Fibre rollouts run on pace. Crews connect streets by the day, and the one thing that structurally lags behind is the documentation: where exactly the duct, the handholes and the joints ended up. A trench is open for hours at most, and whatever is not recorded before the sand goes back in gets reconstructed later, from photos and memory. That is how network maps become unreliable.
Fibre optic surveying with GNSS turns the documentation into a by-product of the digging itself.
How it works in the trench
The field engineer measures the route with a UNI-GR2 on the pole while the trench is open: duct sections, handholes, tees and crossings, each with a centimetre-accurate RTK position. The measurements sync live to UNI-Cloud, and from there they flow into the registration systems the fibre sector runs on.
That last step is where the real time savings hide. Through the UNI-Cloud API, measurements land directly in fibre registration platforms such as Speer IT’s Cocon, and through the Bluetooth integrations they feed field software such as GOconnectIT. No export files, no retyping, no Friday afternoon of processing sketches.
BAM Infra Telecom summarised the effect on the UNI-GR2 product page: “By using the UNI-GR2 and combining it with our GIS tools, we have been able to work more efficient. On fibre optics projects, we are now able to skip about 50 process steps!”
Who already works this way
Infra service provider Baas surveys cables and pipes digitally with GOconnectIT and marXact. And the approach crosses borders: Noldor Net Networking measures fibre optics in Germany with digital surveying.
For network operators the gain reads differently but lands in the same place: as-built data that arrives georeferenced, structured and the same day, instead of weeks later in a format that needs fixing.
A concrete example
Say a crew connects 60 homes in a new district. The engineer measures each handhole and the trench line right after the ducts are laid. By the time the crew packs up, the day’s work is in the registration system and the network operator can review it the same day. The subcontractor invoices on delivered, documented work instead of waiting for the paperwork to catch up.
Getting started
You need one set per crew: receiver, app, cloud environment and RTK corrections, together in the UNI-Collect Survey Package. The UNI-Cloud API handles the connection to your registration platform.
Want to see what this does to your rollout pace? Contact us for a demo.