Regional Gulf Coast fiber provider Southern Light has implemented Connected2Fiber’s Connected World software as a service (SaaS) platform, enabling its customers to search where the service provider has available fiber.
As part of its agreement with Connected2Fiber, Southern light has also adopted the Building List Manager, an automated software module for creating and distributing on-net and near-net building lists to drive wholesale and channel market participation.
Southern Light is also using the Building Intelligence market visibility module.
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By using Connected World, Southern Light gains an acceleration platform to help network operators see and manage their assets with market intelligence.
Specifically, the SaaS platform enables on-net and near-net location management, route tracking, interconnection and building list automation, all in a visual, automated toolset designed for the connectivity industry.
Southern Light, which operates more than 6,000 miles of fiber optic networks in the Southeast, provides fiber optic services to area businesses, nonprofits, financial institutions and government entities.
“The process of managing our locations, creating spreadsheets to share that information and mapping it to the formats our large carrier customers want has always been a challenge in the industry,” said David Loeffler, sales director at Southern Light, in a release. “Now, with Connected2Fiber, we have a platform that can create, design and program building lists to be distributed in customer-preferred formats in less than four clicks.”
Platforms like Connected2Fiber will continue to come in handy for emerging regional fiber players like Southern Light, particularly as they grow their fiber reach.
Southern Light has continued to expand its network reach organically and through partnerships with other providers.
In January, Southern Light and Allied Fiber signed a 20-year Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU) agreement, giving Southern Light another avenue by which to extend its network to a growing customer base across Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.
Earlier, Southern Light began building a new fiber network extension to accommodate a fiber-to-the-tower (FTTT) macro tower contract with a large unnamed wireless operator. Under the 20-year contract, Southern Light will install over 1,650 route miles and 14,000 fiber miles to connect 446 tower sites in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
While the FTTT contract is important it could leverage and extend that same network to serve a host of other potential customer verticals including military installations, hospitals, universities, businesses, non-profits and financial institutions.