It’s not quite the kind of superpower you read about in comic books, but software company Nrby is peddling a kind of app-based X-ray vision that makes it easier for telecom technicians to locate problems with plant in the field, see recent maintenance activity at a given site and track their own repairs. The technology appears to have peaked operator interest, with dozens of providers from Tier-1s like Comcast to mom-and-pop ISPs deploying it with their teams.
Ron Miller, Nrby’s VP of Customer Success and Product, told Fierce the kind of insight its app provides was previously only visible to staff in an operator’s network operations center and had to be manually passed to field techs. By cutting out this middle step, operators can save time, make their workflows more efficient and be more proactive about maintenance, he said.
The app displays “smart pins” to represent different sites, color coding them to reflect the health and status of each. The company’s tech can be integrated with a range of network monitoring systems, allowing it to reflect data about power supply issues, modem performance, frequency and out of date maintenance, among other things. The system works with copper, fiber, hybrid-fiber coaxial and fixed wireless networks.
Miller said Comcast signed on as Nrby’s first customer several years ago. Now, it has around 30 service provider clients, including WideOpenWest, TDS Telecom, Astound Broadband, Cogeco’s Breezeline, Vyve Broad and Blue Ridge Communications. Its most recent customer is Pennsylvania-based Service Electric Cable TV & Communications.
Chris Kelly, Manager of Engineering and Customer Products for Service Electric, told Fierce the company will initially use Nrby’s app to better manage its power supply maintenance and keep track of things like battery replacement, input and output voltage and overall condition. He said the operator expects to reap not only time savings from its use, but also reliability benefits since it will more effectively be able to target neglected power supplies and increase network uptime. (This Service Electric is distinct from the New Jersey-based provider of the same name which was acquired by Altice USA in 2020).
“We realized we didn’t have the most efficient way of keeping track of which power supplies were maintained versus which weren’t and this puts it right in our face and gives us a platform to make sure everything gets the equal attention it deserves,” Kelly explained.
He added Service Electric is looking at the possibility of integrating Nrby with additional systems to give its techs the ability to access more data, including plant maps and real time monitoring information for customers and nodes, in a single place.
Beyond maintenance, Miller said Nrby’s platform can be used to record findings from initial walkouts prior to network construction and also during construction to keep tabs on the completion of different tasks. He noted Nrby is also exploring how its tech can be applied in additional verticals including the municipal and utility segments.
That said, he stated Nrby sees “sufficient and healthy growth within the service provider space.” It is currently running “a lot” of unannounced proof of concepts “in the background with a lot of the majors” and larger mid-tier providers in the U.S., he concluded.