A Field Study on Proactive Network Maintenance and Signal Leakage Tools

The objective of the field study was to determine if a direct correlation exists specifically between Nimble This PNM drop, in home / near home data and leakage.  More specifically:

What percentage of the time can Nimble This PNM data be used to proactively identify drop, near home / in home impairments that will have cable integrity issues that the subscriber will notice in the immediate future and these impairments can be located / fixed using ComSonics M3/QAM Compass solution?

Due to time limitations and the need to pre arrange subscribers in home approval the field study selectively identified 15 homes that exhibited: 1. Very poor modem performance, i.e. Red Modems, and 2.  Specifically focused on impairments either near or inside the home.  For this study modems that exhibited OSP problems were not selected.

The data that was used to select the target subscribers included:

  • Failing readings on the Nimble This PNM application
  • Poor In-Channel Frequency Response (ICFR) on the DOCSIS Return Channels
  • Pre EQ Tap response with bad levels of micro-reflections on digital pre-eq taps 9 and 10
  • Modems operating in an upstream partial-mode condition (i.e. running on one upstream channel instead of two)
  • FM Ingress on downstream

The findings exceeded the predicted expectations and can be summarized as follows:

1) Of the 15 subscribers selected for the drop, in home / near home impairments study using the Nimble This PNM tool, 100% of the subscribers exhibited cable defects either in the cable drop or in home / near home upon site inspection.  Once on site those defects were quickly located by the ComSonics M3/QAM Compass. 

2)  Of the 15 homes selected using the PNM data, the cable impairments in 13 of the 15 “or” (87%) of the homes were quickly located and fixed using the M3/Compass once on site, bring the modem status back to green.  The Nimble this PNM indicated the subscribers’ had in-home / near home impairments which were still not noticeable by the subscriber themselves but would be in the near future. The other 2 homes did have leakage that contributed to the modem problems, but also had data-only traps at the end of the drops that were faulty and did not exhibit leakage.  The process of eliminating the leakage related problems allowed the technicians to look for other probable causes, such as the data-only traps.

  1. A few of the homes exhibited outside plant (OSP) related impairments uncovered by Nimble This PNM. This was determined after the in the home leakage was repaired. Upon eliminating the cable impairment the technician using the PNM mobile app determined it was an OSP impairment.  This data can be relayed to a OSP technician with a very high level of confidence that the resulting repair will fix the remaining modem’s issues.
  2. It should be mentioned that once the technicians were on site with the pre-selected subscribers home location, the technicians would also use the Nimble This mobile app to locate other nearby homes in the area with impairments. Where possible, the techs would resolve issues that could be located and fixed outside the home using the ComSonics M3/QAM Compass. Issues determined to be inside the house required a scheduled house call.  These issues are not featured here but were proactively resolved before a subscriber called for service.

The results of this study are very exciting and go a long way to supporting the claim stated earlier in this paper:  “Combining the two solutions form an “effective team” that provide a superior proactive maintenance solution that appear to outperform any other solution in the marketplace.”  To put this in another perspective, the efficiency of sustaining a proactive network maintenance with tangible results can approach 100%.  Return service calls will be reduced to near zero. To date, no other solution set can make this sort of claim with real world data to back it up.

To read the whole white paper on the field study please click below

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