Qowisio focuses on the remote monitoring, management and supervision of telecom sites for telecom operators in Africa, the Middle East and Europe for telecom operators and towercos. Launched six years ago, Qowisio’s founders identified that many remote power monitoring systems in Africa were excessively complex and difficult to install. So they created a wireless system that required no calibration or customisation, but that could ‘Plug and Start’ on site and be configured from the NOC.
TowerXchange: Thanks for speaking to us today Xavier. Please tell introduce us to Qowisio.
Xavier Eme, Sales Director, Qowisio:
Qowisio is a French based company founded six years ago in response to African telecom operators’ needs to enable the monitoring of power at remote telecom sites. All our founders have a strong experience and background from leading telecoms vendors and operators, and we felt that many of the remote monitoring solutions in use in Africa were not meeting customers’ expectations.
Having come to market more recently than many of our competitors, Qowisio were able to design a solution to overcome three specific challenges of remote monitoring in Africa. First, in order to reduce installation complexity and improve tamper resilience, we made our system fully wireless. Second, to avoid the necessity of using skilled installation technicians, our sensors were designed to automatically configure themselves. And third, in order to minimise the bandwidth needed, we used algorithms and coding to compress data uploaded from the site to our web-based control server.
We also designed an open, flexible central application to collect data from our sensors and from third-party sensors on the field, and to make insights available through a web-based interface.
Thanks to a strong R&D team, we managed to develop a wide range of sensors to meet customers’ expectations but we also managed to develop new technologies. Our wireless solution enables communication between sensors and the controller within a range of 1km.
TowerXchange: What is Qowisio’s installed base?
Xavier Eme, Sales Director, Qowisio:
We cover several thousand towers in the Middle East and Africa, working with over 30 mobile network operators in 40 countries.
We also provide smart metering solutions to remotely monitor electricity consumption at telecom sites, developed for European clients seeking to reduce their CO2 emissions by monitoring both global consumption of electricity at a site, and to monitor the specific consumption of each piece of equipment.
This gives us the capability to monitor the consumption of energy of different tenants on a shared tower, allowing the towerco to provide more accurate invoicing.
In six years we expanded our range of sensors to be able to offer a complete solution to remotely monitor power, security and environment on site. We developed SNMP, RS485 and dry contacts modules, enabling the collection of different types of information from any equipment such as the rectifier and genset. On the software side, we developed a strong application where all data are gathered and display in graphs. We are very flexible; even in the application, data from third-party equipment can be displayed and analysed.
With no need for complex wiring or calibration of sensors, deployment of our solution is fast and easy as tower operators do not need highly skilled technicians to install sensors.
TowerXchange: Tell us more about your ‘Plug and Start’ capability and how that eases installation and futureproofs the cell site.
Xavier Eme, Sales Director, Qowisio:
We use ZigBee, an M2M interoperability protocol, to facilitate wireless communication between sensors and our system at the cell site. Having no wires makes our solution as invisible as possible – there are no cables to cut, while some of our customers have implemented a cage or cameras to further prevent tampering and vandalism.
What we call ‘Plug and Start’ means as soon as you connect a sensor, it is automatically detected and synchronised by the QowisioBox. With no need for complex wiring or calibration of sensors, deployment of our solution is fast and easy as tower operators do not need highly skilled technicians to install sensors, which can be costly and time consuming. Any customisation can be undertaken remotely from the NOC.
‘Plug and Start’ also means our solutions are very flexible. An unlimited number of sensors can be added to a cell site. The tower operator might start with security monitoring by having cameras on site and access control, then according to its needs the tower operator might want to monitor its grid power, analysing power consumption and efficiency. Adding new sensors to our solution is easy, it only requires the connection of new sensors.
TowerXchange: How does your system communicate data from the cell site to the NOC, and how is that data then integrated with OSS platforms?
Xavier Eme, Sales Director, Qowisio:
It’s good to have RMS, but it’s useless if RMS generates data that requires 10-20% of the customer’s bandwidth, bandwidth that could otherwise be generating revenue. So Qowisio was designed from the outset to use an algorithm to compress and code data and minimise bandwidth. We use GPRS when available, but if not we can optimise data upload to the character limits of SMS. We can also use an IP connection for communication between the cell site and the NOC.
Each cell site communicates data on a regular basis defined by the customer, and this can be adjusted at any time without going onsite.
Our central web server gathers data from all the sites, aggregates it into a database and displays graphics and statistics for trending and analysis, enabling real-time monitoring of remote sites. We can automatically email or SMS selected alarms.
Qowisio uses SNMP and open protocols to interface data and alarms with any OSS system our customers might use.
TowerXchange: How does Qowisio customise alarms to ensure the customer isn’t overwhelmed and can focus on only alarms which require action? And how are those alarms then integrated with job ticketing and ultimately the activities of the O&M team in the field?
Xavier Eme, Sales Director, Qowisio:
Alarms are defined with our customers, depending on the criticality of each individual data. We have different alarm levels so customers can have a clear view of the site situation. For example an alarm regarding lack of fuel or power outage is more important than an alarm notifying that a door remained open or that a tower light is not working.
So Qowisio, together with our customer, defines the criticality level and the distribution channel associated to it in order to have the right information communicated to the right people when a threshold is reached.
On the raw data side, our RMS platform can export data automatically to a third-party application. Some of our tower company customers are using these data in statistical tools and reporting applications to perform different types of analysis and predictions.
TowerXchange: Is there a danger that the monitoring devices embedded in new hybrid equipment will reduce tower operators’ investment in dedicated RMS systems?
Xavier Eme, Sales Director, Qowisio:
More and more equipment providers include remote monitoring sensors embedded into their own system. Tower operators are faced with a wide variety of systems and alarms that in many cases are not integrated. We provide one centralised system that uses an open interface to collect alarms and data from existing sensors in gensets, batteries and hybrid controllers. So the tower operator can manage a single platform rather than many.
We provide one centralised system that uses an open interface to collect alarms and data from existing sensors in gensets, batteries and hybrid controllers.
TowerXchange: Finally, please sum up how you differentiate Qowisio from your competitors.
Xavier Eme, Sales Director, Qowisio:
Qowisio offers a wide range of modules for the remote monitoring of telecom sites that can meet all the needs of towercos and operators. The fact that our solution is wireless gives us a strategic advantage over our competitors. The wireless solution makes the installation easy and safe by deleting cabling from the equation and gives the flexibility to add as many modules as you want.
our team succeeded to develop a new technology enabling Ultra-Long Range wireless communication covering tens of Kilometres from one controller. So, if you have multiple sites within range, you need only one controller
Our solutions are open and flexible for integration with existing equipment and for the implementation of new features and technologies.
We do everything in-house in terms of the design of hardware, software and the application. As we have full management of the solution, we can be very responsive to customer needs.
Every country has it’s own certified electricity meters. We can interface with and remotely upload data from these meters to the central server by adding a wireless module to the communications port.
Finally our company is oriented towards innovation thanks our R&D team which has developed Long Range wireless technology enabling communication up to 1km. A new solution is coming.
Today we are proud to say that our team succeeded to develop a new technology enabling Ultra-Long Range wireless communication covering tens of Kilometres from one controller. So, if you have multiple sites within range, you need only one controller. This technological breakthrough in the RMS solution allows Qowisio to keep its technological leadership and to become a key player in the sphere of the Internet Of Things (IOT).
