Digant: End to end remote monitoring hardware and site management software for cell sites

Digant’s end to end site monitoring and management solution extends from hardware to software, and has been proven at thousands of cell sites across India. Creating real time visibility of cell site performance isn’t just about technology – it must also be about understanding and optimising operational processes, whether it be predicting equipment failures before downtime and SLA penalties are incurred, or setting a manual override back to automate power source selection and minimise DG runtime.

TowerXchange: Please introduce Digant to our readers - where do you fit in the telecoms infrastructure ecosystem?

Our company offers end to end solutions to passive infrastructure firms. As well as the remote monitoring of various key parameters, we automate switching the load between the different power sources on a cell site (both conventional and renewable) while accurately measuring the fuel consumption at the site, combining to help towercos minimise downtime and avoid SLA penalties.

The mix of solutions we offer is derived from teams dedicated to hardware, firmware, application development and software. Everything is designed in-house in Bangalore by our team of electrical, electronics and telecom engineering experts. Robustness in design and final product means we are able to plug into customers’ profitability gauges. This enables us to measure energy / fuel usage at tower sites, and enable timely alarm reporting and thereby help customers achieve operational excellence.

TowerXchange: TowerXchange tracks 27 different suppliers in our cell site monitoring who’s who - some are focused on hardware, some on software - why does it matter that one company provide both?

When we buy electronic gadgets, it is apparent that some suppliers are good at hardware and others are only good at software. Digant believes that the ability to design and develop both hardware and software leads to tighter integration and a more robust solution. Quality is critical at remote cell sites.

The techno-operational benefits of using our end to end solution helps our customers maximise return on capital invested. We believe we have a clear advantage over many global solution providers on this basis.

TowerXchange: Will you sell just the hardware to a customer who has committed to a software platform, or vice versa?

We prefer to deliver the end to end solution. When you consider the importance and the variety of KPIs monitored – energy monitoring, measuring electricity consumption and uptime, channelling, accounting, air conditioning, fuel tanks, and the opening and closing of alarms – it is difficult to have hardware from one vendor and software from another. However, where customers already have a software solution but want hardware, we’ll integrate by identifying any technical and operational gaps to make the solutions compatible.

While we don’t mind integrating with another vendor’s software, we must understand the package, and the suitability to our robust hardware platforms. We will work hand in hand with the software firm to evaluate and then submit a report on required changes to be made in the software by the software vendor.

While we do integrate our hardware with third party software, we are not interested in integrating our software with third party hardware.

TowerXchange: The first question our readers usually ask is “how proven is the solution in the field?” Please tell us about your proof of concept trials with Indian towercos.

The NDAs we have with some of our customers means that we cannot give you their names. We have undertaken proof of concept trials with five towercos in India, with one of which our solutions are now deployed across 3,000 sites, including a few green towers where renewables such as solar are used. Digant started providing remote site automation systems to petroleum retail outlets eight years ago. One client from an India-based oil company has been monitoring and measuring their operations remotely at 5,000 petroleum retail outlets across India for many years now.

The remarkable accuracy of our solutions means we are winning business consistently.

TowerXchange: What do you see as the main challenges to be overcome in the monitoring of remote cell sites, and how do you overcome those challenges?

Seeing alarms in real time enables our customers to respond in time to resolve problems, avoiding paying SLA penalties where operations function below performance thresholds. We are often able to foresee malfunctioning of existing power or load automation technologies.

Existing automation technologies, often integrated into conventional controllers, are prone to going faulty. This forces the tower operator to default to manual operations. An example of this is that grid power outages require switching on the DG, or overriding the automatic load transfer to avoid downtime.

Existing technologies are prone to tampering – the customer may not know for hours, days or weeks. This leads to extended outages, and enables malpractice such as fuel and equipment theft.

Our robust solutions provide more than remote monitoring, they also take care of power source automation in an integrated solution. They switch between the three phases of power and select the power source via the cheapest and qualitative source available, including both conventional and renewables, where available.

We make sure the battery bank gets as fully discharged as possible, minimising DG runtime while avoiding deep discharge of the battery bank to keep it in good health. With the health of these two important assets secured, lifetime is extended. The two primary challenges we see are to minimise DG runtime and to arrest fuel leakage, which we can help to achieve. Unfortunately we often encounter situations where contractors are running multiple energy sources concurrently to run up invoices, to disguise theft, or simply because they don’t realise there’s enough charge in the battery bank.

The solutions we offer remove the operational hazards of manual power source selection. It is not easy for towercos to understand what power sources are running on their cell sites, what is running efficiently and the health of their equipment. Using an end to end solution like ours minimises unwanted capex reinvestment.

We monitor batteries at cell level so towercos are able to know which cells are faulty, and can replace only those cells. Finally, we can help combat the theft of equipment such as batteries and battery banks. This can be done by identifying the movement of an asset on the site and alerting field staff.

TowerXchange: How do you tamper proof your solution?

Tamper proofing depends on the accuracy of operational parameters, as well as the timeliness of alarms. We use sensor-level architecture; everything is integrated within our main unit. The alarm multiplexers at sites are connected via SNMP. The equipment we use also has a good number of on-board alarms which feed directly into our customers’ dashboards.

Nothing is destruction proof, although the customer will be able to see any untoward incident instantly. This is possible whether it is a sensor that has been destroyed, or a battery bank stolen, or if the DG mode has been manually overridden to enable fuel pilferage. Any tampering alert is sent instantaneously to field staff, giving them the best chance to confront the person tampering with the equipment.

The accuracy of our fuel monitoring means tower owners can evaluate the performance of refuelling contractors. This allows them to identify how much diesel has been consumed or pilfered, and reconcile accounts to identify excessive fuel claims by the contractor. As a result they will reduce opex, arrest leakage, and improve EBITDA.

TowerXchange: What do you see as the KPIs for the monitoring of remote cell sites?

The most important KPI is always to maximise site uptime. Automating the power source selection and load without any manual intervention is also a key indicator of performance. It enables towercos to manage and compare the energy generated to the energy required by the load on the site. This highlights any energy leakage.

Monitoring remote sites is also beneficial in measuring and preventing pilferage. These solutions can also monitor and manage the performance of batteries and DGs to ensure longevity. They reduce opex on a month to month basis by eliminating false alarms, unwanted site inspections, rectification issues and overrides of the automation controller on the existing conventional automation equipment.

The importance of these KPIs illustrates the importance of accurate, trustworthy site data from RMS. If an organisation does not use these types of tools, they may be faced with inaccurate information and decision making could suffer. Customers must be able to identify the best field engineers, refuelling vendors, O&M people and they should be recognised and rewarded.

TowerXchange: How do you translate data into actionable intelligence?

There are three key steps an organisation must take to translate data into actionable intelligence efficiently.

1. Alarms raised on a site need to be instantaneously sent to field technician without delay – escalating to managerial layer as appropriate. Any closed alarms must also be accessible to technicians and the managerial layer.

2. Visibility into any manual overrides of automatic load transfer – between the grid, battery bank, DG, and renewables (where available), as well as air conditioning or climate controls. This enables, where appropriate, arrest of manual overrides and restoration of automated operations. This avoids unnecessary opex.

3. Understanding your consumption per hour (CPH) enables customers measure unnecessary DG runtime and diesel consumption. This helps our customers understand how much diesel is burned and how much diesel is pilfered on a daily basis. This arrests excessive claims by diesel filling companies, which can make a huge dent on profits.

Without actionable RMS data towercos have to have fixed fuel consumption agreements; with effective site intelligence they are able to bill for the actual fuel burned.

TowerXchange: The number one challenge most towercos report with RMS is ‘deployability’ - complex solutions are difficult to install and maintain in the field - how does Digant propose to overcome this challenge?

Our RMS solution is designed with a minimalistic interface; almost everything is contained within the hardware. Most alarms have no dependency on external equipment. The installation / commissioning engineer who installs all passive infrastructure at site should be more than capable of installing our hardware. We also provide training to installation and commissioning personnel.

TowerXchange: Finally, please sum up how you would differentiate Digant from competitive RMS and ILM solution providers.

There are four key factors that differentiate us from other RMS and ILM solution providers:

1. Less sophisticated RMS are little more than a modem with controllers and a dashboard and they are prone to not meeting the towercos’ remote monitoring and measuring objectives. Digant understands this aspect and the techno-operational issues and challenges at telecom tower sites, thus attained the capability to bring out solutions that are operationally rather than technologically focused.

2. Through our experience in providing site monitoring and automation, we have become an industry benchmark for accuracy of data. Our customers rely on our data, and when they check sites they find their performance exactly matches what they can see on our system.

3. Towercos are trying to make cell sites man-less by fully automating day to day operations, except for the manpower required for diesel refueling. Towercos are also operating loads on green energy sources where feasible. Our solutions are the right fit to these requirements. This avoids the costs involved in both the maintenance as well as the associated long drive times of field level engineers / technicians.

4. Securing the health of energy meters, DG and other electronic equipment by managing sites and anticipating problems based on the intelligence coming from our solutions – moving from scheduled to predictive maintenance. This will minimise opex, avoid unnecessary capex and ultimately improve EBITDA