ConnectMaster has delivered for htp for over two decades
htp is a subsidiary of the energy service providers Stadtwerke Hannover AG and EWE AG, Oldenburg. It offers Internet, telephone and mobile phone services for around 126,000 customers in the greater Hanover, Hildesheim, Braunschweig, Peine, Wolfenbüttel and Hameln-Pyrmont areas. The company is expanding the broadband infrastructure in the service area and promoting future-proof Internet coverage.
Challenges
In 2000, htp was looking for a modern software solution for comprehensive documentation and planning of the telecommunications infrastructure in the backbone. Their goal was to achieve continuous, end-to-end management of the services and a clear overview of their interconnection.
Another challenge was to obtain a complete overview of the maintenance status of the backbone locations at all times, so that their maintenance could be outsourced to a partner company. It was therefore essential that the solution be able to integrate external service providers with customizable access rights.
The most recent challenge in 2022 was the requirement to deliver efficient management of customer connections up to and including network level 3 in the broadband area for households. ConnectMaster was also to be used here to record the logical transmission paths on the physical objects and to manage the locations in the backbone and to the customers (private and business).
Solution
htp has been working successfully with ConnectMaster from VertiGIS since the beginning of 2000. With the Ethernet/IP and WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplex) technologies used, htp achieves continuous end-to-end management of their services and a clear overview of their interconnection. An interface to the Eramon ticket system completes the solution.
As a first step, the project team carried out the management and planning of the logical transmission paths. Later, together with VertiGIS, htp supplemented the physical infrastructure by importing it from the GIS and other systems and linking it to the logical transmission paths. The final extension involved importing the infrastructure created by the broadband expansion up to network level 3.
Maintenance is also optimized: the external partner company creates maintenance reports and then uploads them to ConnectMaster. A plug-in in ConnectMaster can then be used to read and manage the electricity meters, for example.
The entire VertiGIS solution has been continuously expanded over the years and adapted to each new challenge. Services, e.g. for data preparation and data import, as well as training courses, still complement the VertiGIS offering today.
Result
htp’s NOC (Network Operations Center) service department in particular benefits from the forward-looking investment in ConnectMaster. It now always has complete access to comprehensive network information. The end-to-end view of connections enables more effective fault management. By allowing third parties to enter information on maintenance work carried out in the backbone locations, for example, depending on their access rights, up-to-date data is always available.