Remove service gaps with parcel data and growth intelligence

When diagnosing where customer churn is occurring, understanding the root cause is critical. Many service gaps that drive attrition are caused by physical obstructions or external factors that are unique to a property. To effectively eliminate these issues and fortify networks, you must understand the context of the service location and accurately predict future network strain. This requires moving beyond basic diagnostics to leverage the power of Parcel Data and Growth Intelligence. These tools expedite the identification of the 'why' behind poor network performance to allow you to strategically fix service gaps before they cause customer loss.

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Leveraging parcel data for physical diagnostics

Cotality’s Parcel Data provides comprehensive, nationwide land and property data, offering over 250 attributes detailing property and land information, providing the granular context engineers need for deep-dive problem resolution. This data is essential for physical diagnostics.

• Signal obstruction analysis: When a customer complains of low signal, Parcel Data can be layered with network planning software to identify external factors that directly interfere with signal propagation. This highly detailed dataset includes, but is not limited to, specific structural characteristics and environmental hazards, such as:
  
  • Building footprint and height: Is the home situated directly behind a newly constructed, unmapped commercial structure that blocks the nearest small cell signal? This information is critical for line-of-sight planning in dense urban and suburban areas and for optimizing fixed wireless access deployments.
  • Land use and zoning: Is the property bordering a large industrial zone that generates high levels of electromagnetic interference? Additionally, understanding the building type, such as single-family residential or multifamily units, informs bandwidth requirements at the property level and validates the correct type of drop installation.
  • Property tax and legal characteristics: Parcel Data integrates legal descriptions, including easements and rights-of-way, which are fundamental to infrastructure planning.
• Infrastructure maintenance: Parcel boundaries are essential for establishing the precise location of network assets relative to private property lines, ensuring regulatory compliance, and preventing service interruption. They help providers accurately map rights-of-way and utility easements, allowing for predictive maintenance planning and reducing the risk of accidental fiber cuts or property disputes, which cause outages (a major churn driver). Accurate parcel mapping minimizes operational risk and protects capital assets, directly reducing service disruptions that trigger customer churn.

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Eliminating service gaps with predictive capacity planning

The most insidious form of churn comes from network oversaturation caused by unpredicted population density changes. A network built for a quiet suburb can quickly become overwhelmed when that area transitions into a high-density, mixed-use community. Telecom investment is often constrained by a reactive build cycle, which means providers are waiting for confirmed strain before initiating costly upgrades.

Cotality’s Growth Intelligence solution provides a powerful anti-churn defense by identifying development trends before they impact existing customers or sabotage new customer acquisition by flagging high-risk zones and accurately forecasting demand. Growth Intelligence tracks land acquisition and transition, subdivision activity, and construction permit intelligence at a granular level, delivering continuous updates on commercial and residential development. This continuous feed sends alerts on new growth before building even begins. Having that foresight provides that crucial advantage of time, meaning that you can plan years ahead for long-term capacity build-out.

Growth Intelligence utilizes a multi-layered approach to provide comprehensive forecasting, including permit-based forecasting, subdivision activity monitoring and address inventory generation. For example, knowing a construction permit is issued for a 400-unit residential project provides two critical, proactive advantages for capacity planning:

1. Prevent existing customer churn by limiting service degradation: Knowing that network capacity in that micro-market will be strained within 12-18 months means you can proactively schedule a network capacity upgrade before new residents move in and congest the existing network.
2. Zero-defect acquisition: Offer high-quality service for 400 new addresses from day one. This proactive step replaces the traditional reactive — and costly — approach where new customers move in, experience terrible service, and churn out.

By directing network investment to confirmed, future-dense locations rather than generalized market areas, carriers maximize the ROI of every dollar spent on infrastructure build-out. Thanks to this predictive intelligence, providers can efficiently manage network expansion, turning an area of high churn risk into a sustained zone of high-value growth.

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Fortify your base with geographical mastery

The competitive stakes in the 5G era are too high to tolerate preventable service gaps. That’s why having an integrated strategy where every property, every network asset, and every service issue is understood in its precise geographical context is crucial.

Cotality’s integrated platform provides the necessary tools to achieve this mastery, combining parcel data, addressing and geocoding, and growth intelligence into a single, cohesive framework. By understanding service gaps and network performance at a hyperlocal level, you can shift away from chasing lost customers to efficiently fortifying you base and capitalizing on future growth.

Learn how Parcel Data and Growth Intelligence combine to eliminate service gaps.