TES offers know-how and patented solutions for tower modifications

Tower Engineering Solutions (TES) has been in the businesses since the very start of the infrastructure sharing model and has worked on approximately 100,000 towers. Now looking to expand beyond its national operations, TES President, Robert Semaan spoke to TowerXchange about their long standing expertise and unique competitive edge.

TowerXchange: Please tell us about TES activities and footprint.

Tower Engineering Solutions (TES) is a tower engineering consulting firm specialising in analysing, data basing and modifying telecommunication structures. With the use of our in-house state of the art Tower Engineering Asset Management Tool we are able to build a comprehensive tower database for the tower owner free of charge at the expense of the carrier performing his routine engineering studies. We work primarily in the United States and are looking to expand abroad.

TowerXchange: Which types of solutions are more in demand in today’s tower industry? 

Since most of the towers in the United States were acquired from carriers, they are mainly single carrier capable and with the high demand for network expansion most of these towers will require some sort of modification at some point in time.

The second product we are seeing a high demand for is the software we offer. There are many asset management tools out there but none that include structural engineering functionality and I can say that we have a unique product offering worldwide in our Tower Engineering Asset Management Tool.

TowerXchange: How does the demand differ between towercos and carriers?

With regards to towercos, I think great tools for managing the tower asset are of prime importance, which will give them the advantage in a competitive market. Basically if you had two sites side by side, the carriers would probably pick the towerco that is easier to work with and with more streamlined processes.

As far as carriers demands, I think providing a fast and accurate engineering support and modification designs are prime for helping them meet their deployment schedules.

TowerXchange: How does the regulatory framework look like in the U.S. when it comes to greenfield projects?

I think with the high demand for densification, jurisdictions are becoming more and more open for new towers since everyone relies on good coverage and high data speeds.

TowerXchange: Are you looking at expanding internationally? And if so, where?

I consider TES to be the premier tower engineering consulting firm in the United States due to the fact that our team has been in the tower engineering industry since the 1980s and also we have developed our own proprietary tower Engineering Asset Management software suite that is one of a kind.

So our goal for 2016 and beyond is to find partners on each continent in order to penetrate the global markets and share our great wealth of knowledge that we accumulated over the years since the inception of the tower sharing concept.

TowerXchange: How do you think your U.S. expertise could support TES international expansion?

TES principals have all seen the development of the infrastructure sharing model since its very inception in the States. I recall my first request for engineering to add Sprint on an AT&T tower back in the 1980s. It was odd then that the original tower manufacturer declined to analyse the tower since they wanted to sell more towers and not analyse one they sold last year in order to fit additional equipment.

Basically we have been dealing with co-locations for a long time now and probably have touched around 100,000 structures in our projects!

TowerXchange: Finally, please sum up how you would differentiate TES from other engineering firms.

What makes TES unique is that we are the only tower engineering firm that developed their own custom Tower Engineering Asset Management software that sets us apart from any other firm who uses off the shelf tower software.

As soon as we have completed a tower analysis/study our software captures in an SQL database all pertinent information and becomes part of a database for the tower owner that we maintain and serve over our portal free of charge. Basically the tower owner ends up with a free database developed through the standard engineering process we follow.

Also we have several patented solutions for modifying towers and poles and we use our patented monopole modification method in the field for one of the largest tower owners in the States.