Rules as Code in Telecommunication Industry: Routing in Fiber Optics Networks

Rules as Code refers to the idea of creating and ratifying laws which can be easily encoded and accepted by computing systems, ensuring a truly digital mode of governance. Through this methodology of integrating machine-readable legislation into the governance process, all systems that involve the usage of laws can be transfigured into more agile forms, eliminating the degrees of separation that appear when normal legislation must be adapted into serviceable formats for various industries. In the context of engineering, the need to translate laws into actionable instructions is enhanced, especially with the advent of AI-tools, machine learning and large language models, which require proper, concise and relevant input data to ensure the output comes out as requested. The concept is extremely new - its research started a few years ago and currently; a number of states and universities are exploring methodologies to employ the concept of Rules as Code in both the lawmaking and project-making processes. In this scientific paper we endeavor to study the case of applying Rules as Code in the field of fiber-optic network design, in particular looking at the legislation which governs this process in Romania, and to interpret it through the aforementioned Rules as Code lens. Special interest will be given to practical implementations of the concept in this field, as the constraints that can be extracted through the implementation have an important impact in how network projects are developed. The results can lead to improved efficiency in the development of projects, considering the fact that interpreting the legislation and evaluating the network in regards to legislation compliance is one the most time and resource consuming parts of the overall process. The progress of Rules as Code ensures digital compatibility for citizen-centered services, governance and jurisdiction, being an essential step in the Digital Transformation.