Among the crown jewels of the company's assets is Cable Mágico, its cable television network, which is based in the competitive Lima market.  To help maintain its technological edge, Cable Mágico has implemented a GIS based on ESRI software in its Customer Service department.  Using ArcIMS, which provides Internet access to its ArcSDE-Oracle managed spatial database, service representatives can run a service area application and immediately determine if a potential customer is located within the company's existing coverage area.  If it is determined that service is currently provided to the area, the system generates a work order that is forwarded to the installation department and subsequently printed from a common Web browser.  If the potential customer is outside the existing service area, the address information is collected to determine the feasibility of expanding the network coverage in the future.

The Cable Mágico application also helps the marketing department perform customer segmentation analysis for its planning and sales forecast reports.  In addition, it monitors the cable television network to eliminate clandestine connections.  Both applications run on a CIS Informix based system.

 Comments Edison Ramirez Motta, Technical Area System's Coordinator , Telefónica del Perú S.A.A., "During the past 5 years, Telefónica del Perú S.A.A. has been systematically developing its GIS, which has ultimately expanded into a corporate wide system with which they integrate, maintain, and distribute spatial data throughout the entire company.  In creating the Cable Mágico application, they made extensive use of this corporate GIS."

 A major requirement for the company in building their GIS was the substantial effort required in collecting, digitizing, and standardizing its spatial data, which in some cases had been originally collected in CAD system formats.  This effort required more than 2-years of work and cost almost 4 million U.S. dollars.  The degree of detail is down to "door" level, in which each customer has a unique identifying point within the system, specifying the door of the house or place of business where the telecommunications service has been installed.  The maps were digitized to a scale of 1/1000 to allow more variables for analysis so that the GIS could provide better support for decision-making at the enterprise level.

 The Telefónica del Perú S.A.A. enterprise GIS uses a three tier architecture.  This architecture loosely couples the applications and data, as opposed to the more rigid Client/Server model.  The three-tier model allows the company greater flexibility in using and modifying its applications and data.

Comments Renzo Vidalón Hoyle, Integrated Systems Analyst for Telematica S.A., ESRI's GIS software distributor in Perú, "A big advantage of the three-tier architecture is that most of the company's business methods, regulations, and strategies are held in the server, where it is easier to make changes for specific applications and projects.  One of the company's goals is to provide a centralized administration and maintenance that promotes the distribution of urban cadastral information to each of the many business units within the corporation and this architecture supports that process."

 Another Cable Mágico application that the company is very excited about is one that was developed by their planning department.  Among the data that they have collected in their enterprise GIS is statistical and demographic information about their customers and their demand for Cable Mágico service.  Their planning application allows them to analyze their existing service areas using this demographic data, so that they can make intelligent decisions concerning the expansion of their coverage areas and the investments required to continue providing quality service to their customers.  The application was completely developed in Visual Basic (VBA), using the interfaces available through ArcView.

 The Cable Mágico service area and planning applications are the first that the company developed using ESRI's new ArcGIS technology.  In the future, there are plans to integrate facilities data into the planning application to further expand its planning and forecasting capabilities.
In addition, the company's wireless division uses an ArcView application to analyze the volume of traffic on its many telecommunications antennas.  This allows them to orient each antenna in such a way to allow maximum coverage, while minimizing overlaps in the areas served by adjacent antennas.  It also provides essential information in expanding the service areas and the placement of supplemental antennas.  The company has also developed a similar application within its landline telephone division, which it uses to manage service and installation requests.

 Because of its detailed geodatabase, Telefónica del Perú S.A.A. has been able to develop products in use throughout the entire company, including an electronic street reference guide for Lima called, "Callejero" or "On the Street" that is distributed via the Intranet and is widely used by all of the business units in the company's various divisions.

 In the future, the company plans to integrate its facilities and technical data into the GIS system to bring more information into a common, georeferenced database, which will minimize redundancy and further expand the system's capabilities.

 Concludes Vidalón, " Telefónica del Perú S.A.A. has implemented an enterprise GIS that can serve as a model in functionality and flexibility for other telecommunications companies that are integrating GIS into their operations."

About the Author

Jim Baumann writes about international GIS-related topics for ESRI.  He has written articles on various aspects of the computer graphics industry and information technology for more than 15 years.

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Jim Baumann
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