Sonar + Positron + Calix SMx
Serve every building your fiber already passes.
A native Sonar integration that automates provisioning, billing, inventory, and deprovisioning for subscribers in brownfield buildings. Positron delivers symmetrical gigabit over the coaxial or copper telephone wiring already inside the building. Sonar automates the entire subscriber lifecycle, the same way it does for every other subscriber on your network.
- No rewiring
- No new workflow
- No added ops headcount
The problem
The buildings are right there. The economics never were.
Your fiber network passes them every day. Apartment complexes, commercial offices, hotels, townhouse communities. But getting gigabit inside, through existing coaxial or copper telephone wiring, has meant replacing the interior wiring: typically $50,000 to $500,000 or more per building, weeks of disruptive construction, and building-owner cooperation that is hard to secure. So those buildings stay underserved, and their subscribers stay with whoever already owns the coax inside the walls, usually a cable operator. Even ISPs who solve the hardware side hit a second wall: managing multi-port devices in their BSS/OSS, where one Positron device serves many subscribers across many ports. Done by hand, it does not scale.
What you get
Automate the lifecycle. Unlock the buildings.
Sonar extends its proven automation to every building you can reach with Positron. Three things change.
Automate
Provisioning that fires itself.
Sonar monitors network events in real time and provisions the right service in Calix SMx the moment the conditions line up: a device at an address, an active account, an active data service. No manual port tracking.
Align
Billing follows service, exactly.
Billing triggers when service is provisioned and stops when it is removed. No gaps, no overcharges, no reconciling service and billing state by hand across separate systems.
Scale
Growth without headcount.
Deprovisioning is automatic on disconnect, status change, or service removal. The same workflow scales across hundreds of buildings with no added operations staff.
By the numbers
$50-500K+
Rewiring avoided
Typical cost to replace interior wiring per building. Positron uses the wiring already in the walls.
30-50%
Brownfield addresses
Share of potential addresses in a typical ISP territory that sit in brownfield buildings.
44M
Households in MDUs
U.S. households in multi-unit buildings. In dense metros, 60 to 80% of housing stock.
The opportunity
Buildings you can now serve.
Every building type your fiber passes, deployed on the same Sonar workflow as your standard subscribers.
Multi-Dwelling Units (MDUs)
Automated subscriber provisioning in apartment buildings over existing coax or copper. No rewiring, no unit access, billing from day one.
Commercial Multi-Tenant
Business-grade service to individual tenants over existing coax infrastructure, with every activation and cancellation automated through Sonar.
Townhouses & Garden Communities
Gigabit across entire HOA communities using existing wiring, provisioned and billed automatically. Same workflow as your residential subscribers.
Hotels & Hospitality
Room-by-room managed internet, automatically provisioned and deprovisioned, with full billing alignment and operational alerting.
How it works
From install to billing, automatically.
The flow is the same for every building.
- 1
Positron installs at the building entry
Gigabit over the existing coax (RG6/RG59, up to 2,600 ft) or copper telephone pairs (up to 500 ft). No rewiring, installed in hours at the entry point.
- 2
Sonar watches events in real time
A device assigned to an address, an active account, an active data service. Sonar evaluates the conditions automatically on every inventory, account, and service event.
- 3
Service provisions in Calix SMx
The moment all conditions are met, Sonar fires the provisioning call automatically. Each port becomes its own account and service in Sonar, with the shared ONT ID handled at the Calix layer.
- 4
Billing aligns, ops stay informed
Billing starts with service and stops with it. Every action is logged, and your team is alerted the moment anything needs attention.
The differentiator
One device, many subscribers, fully automated.
Calix SMx treats a Positron device as a single ONT with one serial number and one ONT ID. But each port on that device serves a different subscriber, each with their own account, billing relationship, and service. Sonar resolves this by treating every Positron port as a distinct inventory item, with its own account association, service mapping, and lifecycle, while correctly maintaining the shared ONT ID and serial number at the Calix layer.
In production today
Aeronet Wireless, Puerto Rico.
Aeronet Wireless is an active Sonar customer delivering broadband to commercial tenants in one of Puerto Rico's largest shopping malls, over existing copper telephone wiring, fully automated through Sonar and Calix SMx. No construction. No manual provisioning. Billing from day one. Positron hardware is deployed by 250+ operators globally, and Sonar's integration means every one of those deployments can be fully automated.
5x
more bandwidth delivered to tenants over the same wiring
What changes
New revenue. No new construction.
A growth channel that runs on the operation you already have.
Growth
A new revenue channel
Subscribers in buildings you could not serve before, with no new fiber build, no new processes, and no new headcount required.
Operations
The same workflow
Your team works in Sonar exactly as they do today. The buildings change. The workflow does not.
Competition
A real answer to cable
Positron's G.hn technology delivers symmetrical gigabit with dedicated bandwidth per subscriber, and Sonar lets you provision and bill every tenant from day one.
Is this right for you?
Best fit for ISPs in this situation.
- You run Sonar with Calix SMx active and data service mappings configured
- You are deploying, or planning to deploy, Positron hardware
- You have MDUs, commercial buildings, hotels, or townhouses in your footprint
- You are competing against a cable operator inside those buildings
- You are passing buildings today because rewiring is not viable
- You are modeling a fiber rollout and want brownfield in the plan from day one
If you are a Sonar customer running Calix SMx, a short scoping call with your Account Manager and a Solutions Design Architect will confirm your prerequisites and what the timeline looks like.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
- Does this require rewiring the building?
- No. Positron delivers gigabit over the existing coaxial cable (RG6/RG59) or copper telephone pairs already inside the building.
- Does my team learn a new system?
- No. Every action happens in Sonar, the same interface your team uses for every other subscriber. Positron buildings are not a separate workflow.
- What is the prerequisite to activate?
- Calix SMx active in your Sonar instance with data service mappings configured. Most current Sonar and Calix SMx customers already have this in place.
- How fast can we go live?
- Sonar Professional Services handles the deployment. Most customers are running a pilot building within days of starting.
- Does it work for coax and copper?
- Yes. Hardware model selection depends on the wiring type, but the Sonar workflow is identical either way.
- Is anyone running this in production?
- Yes. Aeronet Wireless in Puerto Rico runs Sonar plus Positron plus Calix SMx in production today.
Serve every building in your footprint.
Talk to your Account Manager, or if you are new to Sonar, request a walkthrough.