Broadnet Telecom: How to measure what matters

Broadnet Telecom fit at the centre of everything that a tower operator would need from a site management vendor. Broadnet provides passive infrastructure and remote management, monitoring and control, enabling: hybrid power management, smart metering (kWh utilisation) and billing validation, verification of fuel usage, workforce automation, and SLA management linked to trouble ticketing module thereby allowing tower owners to manage their subcontractors and link their performance directly to SLAs. Andy Richardson a veteran of the African Telecoms Industry. Well known as a WiMAX pioneer and more recently the architect of Kentrox’s success in the tower market, he’s now spear-heading Broadnet Telecom’s foray into Africa.

TowerXchange: What’s your footprint in Africa, and who are your target clients?

We are active today in sub-Saharan Africa. For the last eighteen months we’ve been working with a number of Africa’s leading operators to prove our technology proposition. We are under NDA, therefore, the specifics are somewhat guarded, although we’re very close to securing two significant opportunities.

Broadnet’s solution is designed by Africans for the African market, at a price point that makes it very appealing. Two thirds of our R&D team are from Cameroon, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria and South Africa. These individuals offer the best possible insight into the needs of the African continent. The reality is that we understand better than most the challenges of operating wireless solutions in the emerging markets. Therefore, we have taken a different approach: one we will teach the client how to make the solution work in challenging environments, two we will give some ideas of how they can mine the “big data” and present the analytics in a meaningful manner and three we enable the client to be more efficient.

Our solution has been designed for the co-location / tower operator market. We have been very deliberate in the way we have engineered our SiteOSS solution.

Many African MNOs and tower operators have or will be acquiring intelligent solutions to more efficiently manage their remote infrastructure assets, motivated by the desire for increased productivity and containment of costs, which is impacted by: covering large distances with under-developed road networks, seasonal weather, crime, low policing, escalating fuel costs, and intermittent RF propagation and coverage all throwing up significant challenges which permit remote management, monitoring and control to add significant and tangible value.

TowerXchange: How do you configure an RMS system to overcome those African challenges, and to meet the differing needs of each site?

There are three critical components: SiteOSS software, the remote unit and the people.

In many of the locations where legacy devices are installed, it’s vital to have a controller that can hook up serial and analogue devices, send information to the NOC, and present it in a meaningful though simple graphical format allowing management to make informed decisions that maximise network uptime by pre-emptively determining where there may be a potential issue.

If the site devices are intelligent SNMP enabled units then there’s minimum configuration required, thus, reducing the installation time. The biggest cost is often getting to the site.

For those sites needing to wire up lots of third party equipment our product has a considerable amount of smart functionality built into the installation process, without compromising quality, which means we don’t need to rely on highly qualified engineers.

As many have discovered maintaining network uptime is a huge challenge in Africa, regardless of whether the site is on-grid, off-grid or on an unreliable grid that might only be available for limited periods. Bandwidth limitations can make troubleshooting extremely difficult and in some cases undermine the value proposition, so pushing opex off the scale, even though raw materials and labour maybe cheaper. However, we have completed major advancements in our solution that have made remote management, monitoring and control more efficient and effective.

TowerXchange: Tell us about the communication between devices at sites and the NOC.

In essence, the site controller gathers and stores information from each monitored asset, communicating back to the NOC at intervals pre-determined by the client – whilst being sensitive to the critical market conditions. Communication can be by Ethernet, GPRS, SMS or GSM.

TowerXchange: Tell how RMS data is integrated into the different software systems at the NOC.

At the NOC we’ll feed data into SiteOSS software, which can communicate through an integration layer with a “manager of managers” system, such as NetBoss, NetCracker, Netcool or Openview. For example, we have our system which monitors a number of different devices, performs thresholding and finally generates alerts or alarms which are forwarded to the next level of the management system, which then takes those alerts or alarms, aggregates them further to send a more concise status report up to the next level. The integration layer or “northbound interface” is simply an interface over which the system can generate or report its output “north” to the next layer, typically a “manager of managers” platform.

TowerXchange: How do you present the RMS data to allow management to derive actionable analytics?

The system interface presents data either as statistical figures, or graphical representation options such as line charts, bar charts and pie charts. For tower operators with a large portfolio of sites with differing levels of sophistication and multiple tenants, capturing site information in nearer real time using a fully integrated asset registry will ensure efficient resource utilisation.

TowerXchange: What differentiates Broadnet’s solutions from your competitors?

Broadnet Telecom is an RF company. The company heritage dates back to Harris Farion; RF engineering and manufacturing. We fulfill a lot of work for leading Microwave OEM’s, and that gives us an advantage in understanding RF communications and in maintaining wireless connectivity. We bring together hardware, software, connectivity and machines.

Furthermore, we consider our core competencies as absolutely vital to the co-location providers achieving their immediate business objectives and maintaining their long term competitiveness. So, whether that’s a services organisation to accomplish backhaul dimensioning, network optimisation, network design, engineering services; or they need operation and maintenance activities such as asset management, reverse logistics, remote site management, hybrid power management and utility verification or back-office trouble ticketing and work force automation, we are one of a few companies who can make all this happen. Combining hardware, software and wireless services in a unique business model that appeals to the operators we’re speaking to in Africa.

The convergence of the tower operators in Africa, the advancements in remote management technology and the change of customer business models, provides us with an opportunity to demonstrate our differentiated service delivery capabilities with integrated tools and processes that enable operational productivity and transparency.

In my opinion, RMS should focus on three critical aspects; intelligent rectifiers, batteries and generators, categorised as an Integrated Power Management Solution (IPMS). If you can cost effectively crack IPMS you’ll have solved the secret to long-term success in passive infrastructure management. Everything else is noise.