Ganges Internationale is a ‘Total Solutions Provider’, specialising in all the capex elements of telecoms infrastructure: from the design and supply of towers, to building foundations and installing tower, antennas, shelter, electrical and other equipment.
Ganges sold over 3,000 towers in Africa between 2007 and 2012 and have over 30,000 installed in more than 14 countries on the continent. Clients include Airtel, Vodafone, Huawei (MTN), Orange, Helios, Eaton, Ramboll and Safaricom. In Africa they work with partners such as Plessey, QTE and Reime to deliver towers and other equipment for Total construction.
With success in the African region and Southeast Asia, now Ganges is entering Latin American market and looking forward to work with operators and leasing companies to bring in cost efficiencies in towers.
TowerXchange: What are the critical design factors in the shareability of a tower?
Bhaskar Babu, Marketing Head – Exports, Ganges International:
Operators should plan for 3 tenants on each tower, although there are up to four or five tenants on some towers in some countries where there are more operators and in big populated cities like Nairobi, Lagos or Dar es Salaam.
A multi-tenant tower doesn’t have to cost much more than a single tenant tower. The land costs the same, maintenance and power costs don’t increase much. Most of the equipment is the same. The tower might be slightly higher, but we’re talking about less than 20%; it’s just a modest increase in the weight of steel and in the cost of the foundation. A forty to fifty metre tower can be shared, even lower heights. Height is rarely a problem for signalizing, unless you’re using microwave antennas for the backbone network, particularly in hilly terrain. Antenna brackets can sometimes accommodate two or three antennas (Dual/Triple GSM brackets) or even with circular platforms where up to 12 GSM antennas can be fixed at single height for four operators. Backhaul and the site network are bigger considerations when it comes to shareability since operators need to use bigger microwave antennas.
However, the lack of standards for loading in many African countries remains a challenge. There’s also a lack of people with the technical skills to evaluate designs and the cost of offerings; network suppliers often don’t know the micro-level costs, although Vodafone and Airtel have excellent technical teams to evaluate towers and foundations. For example, Airtel has rolled out towers costing 40% less than those of MTN, Etisalat and Glo in Nigeria.
TowerXchange: What can operators and towercos do to reduce the total cost of cell sites?
Bhaskar Babu, Marketing Head – Exports, Ganges International:
When such a high proportion of the total cost of the site can come from equipment such as shelters and air conditioning units, operators should consider the benefits of buying class A equipment directly from manufacturers – when they buy through contractors, they can be subject to markups of 20-30%. Airtel reduce costs by buying direct from vendors, and give those materials to their contractors. Airtel gets the lowest prices due to product standardisation and buying in bulk for many countries on a long-term contract basis.
You can also reduce operating costs by using less indoor equipment. Using outdoor BTS equipment that operates at ambient temperatures means the shelter capacity and air conditioning load comes down, and you don’t need so many lengthy cables.
TowerXchange: Is the transfer of tower ownership from operator to towerco good news from your perspective?
Bhaskar Babu, Marketing Head – Exports, Ganges International:
Some tower manufacturers dislike these deals because volumes go down – where once three towers were built, now it’s only one shared tower. But for professional companies like us, it’s not such a threat. We’ve upgraded our designs for sharing companies and are the largest supplier to ATC. Also we get more work in legacy tower strengthening, which is good for the industry in the long term.
However, not all towercos are profitable. In India, only Infratel and Indus are making good profits. The minimum cost savings and lease up rates to break even are not being achieved by other towercos in India. In Africa tower tenancy ratios may need to be even higher because opex is so high. African towercos’ 20-25 year contracts and high rentals for expensive new sites may mean they struggle to quickly attract additional operators tenancies and achieve profitability from day one.
Airtel conducted a study into whether to build new towers, and saw ROI in less than three to four years if they built their own towers, giving them the potential to offer lower rental rates to tenants in the future. Towercos need to offer lower rates to operators so that operators can take up more sites. Most legacy towers are not designed for sharing hence towercos are not interested in crowding the towers and reducing the rentals.
TowerXchange: What are the different requirements when selling to a towerco compared to an operator?
Bhaskar Babu, Marketing Head – Exports, Ganges International:
The structures ordered by towercos should be of greater loading capacity with space for 3 to 4 operators, and also to have flexibility to upgrade to higher loading with minor charges in the future. We do a lot of work to help towercos strengthen legacy towers they’ve acquired – strengthening foundations, upgrading shelters and diesel generators.
We can upgrade a two operator tower to suit three co-locations by sending just 20 parts
With towercos seeking long-term contracts with operator tenants, it’s important that they choose contractors with the credentials to be around for 20 years and more. It can be a problem if a tower supplier vanishes – you might lose designs and drawings. If you don’t have the drawings, as happened to American Tower in Ghana, then the new vendor has to measure every component of the site and do lots of re-engineering. It can be very costly.
We design future-ready towers, with shared drawings and common dimensions. For example, we can upgrade a two operator tower to suit three co-locations by sending just twenty parts, essentially increasing thickness, while other dimensions remain the same. Operators and towercos should keep the future in mind and standardise the towers in their network; having 20-30 different tower designs in network makes it much more difficult to make changes such as moving towers to new sites
