Invendis: How RMS adds value to multi-tenant towers

Invendis (INVENt and DIScover) is a telematics technology developer from Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India. They have developed an RMS solution that adapts perfectly to the tropical climates in India and Africa, and which is in use today monitoring over 24,000 towers, most with multiple tenants. Invendis are one of the few RMS suppliers to have successfully passed through a North American towerco’s rigorous partner selection process – naturally, TowerXchange wanted to learn more…

TowerXchange: Where do Invendis fit into the telecoms infrastructure ecosystem?

Invendis started its operations in 2007 as a telematics company for vehicle tracking and mobile workforces. In 2008 we got into telecoms as the industry needed telematics for static platforms such as shelters and fuel tanks.

2008 was an exciting time in Indian telecoms, and there are many parallels to Africa today. A lot of new licenses were being issued and a many international new market entrants were coming in. Towers were being hived off as separate independent towerco entities.

With the big operators and towercos commanding portfolios of 60-100,000 towers, as a startup Invendis decided to focus on new, smaller towercos with less than 5,000 towers. We did demonstrations to three towercos, one with 1,800 towers, another with 200, and a third with 2,200. Our first order came in for systems for all 1,800 towers six months after the demonstrations. We secured a second order from the 200 tower company before they were acquired by a large American towerco, then we were shortlisted to get a PO for the 2,200 tower business before they were acquired by the same towerco! So this large North American towerco came to us as a legacy supplier.

TowerXchange: What is Invendis installed base in telecom towers?

Between 2008 and now we have installed end-to-end RMS in 6,000 towers in India, and we’ve also added energy management, alarm extension and inventory management for another 15,000 towers. So our domestic installed base is around 21,000.

About three years ago, after our domestic rollout, we decided to see what we could do in other markets. The North American towerco had just acquired about 2,000 towers in South Africa, so we brought our reference credentials from India, we responded to their RFP and were invited to participate in a trial, then agreed commercial terms and secured the order. Deployment started a year ago on the first 250 towers, with the total order being for 600. Deployment will be complete by the end of July. So our installed base in Africa will be 600.

We are currently participating in other African trials and have been shortlisted in Uganda, and have active prospects in Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania.

In Oman we have a major rollout of approximately 400 telecom exchange buildings, and 250 systems about to be installed in Kuwait.

TowerXchange: Please tell us how tower operators can achieve RoI in remote monitoring and control systems such as yours?

Our approach is to move the customer operations from a reactive mode to a proactive mode by monitoring various parameters including alarms to detect and eliminate a potential site outage and also to optimise the equipment usage and operational expenses.

We are not just a remote monitoring company, we consider ourselves an energy optimisation company.We optimise the selection of energy source to reduce energy opex.

Our systems are most commonly installed at multiple tenant sites and we implement hybrid system based on power source and temperature. Cell sites have three major power sources: an often unreliable grid, 99% of towers have a diesel generator, and many have a huge battery bank (in some cases there is also solar or wind power, but in most cases it’s still grid, diesel generators and batteries). Our systems help decide which power source to use to optimise operational expense and also increase the battery lifetime.

As long as you have grid power, the site runs on the grid. The moment grid goes down, what used to happen was the DG was switched on because the tower operator didn’t know how much charge was in the battery. With RMS, you can run batteries more often and run them for deeper cycles to optimise battery lifetime.

Many parts of India and Africa share a tropical climate, which means air conditioning is needed to keep the temperature in the shelter down to 25-30°C and operate the telecoms equipment within specified operating temperature ranges. When the cell site is running from the battery bank, air conditioning is often switched off. However, if RMS is installed we can monitor the temperature and run the air conditioning off the DG if the temperature exceeds a threshold of 35°C.

However, the biggest difference between Africa and India is that in India the infra company owns the shelter and the DC power is shared between the operators where as in Africa the shelter is often owned by the operator and the infra company provides AC power to the operator and hence we install RMS devices inside the shelter in India and in Africa we install outside the shelter using weatherproof enclosures.

TowerXchange: What is the typical capital outlay per site to install your system?

In India, the cost is around US $2,000 per site for the equipment and installation, with 6-7 months to RoI based on monthly savings of US $300-350.

In Africa because of import duties, local regulatory mechanisms, and very high installation costs (technical manpower can be six to seven times the cost in India), typical installed costs might be around US $4-5,000 per site. The costs are also higher in Africa because of the geographical distribution of cell sites, poor transport infrastructure, and more complex specifications to manage multiple tenants at sites on an unreliable grid. So RoI in Africa can be around 10-12 months.

The cost also varies based on geography, sensors, accessories and services required by the customer.

TowerXchange: How do the requirements of remote monitoring and control change when managing multi-tenant sites?

Different tenants often use different active equipment with different specifications and different power consumption. So in multiple tenant scenarios, towercos need visibility of how much power each tenant has consumed so that each operator can be billed separately.

In the absence of RMS, the towerco would divide the power consumption bill between tenants, but tenants are increasingly unhappy with such arrangements, especially if they’ve invested in new low energy equipment that can use a quarter of the power.

Secondly, RMS resolves disputes as to whether the active equipment or power solution was responsible for any outage. BTSs take a long time to power up after any outage, and SLAs often mean penalty clauses are triggered if the towerco lets the power go down.

The third way RMS adds value for multi-tenant sites is by reducing expensive technical manpower costs. Previously maintenance teams may have visited every day to check the site, but with RMS now they only need visit when an alarm is triggered and a site visit is necessary, and you know what expertise is needed and what spare parts are required to stabilise or resolve the incident.

RMS plays a major role in ensuring the health of the tower site passive equipment and helping to prevent or minimise site power outages by acting proactively before an incident occurs which leads to outage, SLA penalties and compromised quality of service.

Finally, RMS plays a very important role in giving towerco management an overall picture of tower performance.

TowerXchange: What were your impressions of selling to that North American towerco – what can you tell us about their procurement process?

When they acquired four towercos in India, including the two towercos with whom Invendis had contracts, they held up equipment rollout and said they’d consolidate and normalise RMS requirements across the entire organisation. So they sent us their specifications and ultimately trialled two different RMS companies. After a full technical evaluation, including the last 3-4 months on multiple sites, they refined their requirements, wrote a new specification, and issued a new order for RMS at approximately 1,000 towers.

So this towerco took a four step approach after acquiring new towers; first they held up deployments scheduled by the acquired business, second they issued new specifications, third they trialled alternate suppliers, and fourth they issued refined specifications based on the trial.

Working with the North American towerco has been a great experience. They have worked closely with us to define their requirements and refine our solution to meet those requirements, and we now have almost 3,000 of their towers running on our software.

We don’t see any major differences between the way that Africa’s big four towercos trial and buy RMS.

Towercos tend to standardise the equipment and operation of their towers. However they understand that every tower has different equipment (especially older towers with multiple tenants using different equipment vendors), so a degree of customisation is required for every site.

TowerXchange: Is there a danger that the monitoring devices embedded in new hybrid equipment will reduce investment in dedicated RMS?

Who owns the sensor hardware is becoming less important – remote monitoring is a data-driven market.Successful remote monitoring requires a software platform to capture and normalise data and render it in a uniform way to support decision making.

We have supplied software in India, the Middle East and in Africa that integrates data from our own sensors and data from Emerson, GE Power Management Systems and other intelligent equipment with embedded wireless communication.

The equipment inside the cell site comes from a wide variety of companies that are experts in a certain field, whether it’s power management systems, batteries et cetera. Even if remote monitoring is built into the genset, I’m not sure how much these systems talk to the different equipment at the cell site. Hence the need for dedicated, equipment agnostic and sensor agnostic RMS systems to integrate data from hardware manufactured by different vendors into a single platform.

I don’t think RMS vendors feel that integrated sensors are a threat to our business. These other companies specialise in power management - how many R&D dollars are invested into remote monitoring? We’re investing fully in remote monitoring and energy efficiency.

TowerXchange: Finally, please sum up how you differentiate Invendis from your competitors.

Invendis is an end-to-end company – from software to remote monitoring equipment, temperature/fuel monitoring and alarms, we have expertise in all three disciplines.

We have a software platform running 24,000 towers across 6 countries.

Ours is the newest hardware on the market – our latest equipment is from a design three months old. Competitors’ industrial equipment was often designed five to six years ago, and doesn’t have the same customisation capabilities.

Africa needs solutions designed for emerging markets, not systems designed in Europe or America where they are used to clean, uninterrupted power and don’t have the same need for robust outdoor equipment as Africa.

Another differentiator is our speed of rollout. Having done 21,000 towers in the last four years, I don’t think our competitors have done even 5,000. To install in 21,000 towers you need robust installation processes. Invendis has only been in Africa for a couple of years, yet we’ve already deployed in two countries.

Finally, Invendis is a technology-driven company, not a box manufacturer. Our expertise is systems development and software development, so our systems are very robust, with no need for manual interventions.