficient coverage or cell signal are reported. Finally, it enables the resolution of inefficiencies in the network as soon as they arise.
Practically all members of the mobility solutions group use the platform daily for these purposes, whether technicians or senior engineers. Consequently, the platform has around 1000 unique users per day and 3000 unique users per week.
When the mapping platform started to show its age, which was normal since it dated back to 2009, a migration to Microsoft Azure was initiated in 2022. Now, with cloud computing, the mobility group can optimize the use of its resources, in particular by enlarging or reducing the size of the infrastructure based on the number of users. The company’s customers also receive better service with the lowest possible operating costs.
The future
Since 5G deployment means more capture points, the telecommunications company will need to ingest and store more and more data. Korem’s proposed solution must adapt to this additional challenge by diversifying how the company consumes its data, in particular through massive data platforms such as Snowflake.
The fact that the company now uses a wide variety of data sources reinforces the mapping platform as a central GIS library. The goal is not only to display more data but to better understand how to interpret it and add the context necessary to make better decisions.
By extension, these infrastructure challenges and the additional data load have led Korem to redesign the solution’s elasticity and ultimately move towards an orchestration system like Kubernetes. The underlying idea is that Kubernetes would allow Korem to operationalize the way its team reacts to spikes in system usage. It could enable the infrastructure to evolve automatically, proactively, and preemptively to better serve the users, with minimal human intervention.
