What the industry is talking about

Are we dealing with Energy in Telecom Infrastructure with passionate zeal?

July 25, 2011, 4:14 am

Robert Kjelldorff,

President, Purcell Systems International

I guess not. It is a fact that the ICT and Telecom networks can consume up to 10% of the country’s energy and in warm countries the cooling systems can use as much energy as the electronics itself!!

Traditional wireless telecom sites were built with shelter in which the active telecom equipment was placed and cooled using air conditioners, often with a back-up unit -should primary fail. Modern electronics can withstand higher temperatures up to 50-60 degrees C. The only part   most sensitive to high temperatures is the battery bank which should be kept at 25-29 degrees to preserve its life and reliability. The consequence has been that the operators in many cases cool the complete site to meet the battery temperature requirement and consume an enormous amount of energy to do that. Using new technology utilizing smart cooling systems we have an opportunity not only to save energy (which is a scarce resource) and go green but also Save costs for the operators for enhanced profitability while Improving network reliability and provide excellent customer service.

The way to do it is to enhance the existing telecom shelters and create different temperature zones for batteries and the rest of the equipment. The equipment zone must be created by installing free cooling systems which consumes much less energy than the active cooling systems but can keep the equipment at ambient temperature plus a few degrees. As a safety measure the Active cooling systems can be set at a higher temperature setting of about 35C.

Recent measurements have demonstrated that this strategy will be able to save more than 50% of the energy consumed for cooling enabling the operators to have a short payback of the shelter enhancement equipment.

We must deal with Energy with a Passionate zeal!

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Elimination, Transformation and Innovation

July 25, 2011, 4:11 am

S.K. Balasubramaniam,

 

The Tower Industry in India is taking firm steps towards enhancing performance, reliability and cost optimization of the Passive Infrastructure it maintains for the Operators. While the spread and distribution of Towers in Urban, suburban and rural areas poses challenges of reach and varying technological complexities, they are  aggravated further by field conditions- climatic, social  and  financial.

We have to make sure that keen efforts are made in determining the variances in product performance, life cycle based degradation and impact of processes, tools and capacities current and futuristic. It is this effort that encompasses a deeper probe into totality of the conditional state of the Infrastructure.

Sophisticated means of establishing the conditional state require an audit, with probes to identify, diagnose and propose changes that would mitigate the downward trend of performance, efficiency, reliability and yield – therefore the performing outcome.

Such an endeavour would be rendered ineffective without ensuring Elimination of defects and pilferages; Transformation of performance characteristics and Innovation in technology, processes and tools. Waiting for the eventuality to arrive and leaving no scope for adequate reaction time will be dangerous to our aspirations to establish, manage and sustain world class Telecom Infrastructure that the Operators have entrusted the Tower Industry with.

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Uptime – And its redefinition in Telecom Infrastructure

July 25, 2011, 4:08 am

Sairam Prasad,

Chief Technology officer, Bharti Infratel Limited

From the very early stages of development of Telecom Infrastructure in India – where an outage of a few hours of service (or even days) in the traditional fixed line telephony was acceptable, to the current phase of high-speed broadband ready 3G networks – not only have the services, but it is also the user expectation which has undergone a 360° change. The definition of Uptime has been reviewed, revised and revisited.

Downtime in today’s age is a ‘non-acceptable’ dirty word, as organizations and industry sectors look to embrace six sigma standards in internal processes and tools to enable high quality outcomes. Today’s Customer is more demanding and intolerant for any pauses or breaks in services, as mobile devices invariably become the most important communications device in business, entertainment and social connectivity. It is this new customer need that will define and probably drive how Infrastructure will be refurbished to fulfill that expectation.

For telecom networks, the single most important contributor to network uptime is availability of good quality power supply at telecom tower sites. While operators and other organizations have extensively debated use of alternate sources of energy to achieve energy efficiency and improved network uptime, Bharti Infratel was the First Telecom Tower Company to successfully implement Green Energy models on a wide scale having installed more than 3 MWT of solar capacity, generating about 5 Mn units of electricity every year. Aimed at reducing diesel usage, Improving uptime and resultant carbon footprint, Bharti Infratel’s Green Towers P7 initiative (http://www.bharti-infratel.com/web/gogreen.html), is an award winning pioneering programme, aimed at adopting cleaner technologies as efficient energy alternatives, to power its telecom towers. These new energy initiatives coupled with operational excellence have enabled Bharti Infratel to work on its core values of ‘Energy efficiency, highest uptime and Environmental friendliness’.  All this has been creditably achieved in spite of there being no subsidies on solar unit installations

While the above efforts have helped in establishing the credence of alternate energies, there are still a whole lot of challenges. There is however no doubt that a single solution fits all sites and needs, there is a good merit in combining various energy efficient technologies tailor made to suit different site combinations to achieve the best result. This combination of technology solutions coupled with good site engineering practices, site monitoring systems and site management practices will yield desired results. The journey is not easy, nor the targets unachievable. It will be the collective commitment and collaboration of the industry and its Partner Eco-system, passionate involvement of Leaders and astute planning and assessment, which will make this dream of 100% network uptime a reality.

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INFRASTRUCTURE SHARING in Telecom – UNLIMITED POSSIBILIIES

July 25, 2011, 4:04 am

Inder Bajaj

Chief Executive Officer of Helios Towers Nigeria, and Director of Helios Towers Africa

 

The drivers of demand for infrastructure in Telecom have been explosive for   growing wireless penetration, including but not limited to,  un-penetrated and  rural  areas in emerging markets, increasing data usage, smart phone penetration, and new technologies(3G and 4G). This has led to capacity investments. The obvious advantage of infrastructure sharing is not duplicating capital costs while lowering the operating costs including that for energy. The advantages become more pronounced in markets with declining ARPU’s and rural segments.  It is also a means of survival for many Telcos.

The possibilities of infrastructure sharing are immense and many are in practice and variants continue to be explored.

The most common implemented model is Passive Infrastructure sharing through independent or Service companies or Operator led Tower Companies wherein the collocation model has provided cost savings of 35% to 40%.

In addition, other successful models have been in areas of Transmission & connectivity (bandwidth, fiber, duct, and long distance carriage), submarine cables leasing or consortiums formed for global connectivity, sharing of IBS/DAS, Collocation in Data Centers etc. In a Limited way, NOC sharing through Global companies having common NOC’s and with scope of it being Multi-operator.

The emergence of OEM’s as managed capacity or service partners, I.T. partners, BPO companies is another form of infrastructure sharing which has emerged successfully.

In this context  roaming i.e. intra & inter network, inter technology (2G, 3G, 4G) can be classified as another form of sharing which has been exploited till now in a limited way though with huge future potential. Additionally,  MVNO is another manifestation of Infrastructure sharing.

One area which has yet to take shape is sharing related to active infrastructure that of Radio access Network (RAN) or core network. RAN sharing has been a topic of keen discussions around common physical cabinets in a multi-technology and multi operator environment and sharing of antenna, feeder cables etc.  The challenge has been finding effective solutions which have not been in the interest of active infrastructure OEM Vendors and with related issues of flexibility requirements in multi operator environment for hardware, software and technology evolution.  Furthermore, there is the concern operators have had of smooth network performance between shared and non shared network elements. It is due to these challenges not being comprehensively addressed that there  is absence of credible/neutral managing partners. Solutions will surely emerge as there are benefits of 25-30% savings in active infrastructure, it being an asset light model, advantages of pay as you grow etc.  which far outweigh the challenges described above.

The other unexploited area is ‘Spectrum sharing’. In our world, this is the most scarce commodity and combining & sharing efficiency opportunity is great. The Regulatory and inter Telco Cooperation is a big areas for all industry stakeholders to work on.

The possibilities are unlimited and many more for all to contribute and more so in finding effective ways to bring in these possibilities to reality.

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