Viom’s end to end tower and infrastructure services vision

TowerXchange fields an ever-increasing volume of calls from investors wanting our view of the tower market in a particular region, or the investibility of a particular towerco. One question the investors always ask us about is the appetite of towercos for provision of infrastructure and infrastructure services beyond towers – and most of the time we have to manage their expectations. Last mile fibre, backhaul services, microcells, small cells and DAS, even power services might be opportunities for the future, but most towercos remain focused on the core tower business.

There are a few market-making visionaries who propose a more diversified set of end to end services and infrastructure provision, but perhaps the most complete vision beyond the tower is found at Viom Networks, specifically within their ‘Viom Next’ team. TowerXchange asked one of the architects of Viom Networks, Ravinder Badwal, Head of Emerging Business, for an in-depth overview.

Convergence is where opportunity and innovation meet to deliver real value to millions of people. The telecom industry is on the cusp of a seminal change, and the Indian telecom industry making a big shift from voice to data. This trend is being fuelled by the growing popularity of smartphones, tablets, PCs and a host of portable devices. The data revolution is already bringing about a change in lifestyle, empowering people with realtime information and enabling them to be connected anytime, anywhere.

We are witnessing the emergence of Telco 2.0 – a new business model – one where the path forward is not about purpose-built networks but instead converged and integrated solutions that will be more intelligent, scalable and provide more and better coverage.

The convergence of access, carriage and broadcast networks and the focus on converged devices will enable operators to differentiate their products and offerings to various subscribers in a cost effective manner. The possibility of network sharing may reduce entry barriers as new entrants will no longer be required to invest in network build-out. Existing operators, on the other hand, will be able to increase their network utilisation as well as enhance revenues by sharing their network assets.

In-building wireless platforms have evolved to converge multiple wireless operators onto a neutral host Distributed Antennae System. Next-generation DAS architecture will converge even more services and applications – both digital and analog – such as cellular, Wi-Fi, public safety and other applications such as RFID, building automation and more. This will be literally a convergence between the enabling of capacity (wireline) and the delivery of communication services (wireless).

The Indian telecom industry with its 400,000 telecom towers is the critical support system for the world’s second largest base of mobile subscriptions. A seldom highlighted fact is that the concept of ‘telecom infrastructure sharing’ was pioneered by tower companies in India. This pioneering business model coupled with the largest base of telecom towers anywhere in the world (China notwithstanding), gives the Indian telecom tower sector a unique distinction that is unparalleled globally.

Thanks to the long-term and stable business model, the telecom tower industry has witnessed steady growth, despite the challenges of the past year. We expect that with increased clarity for the telecom operators over the past few months, the network investment cycle will be enhanced in 2015-16 and beyond.

The telecom tower companies are today offering end-to-end infrastructure solutions to the telecom operators. This will help in increasing rural penetration that now stands around 40% and in dealing with the surging data consumption in the urban markets, providing further impetus to the telecom tower industry. Data will be the next growth driver for the Indian telecom industry in the next decade as voice was in the last decade. With the advent of technology such as TD-LTE, a mobile data boom is expected in the coming years.

The telecom tower industry has reached impressive milestones in size and importance, thereby establishing itself as not only a foundation of the telecom industry but also as a contributor to the country’s economic growth. Viom expects to emerge as a beneficiary of India’s sweeping telecom revolution and the evolving demand for data within it.

Mobile towers in India are handling a surge in cellular traffic as operators upgrade for a new generation of bandwidth-hungry smartphones and tablets. Some of that anticipated growth may come from additional users and more connected devices, but most of it is predicted to come from an increase in traffic per connected device as users demand more and more wireless data. The new traffic translates into soaring growth prospects for tower operators.

Reports predict wireless network traffic to grow another ten times over the next five years with about 75% of this growth expected to be delivered over traditional macro sites, primarily towers. In-building solutions (IBS), Distributed Antennae Systems (DAS) and other small cell installations are projected to support the remaining 25%.

With over 70% of data consumption in urban India happening indoors, in-building solutions (IBS) in the form of micro-cellular technologies such as picocells and femtocells that create small-footprint cell sites within buildings, enable more effective coverage within the premises. With the growing demand for anywhere connectivity, IBS is gaining momentum. Operators use DAS and/or IBS to address issues related to poor wireless reception in indoor environments.

While the urban areas witnessed a shrinking IT device business, this was balanced with the growing adoption of smartphones which are driving the increase in demand for data. The rural areas along with Tier three and Tier four cities were seen as the main drivers for both PCs and phones which highlights the need-gap for much awaited growth in more remote areas of India. The potential of masses living in the hinterland and their inclusion in the mainstream economy can only be imagined when they are equipped with connectivity and functionality to use the public and business services like e-sewa or e-commerce platforms.

With emerging trends like mobile platforms accounting for 41% of e-commerce sales in 2014 it is clear that customers are ready to adopt mobile devices. Mobiles accounted for around 70% of leading e-commerce platforms orders; e-tailers are graduating from desktop sites to app-only models and many more will follow the cue, indicating how the retail sector will evolve through increased connectivity.

The telecom industry is optimistic about the emergence of mobile data usage; we expect that an improved data experience through the use of smartphones will widen mobile data traffic. For instance, there was a 74% increase in mobile data traffic generated by 2G and 3G mobile broadband services in 2014. The growth was primarily driven by robust 3G growth (114%), despite only about half of the 130 million subscribers consuming data using 3G enabled devices (expected to clock 123.3mn in 2015). Currently India’s 3G coverage on average is about 30% of its 2G coverage, which indicates immense potential for expansion of 3G services on 900 MhZ or 2,100 MhZ for nationwide availability and quality of mobile broadband.

Similarly, in 2014 India ranked as the number one in new internet users, having added 63 million users by end 2014. India appears to be covering ground by rising from its third position (232 million Internet users, after China and US) through significant 37% growth over the previous year.

With fixed or mobile internet readily available, it is only a matter of time before it becomes the norm for the public to expect internet access as a basic necessity. Easy and cost effective access is the key to the internet economy. At present, only 10 million individuals have access to Wi-Fi at home or in the office, thereby leaving enough growth room that can be filled in by innovative solutions such as Wi-Fi hotspots. In India, nearly 400 municipalities are likely to deploy Wi-Fi hotspots by 2018, and that would scale up to 2 million hotspots by 2020.

Capitalising on the above trends as the ISPs grow their base and cellular operators surpass 3G towards 4G deployment, we foresee increased data demand coupled with need for high network quality, which will make it an imperative for infrastructure to grow, provide seamless operations and select the right network elements – the area where Viom has an expertise.

Harmonising technology, another important axis, has been at the core of sustaining new patterns. The colossal subscriber growth puts pressure on serviceability and quality of connectivity as there is uneven growth for telecom operators where they currently have a lean base.

In addition to deploying a high-speed mobile broadband network across India, the industry is expected to enhance efficiency and subscriber experience. With more 3G and 4G networks available, subscriber expectations of quality mobile data accessibility will increase. The result is that India will need to deploy more small cells for a seamless telecom experience in high density areas, use intelligent geo-location and 3D mapping-based technologies, graduate to self-organising networks (iSON) and evolve network management by not only looking at base station KPIs but also ‘service management’ or end-user service KPIs.

As a leader it becomes pertinent to stay ahead of the technology curve and maintain the competitive advantage. Hence, playing on our strengths like IBS, small cells, et cetera and pursuing the new deployments like Wi-Fi hotspots will be the key to success. By the virtue of being an independent and agnostic tower company, we stand in a better position to push the charter of sharing and connected towers and plug the gap as managed service providers. This is augmented by our technology operations platform or Business-Process-as-a-Service (BPaaS) that provides a strong reason for us to be the partner of choice now and in the future. At Viom, we have ready capability and tested models to meet the increase in mobile subscribers and sustain the interest of our clients in the telecom industry.

Connected towers in the form of fibre-led backhaul and tower companies offering the tower plus fibre solution to telcos will be a trend in times to come with data demand surging and customers wanting a seamless data experience. In addition, the PoP or Point of Presence concept will also gain momentum with tower companies managing all the site elements in a comprehensive manner.

Viom’s interest is in the managed services space where it may operate as a ‘ServCo’ and not necessarily as an asset company; to be both asset-light and be a world class ‘ServCo’ at the same time.

On the technology front, we have changed our whole world at Viom Networks, literally. We have set up a clear technology roadmap which delivers end-to-end connectivity, from all our towers right to the billing system we use for our customers which is very different from the current industry standard.

We are focussing on deploying instrumentation on the sites to capture in real time information on availability, asset health and field force data through M2M (machine-to-machine) interfaces, using technologies such as event correlation and aggregation for situation detection. We are eventually moving towards ‘Big Data’ which will be the heart of our tower operations center and will ensure enhanced reliability for the telcos.

At Viom Networks, we are working on integrating our data streams into SAP based core ERP (enterprise resource planning) modules, which will complete the back office, accounting and financial processes – thus, creating a digitally unified, integrated enterprise solution. Some of our innovations will not only be the first for a player in India, but perhaps first globally.

Owing to our innovative approach to managing operations with initiatives such as the use of handheld devices, RFID tagging and more, Viom’s uptime has seen an increasingly upward trend. This well-constructed technology roadmap that leverages data analytics and a mobility platform for informed decision making and interventions has further elevated our competitive advantage and helped us manage cost, report real-time field incidents and track account receivables seamlessly.

With the objective of improving site operations by streamlining the end-to-end business processes through embedded mobile technologies, Viom has built mobility applications wherein the asset managers can register their attendance, do preventive asset management, and raise a ticket if any equipment is not functioning at the site. The end-to-end process is automated with workflows, alerts and to-dos or notifications, which helps the field workforce to do its work more efficiently and economically with a better preventive maintenance schedule and compliance. The field workforce is able to complete all its activities using handheld devices which are integrated into the backend SAP system. This platform helps in better preventive maintenance, asset lifecycle management, and compliance and eventually it helps in improving site uptime.

The project that went live on October 1, 2014 is a classic example of frugal engineering. The organisation developed the project on hybrid architecture keeping the development and architecture cost low to make it easily scalable. The platform was built in-house on an open source platform. As a result, the mobile platform is serving everything up to the field workforce in record time.

Site asset health improvement is a major benefit; prior to implementation uptime was 99.91%. Now it has increased to 99.97%. Asset movement tracking has seen a significant improvement; service request closure used to take 21 days now it has come down to 10 days. Since these devices are location-based, it is easy to know how many sites the field workforce has visited, number of asset maintenance completed per day, per week. It has created more visibility into the system and preventive maintenance compliance has improved from 75% to 95%. Now that the basic modules are in place the next step for Viom Networks is to build smart analytics which can help in proactive decision making and closely track operations performance.