Q: Would you tell us something about the history of GIS in Macedonian Telecommunications?

A: It started with the instruments for geodetic survey purchased in 1993-1994 and the beginning of the collection of spatial data for new copper and optic cables with our own instruments and our own staff.
In 1996 the first licenses for ESRI GIS SW were accepted and used for the creation of the digital terrain model of Macedonia. A few years later, and with the experience of the first project, a new set of GIS data was created, plus a lot of new geodetically surveyed objects from the access and transport network to cable ducts etc.

Q: What are your experiences of the start of the collection of the data and its usability?

A: MT created some GIS data at that time, but the usability of the collected data was very low because of some problems we identified. I would certainly mention that before GIS was put into practice, spatial data was stored in different formats, on a paper documentation, maps and drawings and in files both in text format, or as excel sheets. Another problem was that spatial data was not matched with attribute data for telecommunication systems which was stored partially in electronic and partially in paper formats. This raised some important questions.

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