Time is the ultimate pressure for any fiber project. The longer it takes to deploy fiber, the longer field crews must stay out to bring fiber to poles and put it into trenches, then prepare buildings and households before the final step of connecting customers into the network. Every day of delay in connecting a customer is another day where revenue can’t be collected to pay the bills, pay off capital project debt incurred to execute the fiber build, another day when waiting customers look out the window hoping they are the next to be turned up - not to mention the additional costly truck rolls that reduce the ROI of each home connected.
Thorough planning and forethought are necessary before any fiber build to optimize the most precious resource involved in any fiber project - field crew time. Idle or underutilized field installation technicians are a double-whammy to the success of any fiber project, since they need to be paid but aren’t connecting households with their available time.
From a management perspective, several good construction management platforms enable optimized use of field crews to build faster and more efficiently, sending out ready-to-go work orders that consider dependencies and provide instant visibility into the ongoing progress of a fiber build through a centralized dashboard.
But reducing last-mile costs also happens by keeping things simple. Overdesigning fiber optic management solutions increases cost and installation time with no added benefit. At Clearfield, we’ve focused on ensuring that the basics of fiber management are met, adding simple but innovative features that deliver lower deployment costs through reduced installation and service turn-up time, eliminating unnecessary material costs, and decreasing total cost of ownership.
Reducing costs is about picking and putting together the right combination of fiber products standardized around a single architecture, including cabinets, cable and drop assemblies, and terminals. By using network systems that are flexible and able to be adjusted in the field with minimal effort, with features such as preloaded fiber reels, cassettes and pre-connectorized fiber assemblies for plug-and-play fiber connections, time spent on splicing and connecting fiber in the field and for customer turn-up is reduced or eliminated.
Using tech-friendly components such as pre-connectorized fiber and pushable assemblies has been well proven to be an investment that more than pays back in increased field productivity through faster field installations. Using the Clearfield FastPass™ Connect product enabled one service provider to save over 30 minutes per installation while eliminating second truck rolls to fix problems that arose from the first install. Another service provider using the FastPass approach with in-cassette splicing found they could double the number of homes passed in the same amount of time as older methods.
Time is money. Leveraging Clearfield’s tech-friendly, field-proven products keep things simple and speed installations, saving time and money in last mile fiber deployments, ultimately leading to happier customers who get service faster and happier stakeholders who see revenues increase at the same time.
Clearfield’s Chief Marketing Officer, Anis Khemakhem, is deeply passionate about technology, particularly in advancing fiber optics and telecommunications solutions. Throughout his career, he has consistently focused on leveraging cutting-edge technology to improve connectivity and enhance digital access across various sectors. His executive experience - including leadership positions at Clearfield, Amphenol and Carlisle Interconnect Technologies - demonstrates his executive engagement capabilities and capacity to handle complex, multi-stakeholder projects.