Point Topic Ltd

Connecting the Dots - A comprehensive perspective on the broadband market backed by an ontology At Point Topic, we have a lot of data on the broadband market. As is true for all companies, different products are built for different purposes and different clients, using different data. Over time, this means that you end up with different sets of definitions and outputs that do not fully align with each other. That is fine because definitions and formats need to be most suitable to the question a dataset tries to answer. But the question is, how does one keep these different sets of definitions, outputs and formats aligned? One simple answer is to use lookup tables to keep different datasets aligned. In SQL databases, foreign keys can be used to have one value reference a value in another table. That works fine, to an extent. However, this is labour-intensive and, crucially, you cannot use this approach when you’re lining up values as well as the underlying definitions for your values. For example, while we have lots of data on BT and Openreach, and often data for one is representative of the other, lining them up means you need to also be aware how the two are different and that doing so will, at some point, cause complications. This is where ontologies come in. Assigning definitions to concepts and things, as well as the relationships between them, allows us to classify data and formalise the relationships between different data in a robust, reliable way. In our context, this is especially useful for understand relationships between ISPs, network operators, wholesalers, retailers as well as the real-world, in-the-ground infrastructure they operate and use, and the products they offer to end-users. While there have been previous attempts at creating ontologies for the telecoms industry, they have had low visibility, did not make their codebase public or were simply not compatible with our requirements. Our approach was to build a new ontology, based on earlier academic literature, and building it around our broad catalogue of real-world data and business needs. The ontology is maintained separately from all of our products, with classes and relationships defined and maintained independently, based on best practices. Data gets tagged and then populates this web of definitions, gradually building up a web of data to represent a complete view of the broadband sector as we (and our data) see it. The ontology allows us to build bridges between all of our products. This allows us to have a complete picture of the broadband market in one environment, where we can query data across multiple dimensions to answer questions in a significantly shorter time than before. We are continuing to work to make this picture even more complete and eventually share this ability with our clients. Full article (with more 📈!): https://lnkd.in/gMTzgDGi

Connecting the Dots - A comprehensive perspective on the broadband market backed by an ontology At Point Topic, we have a lot of data on the broadband market. As is true for all companies, different products are built for different purposes and different clients, using different data. Over time, this means that you end up with different sets of definitions and outputs that do not fully align with each other. That is fine because definitions and formats need to be most suitable to the question a dataset tries to answer. But the question is, how does one keep these different sets of definitions, outputs and formats aligned? One simple answer is to use lookup tables to keep different datasets aligned. In SQL databases, foreign keys can be used to have one value reference a value in another table. That works fine, to an extent. However, this is labour-intensive and, crucially, you cannot use this approach when you’re lining up values as well as the underlying definitions for your values. For example, while we have lots of data on BT and Openreach, and often data for one is representative of the other, lining them up means you need to also be aware how the two are different and that doing so will, at some point, cause complications. This is where ontologies come in. Assigning definitions to concepts and things, as well as the relationships between them, allows us to classify data and formalise the relationships between different data in a robust, reliable way. In our context, this is especially useful for understand relationships between ISPs, network operators, wholesalers, retailers as well as the real-world, in-the-ground infrastructure they operate and use, and the products they offer to end-users. While there have been previous attempts at creating ontologies for the telecoms industry, they have had low visibility, did not make their codebase public or were simply not compatible with our requirements. Our approach was to build a new ontology, based on earlier academic literature, and building it around our broad catalogue of real-world data and business needs. The ontology is maintained separately from all of our products, with classes and relationships defined and maintained independently, based on best practices. Data gets tagged and then populates this web of definitions, gradually building up a web of data to represent a complete view of the broadband sector as we (and our data) see it. The ontology allows us to build bridges between all of our products. This allows us to have a complete picture of the broadband market in one environment, where we can query data across multiple dimensions to answer questions in a significantly shorter time than before. We are continuing to work to make this picture even more complete and eventually share this ability with our clients. Full article (with more 📈!): https://lnkd.in/gMTzgDGi

FTTP adoption rates and market value in Europe: As of mid-2023, fibre adoption rate ranged from 16.3% in Austria and Greece to 94.9% in Iceland, with the average among the 30 European countries standing at 57.2%, up from 54.4% we recorded in mid-2022.  #fttp #fibreadoption #broadband https://lnkd.in/e638WeH5