Feasibility studies -- watch out for conflicts of interest!

Fiber Planners routinely helps clients determine the feasibility of fiber projects involving internal and municipal networks and dark fiber leasing.

For more aggressive fiber deployments involving cable TV services, competitive telecommunications services or Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH), we strongly recommend utilities retain an independent, third party consultant that has no vested interest in the outcome and will have no role in any resulting project. These are all potentially lucrative and successful businesses but also financially riskier. We have seen too many utilities retain a design firm to perform their feasibility study, then retain the same firm for the resulting project.

Not surprisingly, these firms frequently seem to endorse the largest, riskiest plans requiring the most design work! If the project later loses millions of dollars and the utility managers lose their jobs, well, at least the consultants got their fees.

Unless we know we'll have no part in the subsequent design work, we turn down these opportunities because of the conflict of interest. (We do remain available as necessary to provide technical advice and cost estimate inputs to the utility or their consultants.)

Back to Specialized technical services page.

• Industry standards development
• Technical assistance to vendors
• Failure analysis and litigation consulting
• OTDR analysis and training
• Technical note publishing
• Helicopter laser surveys of inaccurately sagged fiber cable or conductors
• PLS-CADD modeling
• Feasibility studies of internal and dark fiber projects
• Telecommunications network design optimization
• Materials testing/replicating field failures