The Challenge

When building fiber to connect rural America, plans can pivot quickly due to environmental and cultural factors such as physical barriers or permitting restrictions.  Bonfire Fiber immediately recognized the manual processes for fiber planning and design was not scalable to meet the needs of the service providers or consumers.  Understanding the need to use accurate data, share information across the organization, and automate repeatable tasks led Bonfire Fiber to look towards GIS-based technology to support their journey.

The Solution

To address the challenge, Bonfire Fiber, partnered with Comsof Fiber to connect the underserved. Combining our best-in- class solutions with a 20+ year track record, we assessed Bonfire Fiber’s processes and advised on areas to improve. Bonfire Fiber can now plan their fiber network route with Comsof Fiber Designer – the GIS-based platform is being used to visualize and edit the GIS data in the Comsof Fiber Designer workspace.

The Result

The company adopted a solutions-based approach that involved identifying the underlying business problem to make the right decisions using accurate and reliable cost information. After the solution was implemented and deployed, Bonfire Fiber was able to quickly determine anchor locations in underserved communities, rapidly produce network feasibility information, and take high level designs to the field for permitting, construction, and operation.

In addition to faster network designs, Bonfire Fiber is now able to deal with the inevitable and often frequent changes to preliminary and existing network designs. Instead of having to start the design process from scratch, Bonfire Fiber can now change a few rules or data inputs and re-run designs in Comsof Fiber to take an agile approach to connecting the underserved.