Geo Networks implements EXFO’s Network Quality Management system

Geo Networks Ltd (Geo) has announced the implementation of EXFO Inc. (NASDAQ: EXFO, TSX: EXF) NQMSfiber system to centrally manage its national optical fibre network.

The new, bespoke ‘Network Quality Management System’ (NQMS) replaces Geo’s current RFTS (remote fibre test system), providing enhanced monitoring, testing and reporting functionalities.

“We already had a pretty robust 24x7 monitoring system across our high capacity, fibre network,” said Graham Leach, Geo’s Chief Operating Officer (COO). “But with the continual growth of our physical infrastructure, including our new subsea cable routes between the UK & Ireland, and our commitment to delivering against our aggressive fibre fix SLAs, decided it was time to invest in a more sophisticated solution.”

EXFO’s NQMSfiber will enable Magdalene, Geo’s strategic service partner who manages the customer NOC facility, to effectively monitor and analyse Geo’s customers’ fibre as well as key dark fibres across the network. It allows quicker and more frequent testing, enhanced ability in determining the exact location and nature of faults and pre-emptive identification of fibre degradation.

“Customers are at the heart of everything Geo does,” continued Leach, “and we constantly strive to provide them with, not only an exceptional fibre optic network solution, but proactive and responsive management of their critical networks. By selecting EXFO’s NQMSfiber solution we will be able to identify and respond to potential outages before our customers are affected.”

Anthony Crane, Managing Director of Magdalene added: “The quality of the Magdalene network operations service is underpinned by the capability of the tools that our NOC engineers have at their disposal. The EXFO NQMSfiber significantly enhances our ability to monitor, predict, prevent and react to Geo fibre network issues. This tool provides a higher level of analytic data and also integrates into our current systems. This enhances our service delivery performance in both preventative and reactive scenarios, having a direct positive impact on the end customer service.”

Geo selected EXFO based on its professionalism, flexible approach and ability to overcome some real-life deployment challenges.

“NQMSfiber’s flexibility allows Geo to continue using its current mapping solution, but it could ‘retro-upgrade’ in the future, should it decide to move to a third-party application, thus future-proofing its system,” says Jon Bradley, Vice President of Sales in the EMEA Region at EXFO. “That future-proofing and the Learning Phase (to reduce false alarms) and Reporting Tool features, they give Geo statistical data for each customer in relation to its SLA performance, all proved to be major selling points for EXFO.”