BEAD Walkout Tools

Most of the work we tend to see over here at Katapult involves long haul and middle-mile connection as opposed to last-mile FTTx. But more of our customers are looking for scalable solutions for last-mile mapping to keep up with the influx of public and private capital that has come with RDOF and BEAD funding.

Over the past three years, we’ve learned more about the challenges of traditional walkout design, and worked to help customers drastically outperform hand-drawn maps with house numbers and span distances. Teams working to provide FTTH have a lot to keep straight, for both the sake of their field crews and to present verified data outlining the under and unserved areas they’re trying to reach. 

While we’ve worked hard to make sure Katapult Pro addresses the big needs of FTTx, we realized our out-of-the-box default workflow didn’t address this specific need for last-mile walkout tools. 

Our technical support team built a toolset inside Katapult Pro to replicate the walkout workflow and remove the pain of handwritten predesigns. 

Main features include: 

• A new node type called Service Location 

• A new attribute called Service Location Type for Residential, Commercial, or Multi-Dwelling Units (MDU) 

• Three new tools, one for each Service Location Type with unique icons for each 

• Three new map styles, one for each Service Location Type that match the new tools 

The toolset lets office staff create maps with nodes for specific types of service locations. Crews may still have to verify locations in the field and fill in unknown data points, but now teams have a starting point to identify houses, businesses, and apartment buildings from the office. 

Once predesign maps are verified, teams can provide transparent, photo-based documentation of the areas where they hope to attach, with addresses, distances, and apartment block sizes clearly detailed. 

BEAD funding and public capital are supposed to help remove the barriers to serving communities in need. We want to maximize the impact of that capital by giving you the tools to reduce redundancies and cut calendar days so you can spend more time connecting customers and less time hand-drawing neighborhoods. 

The tools we create are built to help our clients– we’d love to hear about your work and see if Katapult Pro can help you tackle challenges and hit new goals.