Decision support system for planning telecommunication networks:: a case study applied to the Andalusian region

Network planning is essential to design real broadband integrated services digital networks (B-ISDN). This paper presents an operations research application to the design of an optic fibre network for the Andalusian region. The economical appraisal is the main consideration in order to take the appropriate decisions: hub location, region sizes and selection of the urban nodes that will receive telecommunication contents. A decision support system with a graphic interface that allows interactive analysis of different scenarios is presented. The system contains a set of mathematical programming models and it has the capability to dynamically construct and solve instances of those models. In addition, it provides data preparation and reports. The system is an integrated, user-friendly and powerful tool to make planning studies by firms developing cable network systems in the telecommunications market.