Information and the ability to effectively manage it will determine the winners in tomorrow's competitive marketplace. No other opportunity exemplifies this principle more than the vast deployment of telecommunications networks. The need to provide and maintain cost-effective and strategically designed infrastructure to support the myriad of evolving services is the mandate of the future.

To meet this mandate, CADTEL Systems (an authorized ESRI business partner) developed SpatialBASE--CADTEL's geographic enterprise data server--and LOGIC/gis--CADTEL's telecommunications design and management client application for mixed copper, coax, and fiber networks. Large and small service providers throughout the world have already adopted this integrated GIS to take network creation and management into the next century.

SpatialBASE--based on ESRI's Spatial Database Engine (SDE) software--is a client/server system engineered to design, manage, and maintain communications networks. The system, along with LOGIC/gis 6.0, comprises a complete communications entity model, business rules, a COM-based API, transaction manager, a local and persistent cache, engineering tools, work order manager, work print generator, and more.

Frontier Corporation (Rochester, New York) and Oceanic Cablevision (Honolulu, Hawaii) are breaking new ground to automate the management of their outside plant facilities. Each provider selected the new SpatialBASE platform, along with LOGIC/gis 6.0, to map their future.

Frontier Corporation is one of the nation's leading telecommunications companies, serving more than two million customers. It operates 34 local telephone companies in 13 states from Minnesota to Florida, making it the 12th largest local exchange provider in the country. In addition, the company's long-distance operation, Frontier Communications International, is the fifth largest long-distance provider nationwide.

Oceanic Cable, a division of Time Warner Entertainment, has a vision--"to be the number one information, communications, and entertainment company in Hawaii." This vision is becoming a reality, as nearly every household and business in Hawaii now has access to cable service. Thousands of Oahu homes are connected to the Internet with high-speed cable modems and Oceanic's hybrid fiber/coax signal delivery system.

The company provides a diverse selection of entertainment and information services to nearly 300,000 households, schools, and businesses on Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island. First in the nation to develop and commit to innovative technologies, Oceanic is known throughout the industry for its advanced level of efficiency and service.

Frontier Telephone of Rochester and Frontier Communications of Minnesota will be the first two Frontier companies to implement the SpatialBASE platform and LOGIC/gis 6.0, along with the corporation's long-distance provider, Frontier Communications International. Frontier Corporation then has plans to roll the system out to its remaining carriers.

After a lengthy selection process, CADTEL was chosen, along with two other companies, to participate in a 60-day field trial. The evaluation began with software installation and was followed by user training. After the two-day training sessions, vendors were responsible for providing ongoing technical and customer-service support for the remainder of the trial period.

"At the close of the field trial, it was obvious to us that the CADTEL system would best meet our short- and long-term goals," says Glenn Richardsen of Frontier Communications International. "The package has the flexibility to successfully meld into our existing operation as well as the scalability to meet our projected needs down the road."

LOGIC/gis will be installed at Rochester Telephone and enhance the current CAD systems at Frontier Communications International and Frontier Communications of Minnesota.

Oceanic Cablevision is the first primarily cable TV provider to adopt the SpatialBASE system. Neal Nakamura, OSP design manager, described what Oceanic was looking for in their GIS system. "We were looking to install a tool that encourages and delivers team efficiency within the department and within the company--no prima donna workstations, no secret file structures, no exclusively controlled information."

The open architecture and COM development environment of SpatialBASE will allow both Frontier and Oceanic to serve up spatial data and metadata about their physical network to multiple applications that use different graphics engines. Whether they are using LOGIC/gis for engineering, ArcInfo and ArcView GIS for marketing and planning, or MapObjects Professional and MapObjects Internet Map Server for customer care, each application will be working off one enterprise server for physical network data.

It is becoming imperative for companies to look outside of the traditional measures of call completion ratings, network downtime, etc.

GIS provides tools for companies to provide cutting-edge customer service, effectively market and sell their services, and design and manage their assets effectively and accurately.

For more information contact CADTEL Systems, Inc. (tel.: 1-800-CADTEL-1), or visit their Web site at www.cadtel.com.