Traceability: A Key Tool for Ensuring High Service Availability

As new technologies emerge, they bring out exciting opportunities but may also raise concerns for operators about product reliability and meeting subscriber expectations. The quality and availability of broadband services hinge on several factors, including mean-time-to-repair (MTTR). These metrics prompt important questions: How quickly can defective products be identified in the field? In cases of possible recurring failures, is it possible to proactively detect which functioning products are at risk of early failure? And crucially, where are these at-risk products located?

?Fortunately, there is a reassuring answer to these concerns: comprehensive traceability. For years, Teleste has been at the forefront of developing advanced product and network-level traceability systems, empowering operators to deliver reliable services to subscribers and quickly address issues. Our extensive experience with these solutions has proven their effectiveness in real-world network environments.

Product-level traceability provides detailed information on components used in a product. At Teleste, this goes beyond a simple bill of materials by tracking components down to the specific surface-mount device (SMD) reel from which they originated. We can identify which other products have components from the same reel or component batch, eliminating guesswork and providing a clear path to answering the critical question: Which other products might be at risk of premature failure?

?In addition to product traceability, network-level traceability plays a crucial role in pinpointing the exact location of products, whether they are defective or under suspicion. Not only do we know, which serialized product was delivered to which customer and when but utilising a modern network management system and transponders in field units, such as the 1.8 GHz amplifiers, operators can also retrieve their location data.

?The level of detail in location information depends on the operator’s practices. It could range from a specific street address to a relative position, such as "the third amplifier from the node”. This enables operators to locate products much faster and at a lower cost compared to traditional methods based on truck rolls. As a result, maintenance shifts from being reactive to proactive, significantly reducing emergency failure visits and boosting overall network reliability.

Toni Hurme

Quality Director, Teleste

Join us at #SCTETechExpo24 to learn how you can significantly streamline network management utilising our 1.8 GHz amplifiers and their management software. Come and connect with our experts at Teleste Intercept booth #909!

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