FTTH installer app
The short answer: a good FTTH installer app does three things — tells you which fiber is which in seconds, works with zero signal, and holds up in gloved, low-light field conditions. Most apps marketed to fiber installers are general contractor or project-management tools with a fiber reference bolted on as an afterthought. AllFiber does the opposite: it's built for exactly one job, fiber color identification, with forward and reverse lookup across 199 cable configurations, including manufacturer-specific tube layouts for Corning, CommScope, Prysmian, AFL, OFS/Furukawa and Sumitomo, fully offline.
Last updated: September 2026
FTTH installer tools have gotten unnecessarily complicated. Strip it back to what actually works, and fiber techs and splice techs only need to nail two or three things well.
What an FTTH installer actually needs in the field
You're standing over an open cable — maybe 144 fibers, maybe more — with no signal, cold hands, and a splice tray to fill correctly the first time. The job isn't “manage the install.” The job is: what tube is fiber 47 in, and what color am I looking for when I open it? Get that wrong and you're re-splicing, or worse, you don't catch it until the OTDR trace comes back ugly three trays later.
That's a lookup problem, not a project-management problem. An FTTH installer app that tries to be a CRM, a scheduling tool, and a color chart all at once ends up mediocre at the one thing that actually saves you time on a ladder or in a manhole.
Forward and reverse lookup, not just a static chart
AllFiber does both directions. Enter a fiber number and get its tube color and fiber color back instantly — that's forward lookup. Or work it the other way: you're looking at a tube color and fiber color in the field and need to know which fiber number that is — reverse lookup. Most printed charts and PDF references only give you one direction, which means you're doing the cross-reference math yourself when you're working backward from what you can actually see in the tray.
Every lookup in the app is pre-computed — 98,898 of them — and bundled offline, so there's no calculation happening on your phone and no chance of a mental-math error at 2am in a vault.
Coverage across manufacturers and standards
Cable color coding isn't universal, which is exactly where generic references fall apart. AllFiber ships with 7 international color standards — TIA-598-C, IEC 60304, DIN VDE 0888, S12, FIN2012, IEC 60794-2, and Type E — plus 199 cable configurations: 139 of those are manufacturer-specific tube layouts (Corning, CommScope, Prysmian, AFL, OFS/Furukawa, Sumitomo), and the other 60 are generic standards layouts. If your job takes you across cable from more than one manufacturer, or you're working an international contract, that's the difference between one app covering the whole day and switching between three PDFs.
There's also an interactive SVG cable cross-section diagram with manufacturer-accurate tube positioning, so you can tap through the actual physical layout instead of reading it off a table.
Built for where you actually use it, not a desk
None of this matters if the tool doesn't survive the environment. AllFiber runs entirely offline — it's a bundled SQLite database, so it works the same in a manhole with zero bars as it does at your truck. The dark theme UI is built for low-light conditions like vaults and manholes, and the tap targets are sized for gloved hands in cold or wet weather. These sound like small details until you're the one trying to tap a tiny button with frozen fingers in December.
Once you've got the fiber identified, the next step in most jobs is documenting or troubleshooting the splice itself — that's a separate skill set covered in our guide to splice tech tools.
Why laminated charts and PDFs stop working at scale
Most crews already have something for this — a laminated card in the truck, a PDF saved to a phone, a chart taped inside a splice case lid. Those work fine for a single standard on a single manufacturer's cable. They stop working the moment a job spans more than one: a laminated TIA-598-C card is useless on a job using DIN VDE 0888 cable, and a PDF viewer doesn't do reverse lookup — you're still doing the tube-color-to-fiber-number math yourself, off a table that was designed to be read, not searched.
The other failure mode is just wear. Laminate cracks, gets lost, or gets left in a different truck. A PDF works until the phone it's saved to has no service and the file was actually stored in a cloud app that needs a connection to open. Neither failure is really about the reference material being wrong — it's about the format not surviving the environment it's used in.
Trying it before you commit
There's a 24-hour free trial with full access to everything — no account required to start, and nothing held back during the trial window. After 24 hours, the whole app unlocks with a single one-time $4.99 purchase. No subscription, no recurring billing, no feature-gated tiers hiding behind an upsell. What you get on day one is what you get after you pay.
If your work also touches fusion splicing, Fusion Splicer Error Codes is a separate app from AllFiber with its own one-time $4.99 purchase, covering 219 fusion-splicer error codes across 10 splicer manufacturers and 84 splicer models — it isn't bundled into the Color Code app's purchase, so it's worth knowing upfront if splicer error codes are part of your day. For a deeper walkthrough of color identification workflow itself, see our fiber color code lookup app guide.
Frequently asked questions
What makes an app good for FTTH installers specifically?
Speed and reliability under field conditions matter more than feature count. The core need is instant, accurate fiber identification that works with no signal, in low light, and with gloved hands — a tool that does that one job well beats a general-purpose app that does many jobs adequately. That's the same bar a good cable identification app has to clear, on any cable, not just FTTH drops — the full checklist is in our fiber optic technician app guide, and our best app for fiber techs roundup runs the same test against the field.
Does AllFiber work without an internet connection?
Yes. All 98,898 fiber lookups are pre-computed and bundled in an offline SQLite database, so the app works the same in a signal-dead manhole or vault as it does anywhere else.
Which fiber color standards does AllFiber support?
Seven international standards: TIA-598-C, IEC 60304, DIN VDE 0888, S12, FIN2012, IEC 60794-2, and Type E — across 199 cable configurations covering six manufacturers plus generic layouts.
Is there a subscription, or is it a one-time purchase?
One-time purchase only — $4.99 unlocks the full app with no recurring billing. There's also a 24-hour free trial with full feature access before you buy.