Telecom Infrastructure Maintenance with Dynamic Wireless Communication
Shinichi Sugiura
Executive Manager, NTT infrastructure network corportation
31-1 Nihonbashi Hama-cho 2-Chome Chuo-ku Tokyo 103-0007 Japan
E-Mail: sugiura@hqt.nttinf.co.jp
Kazuhiro Ootsuki
System Manager NTT infrastructure network corporation
31-1 Nihonbashi Hama-cho 2-Chome Chuo-ku Tokyo 103-0007 Japan
E-Mail: ootsuki@hqt.nttinf.co.jp
Abstract
NTT infrastructure network corporation, a provider of network
management services for information technology and telecommunications infrastructure
in Japan, has successfully established a new business model for facility information
management by utilizing mobile devices. The new application employs wireless Web
GIS technology that allows field crews to access and update facility information
immediately in the field. As a result, NTT InfraNet has experienced a drastic
improvement in workflow management.
Introduction
NTT InfraNet provides network management services for information technology and
telecommunications infrastructure throughout Japan. Based in Tokyo, NTT InfraNet has
offices nationwide and fields more than 1,700 technicians who use 55 information
technology including telecommunication management platform (Triple IP) to provide
management services of planning, engineering and maintenance of extensive
underground telecommunications facilities, optical cables including manholes, conduits,
and tunnels now exceeding 400,000 mails across the country. NTT InfraNet seeks to
provide greater efficiency and higher quality service to a growing client base that
includes government ministries, municipalities and major Japanese telecommunications
firms.
Minimizing downtime in client networks is a priority and requires close
communications between NTT InfraNet’s technicians and operations center to be
maintained at all times. To accomplish this, NTT InfraNet worked with a Japanese GIS
software developer to create a wireless Web GIS solution that can serve facilities
information in real time to remote field crews.
This wireless Web GIS solution has extended spatial facility information to NTT
InfraNet field crews via handheld devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and
mobile phones. Field technicians can now receive work orders, view network facility
information in real time and instantly determine how to proceed with their work. Once
the work is completed, the technicians can make changes to the facility information
onscreen and transmit the information back to the operations center where the
appropriate database is automatically updated.
In the past, work orders and related facility information such as maps and charts were
either printed out or downloaded from an operations center server to a mobile PC and
carried into the field. After work completion, technicians returned revised hardcopy
drawings or digital schematics to the operations center where they were updated on the
center server. This required at least two daily trips to the operations center and meant
that shared network facility information was never completely up to date. In many
instances because of work efficiency considerations, a technician other than the one
who actually performed the field work would input the updated information, so there
was no guarantee that the updated facility information completely reflected on-site
conditions.
In addition, an increase in the number of businesses entering the information and
telecommunications sectors has intensified competition for services, so service
providers do not always have adequate specialists to perform specific facility and field
operations. Conventional facility management based on diagrams and charts generated
by field operations specialists had led to obstacles for information and communications
service providers to communications with NTT InfraNet, a management service
provider. Therefore, NTT InfraNet must be able to access each client’s facilities
databases to understand the network design and properly service their infrastructure in
the field.
True Mobile GIS
The keywords of field operation innovation are “wireless” and “visual.” With the
expanding coverage of wireless communications and advances in digital image
processing technologies, services have been freed from the limitations of prior
perspectives, and it is possible to obtain a wide range of digital images without
restriction.
NTT InfraNet’s wireless Web GIS service uses handheld devices to allow on-site
technicians to instantaneously visually confirm and update facility information from the
field in real time and in a manner that is easy to understand even for technicians who are
not field operations specialists, thereby dramatically improving field operations. As a
result, center and field technicians can work in tandem based on the latest data.
Figure 1. This overview of the Wireless Web GIS service shows how client facilities
information is accessed and shared by handheld devices in the field as well as by PCs in the
operations center.
There are two main features of this application that fully leverage the power of handheld
devices. The first is downloading and viewing support for vector maps that operate 5 to
10 times faster than bit maps. The second is the wireless Web GIS service that enables
server data to be updated from handheld devices in real time. An important aspect of
these features is that digital images are not limited like diagrams and charts that include
only pre-determined information. Rather they contain dynamic information relating to
the site where the technician using the device is located. This allows the technician to
specify and view details visually, which dramatically enhances decision making in the
field.
