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A few years back, the telecommunications industry experienced a major shift. Network operators moved away from disconnected processes and basic tracking toward dedicated management platforms. But now that we have experience with these systems, a critical question emerges: Are we actually using them to their full potential?
In fiber network operations, change is constant. Whether turning up a new customer, rerouting around a break, or expanding capacity, the underlying network data is always in motion. Planning those changes within fiber network management software helps ensure accuracy, visibility, and alignment across teams—but executing them without disrupting the live operational environment presents an entirely different challenge for network operators: the need to understand both what’s currently installed and what changes are planned.
One global report estimated that the smart city platform market is set to be worth $292.1 billion by 2028, the primary factor driving this growth being various government initiatives to develop digitised, smart city infrastructure.1 Meanwhile, at a European level at least, FTTH Council reports that full fibre coverage across the continent has reached 74.6%.2 As these two trends converge, the message is clear: the future of smart cities and the expansion of fibre networks are not just parallel initiatives—they are fundamentally connected.
Cost miscalculations. The silent deal-killers of the fiber proposals process. Following our exploration of slow, manual processes and asset visibility challenges, we now address the most problematic factor that 37% of organizations we surveyed in a recent webinar identify as their biggest hurdle: creating accurate cost estimates.
Valuable fiber assets often sit unused while providers build costly new infrastructure alongside them. Why? Because many providers simply can't see what they already have.
Ever wonder why some fiber providers consistently win contracts while others struggle to close deals? In a recent webinar, we pulled back the curtain on what's really happening in the proposal process. The (not so) shocking reality? Many providers are losing winnable deals due to slow, manual processes, poor visibility into their network assets, and proposals with cost estimates that miss the mark.
If this year’s FTTH Conference in Amsterdam made anything clear, it’s that the fibre industry is moving faster, growing smarter, and getting a whole lot more collaborative. The exhibition hall was alive with activity, as rows of booths hummed with demos, meetings, and panel debriefs. Conversations were wide-ranging: AI and automation, sustainable transformations, new builds, rural challenges, and, of course, how to plan, deploy, and manage networks that are only getting more complex.
But as much as the conversations varied, there were some common threads.
Welcome to the 2025 Q2 edition of Along the Path. In this issue, we’re exploring scalability. Often overlooked during the buildout frenzy, scalability is reemerging as a critical component of fiber network management. From operational scalability to system scalability, telcos need the flexibility to adapt to project needs without worrying about overburdening their people or processors.