NGI0 COMMONS FUND / GRANT 101135429 / GPL-3.0-OR-LATER
Interoperable open tooling for fiber rollout
FiberQ is a free and open-source toolchain for designing, documenting and validating fiber-optic access networks, FTTH, GPON and the underlying duct infrastructure, inside the open QGIS ecosystem. This grant funds the next major plugin releases.
| FUND | NGI0 Commons Fund, established by NLnet |
| GRANT | No 101135429 |
| LICENCE | GPL-3.0-or-later |
| PRODUCTION | Since v1.0, December 2025 |
| CURRENT | v1.5.0, September 2026 |
01
SCOPE
What the grant funds
The grant supports the next major plugin releases, all on the same open codebase: a dedicated infrastructure data model and repeatable workflows that take a design through to documentation and QA without ever leaving open formats.
| DELIVERED · v1.3.0 | Schema migrations for clean upgrades |
| DELIVERED · v1.4.0 | Automated topology and attribute validation with audit-ready reporting |
| DELIVERED · v1.5.0 | Import and export for round-trip compatibility (GeoPackage / GeoJSON), with a documented, openly licensed project-interchange format |
| PLANNED | Performance work for large projects |
| PLANNED | Automated tests with CI |
FiberQ Designer, a separate browser-based companion developed independently as a commercial product, interoperates with the plugin through this open interchange format.
02
AUDIENCE
Who it is for
FiberQ targets municipalities, smaller operators, contractors and engineering teams that today rely on proprietary CAD/GIS suites with non-portable data formats. The goal is an open data model these teams genuinely own: one that carries a fiber design from planning through to documentation and QA, and keeps it portable end to end.
03
RELEASES
Releases and downloads
Every funded work package ships as a tagged plugin release with published documentation, on the same open GPL-3.0 codebase. Newest first.
SEPTEMBER 2026 / RELEASED / GPL-3.0-OR-LATER
v1.5.0 — WP3, an open interchange format
A fibre design is not a pile of points and lines: a slack loop belongs to a particular cable, a cable passes through particular manholes in order, cables are grouped into named routes. A generic export drops all of it, because those relationships live in identifiers local to one project file. Export interchange bundle carries them, keyed by an identity that survives the trip, and Import interchange bundle reads them back. The format is published, so the tool at the other end does not have to be FiberQ.
| CONTAINER | GeoPackage (OGC 1.3) for a complete bundle, or a folder of GeoJSON files for web maps and quick handovers — explicitly marked lossy when relational data cannot come along |
| CARRIES | Cable references, pass-through elements and named cable groupings, all keyed by fiberq_uuid rather than by row numbers that mean nothing in another tool |
| PRESERVES | An element type FiberQ has no layer for, an attribute it has no column for, and relational data it does not implement — fibre splices, trays, duct occupancy — survive a round trip unchanged. Nothing is ever reclassified to the nearest familiar type |
| SPECIFICATION | Published under CC-BY-4.0 with a conformance checklist for readers and writers, plus the complete field and value mapping, generated from the code so it cannot drift |
| LEGACY | Pre-1.0 projects with the original Serbian layer and field names export the same bundle as a new one |
| VERIFIED | 378 tests on QGIS 3.44 (Qt5) and 4.0 (Qt6) in CI, including a round trip through a bundle deliberately richer than the plugin. Verified by hand on QGIS 3.40 and 4.2 across six scenarios; five defects were found that way and fixed, each with a regression test. Clean plugins.qgis.org security scan (100%) |
AUGUST 2026 / RELEASED / GPL-3.0-OR-LATER
v1.4.0 — WP2, validation and reporting
Validate project runs fourteen checks over the whole design and lists what it finds in a dockable panel. Filter by severity, layer or rule, click any issue to jump straight to it on the map, and export the run as a report. Verified end to end on QGIS 3.40 (Qt5) and QGIS 4.2 (Qt6), across four projects and two coordinate systems.
| RULES | Topology and connectivity, referential integrity, feature identity, required attributes, value domains, length coherence, CRS consistency, geometry health |
| REPORTS | Self-contained HTML for handover, JSON for tooling, CSV for spreadsheets and issue trackers |
| LENGTHS | Measured on the project ellipsoid — true ground metres, not map units. Recalculate lengths repairs existing projects, showing every change before writing anything |
| EXTRAS | A demo project with planted faults and the report it produces. Now translatable. Clean plugins.qgis.org security scan (100%) |
JULY 2026 / RELEASED / GPL-3.0-OR-LATER
v1.3.0 — WP1, data model and migrations
Project schema versioning, safe automatic migrations, and a stable per-feature identity (fiberq_uuid). Verified end to end on QGIS 3.40 (Qt5) and QGIS 4.2 (Qt6), with both new and migrated older projects.
| VERSIONING | Per-project schema-version marker, mirrored into the GeoPackage |
| MIGRATION | Automatic, lossless, idempotent on-load migration of older projects (schema 0 → 1.0) |
| IDENTITY | fiberq_uuid, a stable cross-system ID on every feature |
| VERIFIED | Clean plugins.qgis.org security scan (100%); tested on Qt5 and Qt6 |
04
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Funding acknowledgment
This project was funded through the NGI0 Commons Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No 101135429. Additional funding is made available by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).
05
FOLLOW
The next stage
FiberQ ships as tagged releases, one per funded work package, listed above with their documentation. Follow release updates, development progress and workflow previews as the plugin and FiberQ Designer mature on a shared open core.