Imagine a household ordering fiber broadband. The website accepts the order. A technician appears. A light comes on. A bill arrives. Four ordinary events, with a small bureaucracy hiding between each one. Somebody must know whether that address is serviceable, which equipment belongs there, when a crew can visit, whether the connection was activated and which charges belong on the invoice. A fast cable cannot answer those questions.
- CHR designs broadband networks and supplies the software to operate the resulting business.
- Omnia360 connects customer management, orders, activation and billing.
- Engineering, managed IT and security services help providers handle the work around that software.
That is the territory occupied by CHR Solutions. Its clients include independent telephone companies, internet service providers, electric cooperatives and municipalities. They may be building a new fiber network, extending an existing one or modernizing operations that have accumulated over decades. CHR offers them an unusually broad combination: engineering outside the building, software inside it and continuing support when either becomes troublesome.
The useful way to understand this company is to follow a handoff. A network designer gives a plan to a construction crew. A salesperson gives an order to an installer. A service system gives a charge to an accountant. CHR’s business sits at those junctions. Broadband customers rarely see them. Operators have to live with them.
The drawing meets the ditch
In August 2025, CHR introduced a construction help line with a modest, appealing premise. Crews using its engineering designs could reach the engineers behind the sheets, around the clock. They could text details about a field question and get help with the plan. The service came with no additional fee, including for design clients who had not hired CHR to oversee construction.
Consider the situations named in the announcement: an unexpected underground utility, a property owner’s concern, a condition that requires rerouting. A drawing can be perfectly tidy while the ground is thoroughly uncooperative. CHR identified uncommunicated field changes as a cause of incorrect splicing and failed installations. The problem begins when a changed reality never makes it back into the record.
For clients using CHR engineering designs, according to the launch announcement. A service term, not a price for the engineering project.
The rest of CHR’s engineering offering gives that small service its context. It covers feasibility studies, network planning, outside plant design, permitting and make-ready coordination, construction management and records of what was actually built. The aim is to carry usable information from the financial case through field execution and into operations.
CHR also expanded its drone program in December 2025. Its described outputs include site imagery, orthomosaics, point clouds and pole-condition assessments. These are ways to improve the information available to a designer. They still need to become intelligible instructions for the person doing the next piece of work.
- 01PlanDemand, routes and financial feasibility
- 02Design & buildDrawings, permits and field decisions
- 03ActivateCustomer order meets a working service
- 04Bill & supportRevenue, records and continuing care
A software upgrade with homework
Dunbarton Telephone offers a more concrete look at the software side. The New Hampshire provider had used Omnia360 since 2018. In July 2025, CHR reported that its upgrade to Omnia360e took 60 days. The deployment included workflows, configuration, dashboards, service activation and e-commerce. General manager David Montgomery said operations and customer service continued without disruption.
The telling detail was preparation. Employees completed software certifications at their own pace through CHR’s learning system before the new environment went live. CHR described its Solution Delivery Process and investment in configuration and data-conversion tools. In this account, implementation included changing the working habits around the application.
Granite State Communications described a related sequence: self-paced learning, instructor-led training and practice in a software sandbox. Its deployment announcement highlighted customer visibility, field tools, facilities management and digital selling. A sandbox is a wonderfully prosaic precaution. It gives people somewhere to make their first mistakes before a real subscriber is waiting.
Reported Omnia360e upgrade, with staff certification before go-live.
Reported 2025 rollout for an existing CHR client since 1997.
La Ward’s implementation likewise included workflows, automation, dashboards and e-commerce. These two reported durations describe existing customer upgrades. A buyer should treat them as examples and examine the scope of its own conversion. The repeatable lesson is the sequence: settle the process, prepare the data, let the staff practice, then put the system to work.
The old network gets a vote
Omnia360 belongs to the OSS/BSS market. The acronyms conceal fairly familiar work: operations support and business support. CHR’s platform handles customer records, orders, provisioning, billing, facilities and commerce. A provider can sell a service, manage the account and follow the operational work within a connected environment.
Its audience does not necessarily run an immaculate all-fiber network. CHR says Omnia360 supports fiber, copper, coax, fixed wireless and satellite. In a September 2026 article, the company made a practical argument for that breadth: replacing an already profitable connection consumes capital and may simply move existing revenue onto a new physical network.
That makes mixed-network support consequential. A modern ordering process still has to serve the customer whose connection uses yesterday’s infrastructure. If an operator modernizes the customer experience in stages, its software must accommodate the stages.
There are credible alternatives. Innovative Systems’ eLation offers billing and subscriber management for telecom and utility providers. NISC’s iVUE Connect Service supports customer information, billing visibility and broadband functions. Integration is familiar ground in this market. CHR’s distinguishing proposition is the combination of its own operations platform with engineering and continuing IT services. Buyers should compare that breadth against the depth and fit of each individual component.
The spreadsheet has a long afterlife
Two 2026 announcements show where CHR is placing its effort. In April, it introduced the Wireline Automated Splicing Program, or WASP. The name suggests a tiny creature with strong opinions. The actual job is preparing fiber assignments and splice diagrams from GIS-based network designs after design and before construction.
CHR describes WASP as rules-based automation operating on network topology in Esri’s environment. It supports several network architectures and is available to its engineering customers. It prepares instructions for field execution; crews still perform the physical splicing. The company claims work formerly measured in days can take hours. That is a vendor claim, with no project-by-project benchmark attached.
In August, CHR and C-Level Analytics announced FiberBooks Connectors between Omnia360 and Oracle NetSuite. The target was manual financial reconciliation: finance staff pulling records from separate systems to establish subscriber revenue and cash. The announcement said connectors were available for CHR customers already using NetSuite.
Equipment tracking was a second phase still in development. The proposed integration would follow individual devices through purchase, warehousing, installation and retirement, with associated accounting records. That distinction matters. Available billing integration and planned asset integration are different buying decisions. A product roadmap is an invitation to ask a precise question.
The people who answer
CHR’s breadth has a history. Reporting on the modern enterprise describes James Taylor and Arun Pasrija’s collaboration in 2003, the combination with Global 1 Source Group in 2006 and the addition of Martin Group in 2009. Omnia360 launched in 2012. Those combinations help explain a business that crosses software, engineering and outsourced operations.
The service relationship can expand in the same direction. FTI WIFI initially hired CHR for cybersecurity. In April 2026, CHR reported that the Colorado provider had extended the engagement to full managed IT after the initial assessment and protections. Previously, it coordinated multiple vendors. The expanded work included monitoring, infrastructure upgrades and retiring outdated domains and servers.
CHR markets managed IT on a flat-rate basis, with continuous support, monitoring and business-continuity services. Its software is sold to businesses, alongside implementation and support; engineering is another contracted service. This is a supplier embedded in operational work, with several ways to earn an ongoing relationship.
“commitments kept, deadlines met, NO SURPRISES!”
Mike Baustert, Pioneer
In CHR’s published engineering testimonial
That praise sounds almost comically restrained beside the usual technology advertising. It is also revealing. The buyer wants a plan that crews can use, a system that employees understand and somebody who answers when the two disagree.
For another operator, the useful exercise is to trace one order from address check to first invoice and mark every place information is retyped, reconciled or chased. Then ask a prospective supplier to demonstrate those exact transitions. Ask which integrations are available today, who owns the field records and how staff rehearse a conversion. Keep the acceptance criteria concrete.
The approach depends on accurate data and cooperation across teams. Automation cannot rescue a network record nobody maintains. A broad supplier relationship also requires clear responsibilities and interfaces with existing tools. CHR’s appeal is strongest where an operator actually needs several of these disciplines to work together. The customer at the far end of the cable will judge the result by something simpler: whether the connection arrives, works and produces the right bill.