Value, 7,000,000 times

History

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. The first telephone line was constructed in 1878. Between 1900 and 1905, the number of phones in the network created by Bell blew past 1,000,000. The telephone was well on its way to becoming the standard for communication all over the world. That telephone system was built on the back of a massive network of wood, metal, and concrete poles that has continued to expand over the last century and a half. Since the first line was set, people have needed to measure, locate, and collect information about these poles. For most of that time, a simple measuring stick was used to collect the heights of everything attached to the pole. Then the location was written on a map if it was collected at all.

That’s why 10 years ago ikeGPS was created to update the way people collect and manage all of the information about a pole. After a few iterations, we arrived at IKE 4 in July 2016. We like to think it is the best way ever to collect pole data, but we needed people all over the industry to capture a whole lot of poles to validate that.

The Big News

With that in mind, we are proud to announce that on September 12, 2018, IKE 4 was used for its 7 millionth capture. That is 7,000,000 times someone collected pole data using IKE in 2.7 years, a feat that rivals the early adoption of the telephone. Of course, times have changed, there are a whole lot more people to help than there were in 1900. We can’t take anything away from Bell, but we can hope to do to pole data what he did to interpersonal communication. From the beginning, our goal was to set the standard for what to expect from utility pole data. 7,000,000 captures are our most significant step yet towards achieving that goal. We have seen IKE used by over 500 different companies.  Everyone from the world’s largest communications company to small one-man contractors is using IKE.

The beauty of IKE has been that anyone can use it to improve the way they go about doing work around a utility pole. It doesn’t matter if the data were collected for a 500 pole joint use audit, or a 2000 mile fiber deployment. People were saving money and getting a better quality record in every case.

We calculate return on investment for any customer that asks for it. One thing we have noticed in over 7 million captures, is that IKE always pays for itself if people use it. Every customer will see value immediately in the improved quality of the record. Then they will continue seeing value every day thanks to the efficiency IKE delivers. Contact us to talk more about how IKE creates value for anyone doing work on a pole.