INEA SA is the 4th largest cable TV operator in Poland in terms of number of subscribers. In September 2016 Globema completed implementation of a Network Inventory System (NIS) at INEA. The solution is based on GE Smallworld Physical Network Inventory (PNI) platform. PNI Implementation at INEA means that 3 of 4 largest cable operators in Poland use Globema’s NIS solution and that networks serving over 70% of Polish cable TV subscribers are documented and maintained in GE Smallworld.
About INEA Group
INEA is the leading telecommunication operator in the Wielkopolska region of western Poland, one of the largest cable TV operators in the country, with over 200,000 residential subscribers and over 8,000 enterprise customers. The company provides advanced telecommunication services based on fibre optic and HFC networks, including:
- high speed broadband internet
mobile internet in WiMAX and Wi-Fi technology- HOT SPOTs
- digital TV
- online TV & VOD
- landline telephony and mobile telephony with internet access.
Currently INEA accounts for almost 11% of the country’s 310,000 FTTH connections.
INEA also participates in the Polish National Broadband Network Plan which aims to provide broadband internet access to 90% of the population and 100% of public institutions and businesses in the country.
Network inventory system at INEA
Globema designed and implemented the complete NIS solution based on GE Smallworld PNI 4.3. To fulfill all INEA’s requirements in terms of supporting their business processes the system includes additional features and was also enhanced with Globema’s PNI add-ons:
- Physical Route Manager (PRM) – for planning, auto-routing and resource management of end-to-end physical connections within fiber and copper networks
- Optical Network Atlas (ONA) – for automatic, on-demand generation of fiber network schemes with detailed plans of cables, ODFs and splices.
In order to ensure enterprise-wide access to all network data held within PNI database, Globema enhanced Smallworld Network Inventory Gateway with special ONA and PRM extensions, so that PRM routes and fiber schematics are also available on thin clients in internet and intranet.
The project included integration with a legacy CRM system already in use at INEA as well as migration and consolidation of network data from various sources into NIS. The implemented solution contains an interface enabling submission of network data to the Polish Office of Electronic Communications as required by the law. The project was completed with professional trainings followed by production roll-out. Currently Globema provides maintenance and support of the delivered solution.
The whole project was executed on time and in budget.
Smallworld position on Polish cable TV market
Over 600 companies operate on the Polish cable TV market. However, six largest operators provide services to over 90% of the cable TV subscribers. Four companies from this group, namely UPC Polska, Multimedia Polska, Netia and INEA (which together provide services to over 70% of Polish customers), use Smallworld Network Inventory to model and manage their networks. Globema implemented and customized NIS solutions at all of these four companies as well as helped them in data migration to NIS.
Globema constantly contributes to development of Physical Network Inventory by enhancing the system with add-on modules, such as: Physical Route Manager, Optical Network Atlas, CableTV-Design, Radio Network Inventory and others. Our team has been also developing Logical Network Inventory (which together with PNI constitute GE Smallworld Network Inventory Suite) for GE since 2008 and was responsible for migrating the system to Smallworld 5 platform.
