A 'TEAMS' Effort - Q-Tel takes a giant stepby Arif Kalim, Head of GIS Unit, Q-Tel |
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"Wouldn't it be nice if these Q-Tel guys can develop super powers and as soon as I apply for a telephone line, they just press a magic button and poof, my telephone is connected!". These were the thoughts going through Ahmad's mind as he was standing in a long queue on a Q-Tel counter trying to find out why his telephone is still not connected almost two weeks since he applied. Well, the GIS technology implementation may not allow Q-Tel planners, engineers, technicians and survey crews to leap over tall buildings or develop X-ray vision to serve its customers, but it can come very close to giving them the similar capabilities while sitting in front of their GIS workstations back in the office.
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Q-TEL is one of 16 government agencies in Qatar that have so far adopted GIS as part of their information management strategies. This map detail shows Q-TEL's telephone exchange and remote line unit (RLU) boundaries. |
By using the pilot GIS system developed by Q-Tel GIS unit, a Q-Tel routing clerk can pinpoint the exact location of subscriber's property from the information given on the application, "visit" the site and "look around" it searching for the underground network facilities from where the telephone connection can be provided to the subscriber. All this can happen in minutes on the GIS workstation screen with the click of a button, rather than hopping all over town looking for the place and sifting through tens of thousands of maps, drawings and other documents to look for an available line, all of which can sometimes take many days. Encouraged by tremendous positive response from the planners, engineers, technicians and clerks who have been testing the prototype system for Al Khor pilot area, the Q-Tel management has decided to adopt the GIS technology to automate the entire Q-Tel Access Network, the first phase of which will ready for use in production by the third quarter of 1998.
"With the commitment to providing quick telephone connections to our customers, we decided to form a GIS systems group within the engineering department back in May 1996," says Mr. Abdulla Rafeia, Head of Access Networks Section at Q-Tel. "After initial phases of system acquisition and setting up the GIS team followed by the successful completion of a pilot project, we launched a major GIS systems development project in January 1997 to automate the records management, planning, and engineering of Q-Tel Access Network, the backbone of Q-Tel's engineering infra-structure responsible for providing telephone services to our subscribers," adds Mr. Rafeia.
Q-Tel GIS Systems Unit is currently implementing the Telecommunication Access Network Management System (TEAMS) to automate Access Network (External Plant) records management, external planning, estimating and monitoring functions for the civil works, and cabling operations required to make changes in the Access Network to extend telephone services to the new and existing subscribers.
Once an application for a new telephone connection cannot be fulfilled due to unavailability of spare lines on the nearest distribution point (DP), the final point in the Access Network from where the subscriber's are connected, it is forwarded to the Access Networks section. A "Works Order" is initiated here for the work to be done to extend the network infra-structure to the new site in order to make the new connection feasible and provide telephone services to the customer. The site is located by field surveying the area and all the necessary maps, drawings and records of that particular area are copied from the permanent paper records and added to the Works Order file.
The Works Order "Folder" travels through different phases of planning, estimating, civil works, external works and cabling operations until the work is completed. For any underground work, road opening has to be coordinated with other agencies. Upon completion of a Works Order, service is restored for the subscriber. All affected permanent records and drawings are updated to reflect the new built-in changes to Q-Tel Access Network facilities infrastructure.
TEAMS is designed to automate the entire workflow of Works Order Processing, which will also include accessing inter-agency data as required and road opening coordination with other agencies for all underground work. The TEAMS implementation is divided into three phases. The first phase of this project, Data Automation, involves converting the existing paper maps, drawings, and records of the entire Q-Tel Access Network information to the digital GIS format overlaid on the Qatar base maps provided by the Center for GIS (CGIS). This phase also includes the development of the access network information query, display and plotting capabilities to allow users to access and use the digital information.
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Detail map of Qatar showing Q-TEL's QATARNET, a global system mobile (GSM) network. Highlighted are mobile switching centres, base station controllers, base transceiver stations and microwave stations, as well as cable and microwave links. |
The second phase, Network Planning & Engineering Applications Development, involves developing specific software modules to automate planning, estimating, and monitoring functions for the civil works external works, and cabling operations required to make changes in the Access network to extend telephone services to the new and existing subscribers. The third phase, Complete Works Order Processing Automation, includes interfaces to other Q-Tel corporate Information systems like Customer Services System (CSS), Corporate Financial System (CFS), Materials Management System, Project Management System and others.
Implementation of Phase I of TEAMS is currently in progress, scheduled to be completed by mid-1998. A prototype of the TEAMS Phase I software has already been released as a beta version to be used by the planners, engineers and technicians in order to provide feedback to the GIS development team for the production version.
The first phase of TEAMS development involves massive data conversion efforts by Q-Tel GIS team to convert over 3,500 maps and drawings of different scales and sizes, plus other associated tabular records consisting of over 30,000 documents to the digital GIS format. All these paper maps and records contain the complete inventory of the entire Q-Tel access network, the physical location and attribute information about each of the network items both above ground and underground, and the complete cable network connectivity information of each telephone line in the system from the exchange to the customer's handset. It is quite a challenging job to convert all this information to the digital format. After careful planning, preparation, comprehensive studies and a pilot project, and after evaluating different options, Q-Tel has decided to do the entire data conversion work in-house.
Once the Data Conversion is completed, all the functions currently being carried out manually by the Engineering Drawing Office will be automated, substantially increasing the efficiency of works order processing by the planners, engineers and technicians. "We will not stop at just automating the access network record system only. We want to take automation all the way to the field operations, to "hot" link TEAMS to the other Q-Tel corporate information systems as well as to other agencies", says Mr. Abdulla Rafiea, Head of Access Networks at Q-Tel. "GIS technology, coupled with GPS and mobile telephony/computing will greatly assist us in carrying out our field operations more effectively, including crew and vehicle tracking and making quick and immediate as-built changes in our records," adds Mr. Rafeia.
The GIS implementation has already benefited Q-Tel in many ways by providing useful tools for managing Telecommunication facilities, Inter-exchange transmission network, GSM network, Qatar Cable Vision (QCV) Area coverage Analysis, Fibre Optic network, and Pay Phone planning and marketing. TEAMS implementation, when completed, will greatly enhance the Access Network planning and engineering work speeding up the process of providing telephone services to the new and existing subscriber's.
In order to foster cooperation among government agencies, Q-Tel has taken a first step towards inter-agency co-operation with a joint venture project involving tracking emergencies by locating pay phones initially, followed by any telephone in the country once the geo-coding of all the addresses is completed. This will contribute in fulfilling a visionary's distant dream nine years ago of Nation-wide Integrated Information Processing between government agencies to serve citizens of the state of Qatar. A small step by Q-Tel perhaps, but a giant leap for the state of Qatar!