OUR SOLUTION

End-to-end software to automate
your fiber to the home business

Our product COS Service Zones helps you find and sign your customers – and get
the data you need to make your FTTH venture a success. Our other product COS Business Engine
helps you deploy and operate your network with world leading efficiency and turn it into a success story
for all parties involved.

COS
Service Zones

Helps you choose the right area to start your FTTH roll-out by finding the area with the highest demand and convert it into signed subscribers...

...By starting the build in the right place and getting a high take-rate there, you get a great foundation for the rest of the venture.

COS
Business Engine

Ties together all aspects of your FTTH venture, automating processes and providing a great customer experience. COS Business Engine also helps you...

...reduce financial risk by providing increased control of every aspect of your fiber business, allowing you to build affordable FTTH.

DEMAND AGGREGATION MODULE
– Find them, sign them and spread the wordProduct: COS Service Zones

INSTALLATION WORKFLOW ENGINE
– Building with control and reliable dataProduct: COS Business Engine

SERVICE ACTIVATION MODULE
– Subscriber online in secondsProduct: COS Business Engine

SERVICE OFFERING & OPENACCESS MODULE – The open access network automatedProduct: COS Business Engine

MARKETPLACE – An automated and digitized customer experience available 24/7Product: COS Business Engine

ADDRESS MANAGEMENT & HARDWARE CONNECTIONS – Validated address and ONT databaseProduct: COS Business Engine

ADMIN & BILLING MODULE – Tailored role based admin access and automated billingProduct: COS Business Engine

OPEN ACCESS

Open up your infrastructure for more services

Why? Because an Open Access approach is better business for everybody. More available service providers on your network will lead to an increased return on investment, more satisfied customers and a good relationship with the community, as it limits the potential for new monopolies.

As an owner of the infrastructure you will always be in control and can orchestrate conditions to use the network. Open Access can be implemented whether you have your own service offering or not, and either in an open marketplace or in a wholesale model with API integrations.

Find out more

OUR SOLUTION

The way you succeed

With 10 years of experience and the FTTH-connections of 1 million households managed in our end-to-end software, we can safely call ourselves a proven partner for your FTTH-venture. We support your entire process, throughout the roll-out, and finally billing and support.

Se how it works

Market survey and sign-up

With our flexible online platform you make a market survey in the community and map out under-served areas and of course pre-sign up customers. Our tool also support your champions in every area to increase take-rates.

Design business model and pricing

Go full Open Access or provide your own services. Configure pricing and service availability for every area to increase take-rates and optimize your business case
a) Open Access - Marketplace
b) Open Access - Wholesale
c) Single provider solution

Roll-out and customer installation

Plan your roll-out based on customer demand, existing services and your network. We provide a workflow tool for your customer installation. We also make sure your customers are informed throughout the process.

Browse and buy

Every area is unique so you can tailor available services and pricing as granular as you wish and optimize your business case. And you should always provide an online experience where customers buy online and get service delivered seconds later without physical work at home.

Automatic activation

A few seconds from customer order to service activation is what it takes to exceed customer experience. Thanks to our zero-touch support with provisioning API:s to the major HW FTTH vendors. Your CFO might also give you a gold medal...

Billing and support

All billing data for your own service offerings and wholesale services is automatically aggregated. Support and ticketing with live data from the network makes you scale with happy customers.

OUR FTTH ECOSYSTEM

Partnerships to establish your end-to-end process

The key to a successful FTTH-venture is to implement an end-to-end process that supports and automates all aspects of your business. We provide the software that is central to establishing your network for successful FTTH roll-out and operations, but you need a number of additional suppliers of software, hardware and services to get things up and running.

For that reason we nurture an ecosystem of partners with products and services that fit perfectly into our end-to-end process. Read more here about our ecosystem and how it can serve to support your business.

Partners

API & Integrations

Integrations and API:s

Integration between our product suit and your other software or platforms will enable a minimum of manual work, with assured data quality. Our platform offers a number of routes to interaction, from notification e-mails to full blown API:s. We are more than willing to help you manage the integration, but you will likely manage just fine on your own.

API & Integrations

Use cases

How does it actually work?

But how does it actually work? Here we have compiled the use cases that really make you understand the capabilities of our products.

The scenarios include full Open Access Marketplace solutions, as well as Broadband surveys as part of market planning, small municipalities and larger regions, ranging from thousands to half a million subscribers.

Use cases

Partner with us

To seek close collaboration with partners in a value-adding ecosystem comes naturally for us at COS Systems, as it is part of our Open Access philosophy. It all comes down to delivering the best possible solution for the client, and the best way to do that is to work in tandem with highly skilled partners.

As a part of our ecosystem, you will encounter great opportunities to market your products and services to new segments in new markets, and you will be able to present a market leading end-to-end solution to your clients.

Björn Wännman
Partner Manager

“The COS software suite is the only platform that truly offers an end-to-end solution, starting with the very first interest survey to automated service activations and self-service portals for subscribers”

Anders Pettersson, CEO Skelleftea Kraft Fiber Network

“At IBI Group we are well positioned to be the managed services partner of choice for all communities who want a full service FTTH partner. Backed by the COS systems suite we can offer everything from initial broadband surveys and consulting services to operations of a fully automated Open Access Network.”

Keith Ponton, Director – Sr. Practice Lead, Intelligent Systems

Demand Aggregation module – Find them, sign them and spread the word

It’s important to start building in the right area where you can get a high take-rate, in order to generate a revenue flow to fund the building project in all your areas. The key is working with our demand aggregation software COS Service Zones to determine public interest and to sign up the customers.

Survey your service area

You start by surveying the demand for FTTH in the entire planned service area, using our built-in survey tool. At this point you will also have the opportunity to carry out speed tests, to determine what speeds your future customers have today. This data is invaluable when applying for grants and paired with the automatically collected IP-based information about which providers are being used currently, it gives you actionable insight about the competitive landscape. As demand grows you will use the intuitive map-interface to easily divide your area into Service Zones – or “Fiberhoods” – based on the level of interest in fiber services.

Set take-rate targets, take signups & start referral programs

After the initial survey, the zones showing the highest demand or if pre-decided, where the build-out will start – are moved on to the signup phase. Now it’s time to determine the take-rate target for each Service Zone. This target usually inspires neighbors to talk about the fiber build-out, which will reduce the sales and marketing effort required by you. To further strengthen this grassroots approach the software offers functionality for you to include residents as Champions in referral campaigns. With contracts uploaded into the system and take-rates on target, you can feel confident in sending the construction crews out to connect your subscribers.

Automate Communication & Manage Expectations

COS Service Zones will also solve two of the biggest problems you might face when managing a fiber build-out. As you are often targeting thousands of households, the task of giving correct and timely status updates about each address can be incredibly complex. But by enabling subscribers to find their own progress updates on your COS Service Zones website, you can automate and simplify customer communication. While moving through the distinct phases of survey, signup and construction, COS Service Zones is an excellent tool för managing the customers’ expectations, regarding when they can expect their fiber connection to be up and running.

Service activation module – Subscriber online in seconds

The key to efficient network operations is self-service, especially when operating an Open Access network. The zero-touch service provisioning functionality of COS Business Engine, enables your subscribers to select their services via your online Marketplace and have them activated with 100 % automation for you and the service provider. The subscriber gets the unmatched customer experience of upgrading from 100 mbps to a Gig with a click of the mouse.

Integrations to the largest hardware vendors

Through the vendor-neutral COS Business Engine provisioning API, we can automate service provisioning of your network. We have partnerships with the largest vendors, such as Nokia and Calix– and we are constantly expanding our portfolio of supported vendors and Element Management Systems. With the multi-network operation functionality of COS Business Engine we can offer this automation even if you would use different vendors in your networks.

Highly efficient in Open Access and wholesale environment

In an Open Access environment your different Service Providers won’t have access straight into your EMS system that controls all the devices in your network. COS Business Engine will still provide an experience close to what they would have if operating their own network. With full separation between the providers, each and every one of them will be able to view diagnostics data from their customers and get insight in how their services are performing for their subscribers. Nad in a full wholesale environment, where the network is not oepnly marketed to the customers with a Marketplace, the provider/s can still provision services automatically by integrating to the COS Business Engine API.

Free-surfers are a thing of the past

With the connection to the EMS platform COS can constantly monitor what is provisioned where in the network and will immediately flag if there are any discrepancies between the active service orders and what is provisioned. A classic problem in manually managed networks is that billing is stoppen as a customer cancels their subscription but the instructions to de-provision the service never reaches the network technicians – effectively allowing the customer to continue surfing for free. This will be instantly detected by COS Business Engine and highlighted on the provisioning dashboard.

Marketplace – An automated and digitized customer experience available 24/7

Statistics from our customers show that more than 90% of orders are placed online by the subscriber themselves and more than 50% of those outside normal business hours. That means you need to present subscribers with a way to buy themselves when it suits them – and that is just one of the needs the COS Marketplace fulfills.

COS Service Zones

Tailor offerings and communication down to single households

One of the keys to profitable FTTH operations is simplicity, but sometimes you need to tailor your offering to different markets or customer groups. Often this is the case already from the start of FTTH projects as the conditions to deploy fiber varies between different areas. In COS Service Zones you can promote different brands, promote different services and prices in different markets or even neighborhoods. If there are different costs to connect buildings you can even use the Service Layer functionality to define geographic areas or lists of addresses where specific offerings or terms are available, for example a group of addresses with a higher installation fee.

Up-to-date information and automated communications to everyone

While targeting hundreds and thousands of households in FTTH buildouts one of the most complex tasks is to keep everyone involved, both internally and the subscribers, informed about the status of the buildout. With COS Service Zones you will divide your planned footprint into smaller fiberhood that you will build-out one by one. By using the distinct phases of Survey, Signup, Construction and Connected for the fiberhoods it’s easy for everyone to get informed about how far in the process a specific neighborhood is. When searching for an address it will be found in one of the phases and neighborhood specific information could be provided on the fiberhood page. The COS Service Zones platform also has an email engine that will automatically send confirmation emails out to subscribers as they interact with the customer portal. By using advanced filtering options you can also filter out any group of customers and send them a templetized email. All communications is documented on the customer log in the CRM part of the system.

COS Business Engine

Online sales and self service around the clock

Once customers are connected to your network you want to give them full freedom to manage their subscriptions by themselves when it suits them. To wait in phone lines to perform simple tasks is something today’s customers are not expecting from a modern company. In a fully automated network a customer not yet subscriber would automatically have the Marketplace pop up in their browser, just as when you go online in a hotel room. Thereafter they can browse the assortment of services available in any number of categories and sign up directly online. The service will be activated within seconds. They can also find all information about their current and past orders on their MyPages, for example to review terms and conditions the accepted when signing up.

The Marketplace automates your Open Access network

Service providers used to have to market their products via call centers, but that won’t satisfy today’s customers of online services and it will drive costs. The COS Business Engine online Marketplace allows the Service Providers to publish their offerings by themselves and let the subscribers browse and choose among available services from your current service providers, be it broadband access, VOIP, IP-tv, security services and so on. The process is fully automated, giving subscribers the means for self service.

All you need to stay in touch

Business Engine is designed to maximize the efficiency of the operator and the service provider, when it comes to direct communication with the subscribers. It provides you and your providers with the customer data you need to make correct decisions regarding your communications efforts and also automates all confirmation emails to subscribers.

Address management & hardware connections – Validated address and ONT database

Early in your projects, for example in the initial survey phase, you might not have reliable address data available. This is not a problem with COS Service Zones as it has tools to locate everyone and functionality to clean up address data over time. As customers get connected it is crucial to know how each address is connected to the network equipment for accurate service provisioning. This is kept accurate with COS Business Engine Automation

COS Service Zones

Google maps integration

To get started with the out-of -the box demand aggregation platform COS Service Zones is easy. Define the area you wish to target and what services you want to try out the interest for and then you are pretty much ready to go. The first step for the customer is to locate themselves, which is done by an address search. With the integration to the Google Maps database, which is often the most accurate one, most people will immediately find their address.

GPS and drop-the-pin functionality

If the address is not found in the Google database, there is fall back functionality in place. Either the customer can approve the platform to use their GPS coordinates if they’re at their home, or they can simply drop a pin on their house on a map and thereafter provide their address data manually. In the admin interface you will see the ones provided manually so that you can confirm the accuracy manually and move the pin if necessary. With accurate address data you can provide the customer with the correct information and offerings as described here (länk till Marketplace-stycket):

COS-Systems-Address-management-hardware-connections

COS Business Engine

Documentation of ONTs

In the New customer installation process (länk till det stycket), the final step is the installation and documentation of the ONT. There are different options for how to ensure that the documentation gets validated. Either a pre -assigned ONT is prepared in the drop staging process and documented in Business Engine. It’s then mandatory for the installer to put in the correct serial number to complete the installation. An alternative is to connect to the ONT, which would utilize the auto provisioning functionality (länk till service activation stycket) to identify the ONT automatically. Ensuring the documentation is correct is crucial since services could otherwise be activated on the wrong location.

Full network documentation an option

The COS Business Engine network inventory functionality is extensive. You can create templates for any type of network element down to port level and even document your network nodes (huts, cabinets, COs) with pictures, access instructions, etc. In fully automated networks, the COS Business Engine network inventory is often just a representation of what is actually installed and live in the element management system of the hardware vendor. This is done over API’s (länk till API-stycket) to ensure real-time sync and accuracy.

Admin & billing module – Tailored role based access and automated billing

Automating administration and billing is always desirable, as it cuts costs, ensures revenue, and saves time. But it is even more advantageous in an Open Access business model as there are so many different stakeholders involved and because it facilitates the lucrative wholesale role. Also, automating admin & billing provides the means to create a really great customer experience.

COS Service Zones

The COS product suite is the heart of your FTTH build-out and operations and therefore a big number of users from multiple entities with varying roles will be working in it. The platform therefore has multiple admin interfaces with multiple user profiles with access to tailored data and functionality. Administration, reporting and billing is highly automated.

Admin dashboards and reports

In the Admin interface your staff will be able to monitor the status of your demand aggregation campaign in real-time. If there is work that needs to be done, it will be clearly visible on the central dashboard. The platform also comes with reports that can be exported in different formats. In the COS Insight module, your data is presented graphically with graphs, which is extremely powerful in the initial survey phases to explain the current broadband availability, competitor, and customer insights.

Deposit billing and credit card information capture

In the signup phase of the demand aggregation process the customer will be accepting your terms and conditions to get installed on the network. In this step it is also possible to take a deposit and collect the customer’s credit card information. This is managed in the COS Service Zones platform, but is built on the Stripe platform’s API’s. If you’re using a billing model where your are billing the end customer, the credit card information will be available whenthe time comes to automate the subscription billing in COS Business Engine. To the right you can read more about the different billing options supported.

GDPR compliant and ready for future privacy laws.

COS Systems is used in Europe where the very strict GDPR Privacy Laws are enforced. COS’s products are built to fulfill these requirements and are therefore ready if stricter privacy laws are enforced in other markets.

COS Business Engine

User profiles for all the entities in the Open Access business model
In the most complex model there are four types of entities involved in the network;
The network owner, who owns the network infrastructure
The Operator, that manages the network on behalf of the owner
The service providers, who sell services on the network
The subscribers, who subscribe to services

Often one single entity fills multiple of these roles, for example Open Access networks, whre the owner also operates their network, and of course you could use the platform to play all three roles being the single ISP. The key is that the platform is built to welcome any entity to collaborate on the network and in COS Business Engine all these entities can work at the same time in the platform with limited access to data and functionality based on their role. Some of these user types even have multiple roles depending on the type of work that they do. As an example a service provider will have access to a limited subset of data and there are two standard roles available. The Admin profile will be able to update service assortment, prices and terms, while the Support profile will have access to network diagnostic and information on how their services are performing on the network.

Wholesale billing reports or automated end-customer billing

In the traditional Open Access model, the service providers will bill their customers, without the subscriber having any insight into how much the ISP is paying the Operator as a wholesale fee. For this model the COS Business Engine will every month aggregate a billing report for each and every ISP, that will be available to them in the COS Business Engine admin interface. There are variation where the Operator is also billing the end customer, or where the Operator is billing the customer for all services, on behalf of the ISP’s. COS Business Engine automates all these billing models, as well as the traditional single provider business model, of course.

Complex Open Access ticketing supported

In an Open Access network the subscriber will contact their ISP if they have problems with their service. The ISP will do what they can to resolve the issue with the help of the diagnostic data from the network available to them in the COS Business Engine. If they can’t resolve the issue, for example if it seems network related, they will pass it on to the operator. As the issue is resolved, the Operator will notify the ISP who will in turn inform the subscriber. In COS Business Engine the ticketing module is built ground up to support this ticket life cycle and in single provider networks this separation is also very useful as the first line customer support team can pass on tikets they can’t resolve to the NOC with the click of a button with full traceability.

Service offering & Open Access module – The open access network automated

Differentiating your offerings between markets and submarkets based on competition and need is crucial for success.
Another excellent way to increase your take-rates is to open up your network to several service providers which helps you accelerate growth and optimize network utilization, as more available services will gain you more customers – and increased ROI.

COS Service Zones

Differentiated offerings based on your survey findings and costs

If your FTTH project has been started with the COS Service Zones survey, you will have gathered invaluable customer, market and competitor data. Based on these findings there is often an opportunity to differentiate the pre-signup offering between different parts of your planned service area based on competition, willingness to pay or the need of your future subscribers. Everything to maximize your take-rates and ROI.

It may also be that the cost of deployment varies not only between areas, but also the cost to do the fiber drop to individual households. There is functionalty in Service Zones to easily tailor your offering to take such variations into account. As an example, the Service Layer functionality can be used to set a different installation cost for specific addresses, or even create a number of different installation cost tiers. When the customer searches for their address on the customer portal, the correct price will be shown to them.

Drive people to sign up with different offerings based on phase of deployment

Another dimension of differentiation is the progress of your project in relations to each and every service zone/fiberhood. Once the distribution fiber is in place ina neighborhood you want to connect as many customers in the neighborhood at the same time and as quickly as possible for cost efficiency and time to revenue. In short, by boosting your pre-signup take-rates prior to starting the customer installations in this phase you will improve the business case. One smart tactic to do this is to offer a lower cost or free installtion for pre signups compared to those signing up to connect after your crews have left their nehgborhood. With COS Service Zones this is easily done with different service offering for fiberhoods in the Connected phase.

COS Business Engine

Managing offerings together with your providers

In an Open Access scenario you will work hand in hand with your providers to win as many customers and sell as many services as possible. You do this by creating Service Types that the providers will build their offerings on and publish on the marketplace. The service types can be of any category, for example Internet services, and dictates the base parameters, such as speed and SLA, and the wholesale fee the provider would pay when selling it to an end customer. You can read more about Open Access here. The service provider will build their retail service offering on that foundation and publish it to the end customer on the network Marketplace with their terms and conditions, price, etc. Within Business Engine, the same way as with COS Service Zones, the network can be separated into subnetworks in many different ways, enabling the Service Types and whole sales fees, as well as the retail offerings to be differentiated even down to an address level. This is useful for example if there are a subset of the market where the prices for service should be subsidized, in high competition areas, areas with higher construction costs, or within specific MDU complexes based on agreement with property owners.

Of course, all this differentiation is also possible if you operate your own single provider network

An easy way in for your service providers

COS Business Engine contains great functionality that helps service providers market themselves and then sign on their new customers via the Network Marketplace. By working in their User interface they can manage their offerings, their customers, troubleshoot their services’ performance and much more. Still, larger providers, or in the case of an entirely wholesale based network where there is no common network Marketplace, the providers might want to rather work with their own systems and websites. This can be achieved with the service provider API. By building integrations to it, the service providers can manage their customers on your Open Access network as if it was their own. For example they can link the address data base and service offerings between COS Business Engine, their CRM and billing platform and sell services on their website that are instantly and automatically provisioned on the network, of course only for eligeble addresses.

Keeping track of all the moving parts

COS Business Engine is intended to be a fundamental operating application for multi provider networks – automating all processes relating to the services provided. Not automating these functionalities brings you a lot of headache as even minor miscues easily could snowball into major issues. But COS Business Engine helps you keep track of every service and every single subscriber, and every single transaction.

End-to-end software to automate your fiber to the home business

COSService Zones

COSBusiness Engine

Open up your infrastructure for more services

The way you succeed

Market survey and sign-up

Design business model and pricing

Roll-out and customer installation

Browse and buy

Automatic activation

Billing and support

Partnerships to establish your end-to-end process

Integrations and API:s

How does it actually work?

Partner with us

“The COS software suite is the only platform that truly offers an end-to-end solution, starting with the very first interest survey to automated service activations and self-service portals for subscribers”

Demand Aggregation module – Find them, sign them and spread the word

Survey your service area

Set take-rate targets, take signups & start referral programs

Automate Communication & Manage Expectations

Installation workflow engine – Building with control and reliable data

Reducing risk by ensuring data integrity

A tried and tested way of working

Service activation module – Subscriber online in seconds

Integrations to the largest hardware vendors

Highly efficient in Open Access and wholesale environment

Free-surfers are a thing of the past

Marketplace – An automated and digitized customer experience available 24/7

COS Service Zones

Tailor offerings and communication down to single households

Up-to-date information and automated communications to everyone

COS Business Engine

Online sales and self service around the clock

The Marketplace automates your Open Access network

All you need to stay in touch

Address management & hardware connections – Validated address and ONT database

COS Service Zones

Google maps integration

GPS and drop-the-pin functionality

COS Business Engine

Documentation of ONTs

Full network documentation an option

Admin & billing module – Tailored role based access and automated billing

COS Service Zones

Admin dashboards and reports

Deposit billing and credit card information capture

GDPR compliant and ready for future privacy laws.

COS Business Engine

Wholesale billing reports or automated end-customer billing

Complex Open Access ticketing supported

Service offering & Open Access module – The open access network automated

COS Service Zones

Differentiated offerings based on your survey findings and costs

Drive people to sign up with different offerings based on phase of deployment

COS Business Engine

Managing offerings together with your providers

An easy way in for your service providers

Keeping track of all the moving parts

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OUR SOLUTION

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End-to-end software to automate
your fiber to the home business

COS
Service Zones

COS
Business Engine