Arie Ben-Dayan is a thirteen-year veteran at Mer Telecom, one of the world’s longest established tower manufacturers and turnkey wireless infrastructure service providers. Mer Telecom are one of those rare breeds of company that are comfortable leading rollouts and retrofits in emerging markets, overcoming all the challenges around infrastructure transport, permit clearances, climate and political risks that entails.
TowerXchange: Thanks for speaking to us today Arie. Please tell us where Mer Telecom fits in the emerging market tower industry.
Arie Ben-Dayan, Marketing & Sales Director, Mer Telecom:
Mer Telecom has manufactured or installed almost 30,000 towers in emerging markets, mainly in Latin America and Africa. We offer our customers a one-stop-shop and single point of accountability for network deployment; from network design, to transmission planning, site pre-qualification & evaluation, site design and engineering, customs clearance and inland logistics, civil works and the supply and installation of passive and active equipment.
Mer Telecom is certified by NSN, Ericsson, Huawei and the other major equipment vendors for the installation and commissioning of all active equipment such as BTS and Core network elements.
After implementation, we also offer maintenance and optimisation services, including drive testing and optimisation of the active network, as well as preventive and corrective maintenance of the passive network.
Mer Telecom covers wireless infrastructure from pre- to post-deployment. We also provide hybrid energy systems, sites remote monitoring and control and a platform for VAS such as mobile financial services, however, those are topics for a future discussion – let’s focus today on our turnkey wireless infrastructure capabilities.
TowerXchange: Is the transfer of assets from mobile network operators to independent towercos a good thing from your perspective?
Arie Ben-Dayan, Marketing & Sales Director, Mer Telecom:
The transition of passive infrastructure from operator-captive to independent towerco is a substantial market change for tower manufacturers and site builders.
Mer Telecom has worked with leading towercos such as American Tower and others. The main towercos’ challenges are to audit, analyse and reinforce existing infrastructure to enable multi-tenant co-locations. The fact that Mer Telecom offers in-house structural and CW engineering, design and manufacturing abilities is a major benefit for towercos; as tower experts, we are able to offer the ultimate efficient and cost effective solution.
Towercos have complex requirements with which smaller construction subcontractors, who might not have tower design and manufacture capabilities as a core competency, may struggle.
TowerXchange: How do you upgrade a tower’s capacity for multiple tenants?
Arie Ben-Dayan, Marketing & Sales Director, Mer Telecom:
The process of upgrading legacy towers designed for single tenants to accommodate additional operators starts from an analysis of the full tower design data. Unfortunately for the majority of sites in Africa this data is not available, so we perform a detailed tower audit and in some cases reverse engineering. Based on many engineering and logistical parameters, we’re able to compute the total cost of required upgrades, compare that to the cost of a new tower, and recommend the most cost effective solution. When we undertake upgrades we typically strengthen the structure, extend height and load capacity, and may need to reinforce the existing foundation.
When we’re designing and installing new towers for multiple tenants, it’s obviously much simpler. The EPA (Effective Projected Area) of a single tenant tower is usually much lower – typically 7-10m2. For multi-tenant towers the EPA is typically 20-30m2. As a result, multi-tenant towers are generally higher, require a larger foundation and a larger site to install multiple base stations and often a second generator. TowerXchange: Roughly how frequently do you find that a tower has to be refurbished or replaced when additional load capacity is needed for multiple tenants?
Arie Ben-Dayan, Marketing & Sales Director, Mer Telecom:
The percentage of towers needing replacement depends largely on the age of the network. Towers designed before people thought about co-location might only have capacity for a few 2G antennas and a microwave backhaul dish. Towers less than five years old tend to have more capacity for equipment and therefore co-locations.
In approximately 90% of cases the tower has to be substantially refurbished, reinforced or replaced – it’s rare to find a site in Africa or Latin America ready to immediately add multiple tenants.
RMS should focus on three critical aspects; intelligent rectifiers, batteries and generators, categorised as an Integrated Power Management Solution (IPMS).... Everything else is noise
we fully control the whole supply chain from tower design to customs clearance, inland logistics and installation
TowerXchange: It’s impressive how quickly Mer Telecom are able to engage in a new country, build your local team and establish the logistical capabilities to rollout twenty or more towers per month. Tower owners have tight timescales for the installation of new sites – please tell us how Mer Telecom optimises shipment, customs clearance, warehousing and delivery of materials to new sites.
Arie Ben-Dayan, Marketing & Sales Director, Mer Telecom:
Being the designer and manufacturer of towers is a key element and a critical differentiator in our ability to deploy networks quickly. It means we fully control the whole supply chain from tower design to customs clearance, inland logistics and installation.
As a manufacturer it’s obvious that Mer Telecom has the ability to anticipate customer needs and expectations. We retain permanent available stock at plants and in local operations to enable us to respond as fast as possible to our customer’s needs. The tower is the critical element of a site, if the turnkey installation partner is not controlling this element, deployment can be delayed.
When it comes to staffing new projects, Mer Telecom has hundreds of people on the ground in Africa and Latin America able to move from one country to the next. This makes it easy for us to allocate right resources according to local needs.
When starting a new deployment, the first phase is the manufacture and shipment of long lead items. Whilst that’s going on, we have time to set up ourselves in the new country, so that when the materials arrive, our local operation is ready to deal with logistics and implementation phases.
Mer Telecom combines manufacturing and logistics capabilities with ground staff available anywhere from East to West Africa. Lead time is never a problem for us, in fact in most cases we move faster than the operator’s own permitting processes!
TowerXchange: What are the most common causes of delays in rollout projects?
Arie Ben-Dayan, Marketing & Sales Director, Mer Telecom:
Those legal issues around site acquisition and building, environment and civil aviation permits remain the biggest challenge for rollouts. As soon as they have spectrum and budget, operators want immediate deployment. I liken deployment to rolling out slot machines – the sooner you install it and plug it in, the sooner you can generate revenue whether it be coins in the slot or ARPU.
Permitting is becoming more and more difficult in Africa. I’d distinguish between francophone Africa, where it’s not so complicated, and anglophone countries like Kenya, Tanzania and Ghana, where it can more often be an issue.
TowerXchange: How do you overcome the challenges of inland logistics, especially in Central Africa?
Arie Ben-Dayan, Marketing & Sales Director, Mer Telecom:
A smooth logistics process requires first to know the logistic challenges in the specific country. There are always many such challenges including choosing the right port of entry, taking into consideration the lack of road infrastructures, import regulations, the impact of climatic conditions and so on.
It is critical to partner with the best in class shipping, clearing and in country transport agents and companies.
Mer telecom has an experienced and informed Logistics Officer in each of its branches to ensure an efficient and smooth port to site logistic chain.
For example, the Democratic Republic of Congo presents one of the most complex in-land logistic challenges in Africa and possibly in the world. We have developed logistic capabilities in all ports of entry including clearing agents, warehousing et cetera.
As a true to life story, we had a case in which a truck which carried site equipment was forced to unload tons of equipments in order to cross an unstable bridge; that required securing the help of local villagers to assist in hand carrying the equipment across the bridge. In some cases, we had to transport the equipment and Civil Work materials along the river in small canoes!
Mer Telecom’s ability to controlling the whole supply chain is definitely an advantage in those challenging countries where the lack of infrastructure, unstable political situation and climatic hazards are a daily reality. We feel “comfortable” and at home in challenging countries.
TowerXchange: Does Mer Telecom operate it’s own fleet and drivers, or do you use local subcontractors?
Arie Ben-Dayan, Marketing & Sales Director, Mer Telecom:
We normally use local subcontractors for inland logistics, selected according to our standards. We strongly believe that some tasks have to be outsourced like site acquisition, transportation and customs clearance to local companies that are more familiar with local business culture and conditions.
TowerXchange: How do you ensure the health and safety of your staff and contractors?
Arie Ben-Dayan, Marketing & Sales Director, Mer Telecom:
Mer telecom is an ISO9000, 14000 and 18000 certified company.
As a global provider, Mer Telecom attributes special importance to Health & Safety issues and employs dedicated H&S officers to ensure full compliance with Health and Safety rules and regulations.
Therefore, our own staff and subcontractors have strict rules, standards and policies that each has to follow, and are under constant supervision.
Mer Telecoms maintains an ongoing training programme to refresh and implement new health and safety rules and regulations, this helps maintain awareness among our staff and subcontractors, and brings the risk of accidents as near to zero as possible.
