Saudi Arabia has launched itself as a global leader in smart infrastructure with the widespread adoption of 5G and numerous megaproject and smart city developments underway. At the centre if this is activity is Saudi Arabian towerco TAWAL who has been pioneering new solutions to support the Kingdom’s continued ICT development.
TowerXchange spoke with TAWALs Chief Operating Officer Abdulrahman Al Moaiqel about the towerco’s new smart pillar solution, Coverage-as-a-Service model and in-building solutions that seeks to redefine the traditional towerco model. Abdulrahman has been COO of TAWAL since the company’s start and has 18 years of technical experience, mostly with Cisco and Ericsson, including rolling out the first 5G network in the kingdom with Ericsson.
Smart pillars: the next step in tower design?
Macro towers are becoming more than just grass and steel: in urban smart cities, connectivity infrastructure has the potential to support a diverse ecosystem of customers and services beyond MNO active equipment.
“The smart pole, pillar or tower is a combination of various smart city applications and services embedded into a unified piece of infrastructure” explains Abdulrahman. “The smart pole features a combination of ‘modular services’ which can be customised by our customers to suit their needs”.
These customization solutions offer a range of different services depending on location and needs. For example, sites located in parking areas can have EV charging nodes added, or if deployed in a public space can provide maps and digital media signage.
“We offer each and every use-case to all our providers and these services can serve multiple use-case owners, not just MNOs”. A single tower can service wifi for an Internet Service Provider, CCTV cameras for a service company, and a 5G small cell for an MNO, all on one single piece of infrastructure.
“We were originally faced with the obstacle that an initial investment was dependent on deploying for a single entity, but now the use-case owner invests only in their own service. This makes it much easier for new customers to integrate their service requirements into existing infrastructure”.
In order to avoid highly complex service agreements, TAWAL breaks down their smart pole portfolios into zones. For example, a park might have 20 smart poles which will all provide a certain type of requested service across all sites within that zone. This avoids the complexities of having to manage various use-case services on a site-by-site basis, instead managing smaller portfolios of smart pillars which are all providing a certain type of requested service.
However, smart poles do not come without their challenges. “The big challenge is small cells as smart pole coverage needs to be designed alongside the umbrella macro coverage for low latency 5G. This requires more complexity in network coverage design, and we are now identifying the right places to deploy smart poles”.
At LEAP, TAWAL showcased their smart pole with ultra-capacity 5G mm waves which cannot be deployed on macro towers and require small cells and in-building networks to deliver. However, by aggregating the macro network with the low latency 5G network they were able to provide a service with 6GB download speeds, a first in Saudi Arabia. TAWAL currently have 1 active smart pillar but are running numerous pilots spread through the Kingdom.
Coverage-as-a-Service means TAWAL plays a greater role in delivering connectivity
Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) is becoming all the rave in Africa, allowing MNOs to build an economic business case for service coverage in the most remote environments. Rural specialists such as AMN and Vanu are mastering a precarious revenue-share model where towercos provide end-to-end connectivity service managing both passive and active infrastructure, receiving a percentage of service revenues rather than charging a fixed-lease rate. This makes rural coverage much less risky and virtually capex-free for MNOs and will play a key role in connecting the unconnected across Africa.
But TAWAL have been exploring a similar, yet different approach to supporting connectivity expansion. “In Saudi Arabia there are some areas where MNOs are not interested in providing a service, mostly because it is not profitable to do so. TAWAL helps improve the business case by providing financial solutions in the form of subsidies, offering a spot on a tower which the MNO can add their active equipment to. We offer to subsidize the cost of the active equipment on their behalf to reduce their capex demands, making the business case to expand their service coverage to a particular underserved area more economical.”
The model came about as a response to local enterprises asking if the towerco could encourage service providers to bring coverage to their area. TAWAL approaches MNOs to provide coverage in a certain location where they have a tower by offering an incentive through subsidizing the equipment on a site TAWAL has selected.
“I do see the CaaS model spreading. Connectivity and broadband are no longer a nice-to-have but a requirement for businesses. However, MNOs cannot justify building a complete network where there isn’t enough traffic to justify the investment.”
“Given the long-term revenue approach of the tower model, we recognize that TAWAL can act as the intermediary to create the business case for the MNO. In time, that connectivity will encourage more economic activity in the area, leading to further data demands and therefore making network coverage profitable for the MNO.”
Saudi Arabia’s telecommunications regulatory body, the CITC, has been very supportive of the CaaS model, adopting the necessary regulation, providing the right guidelines and working closely with TAWAL since inception.
Bringing connectivity in-doors
With macro towers unable to provide the low latency, high traffic networks needed to deliver 5G in-doors, the demand for in-building solutions (IBS) is growing significantly. However, while some key buildings such as hospital, stadiums and shopping centers may guarantee high data traffic, not all buildings offer such a clear business case for IBS deployment.
TAWALs IBS model aims at rectifying this challenge that MNOs face. “Our IBS proposal is coming to solve the business-case challenge that MNOs face where there needs to be enough traffic in each Individual building to justify the building and operating of an in-door coverage network”.
In addition to building IBS networks on request for MNOs, “TAWAL has created a new solution built on a subsidy model, which asks building owners and managers to subsidize IBS to drop down the cost of inserting active equipment for the MNOs. We then invite MNOs to bring their active equipment to connect to the site and only pay the operation and maintenance fees”.
“All IBS sites are built with the ability to colocate operators, and we offer tenancy discounts with colocation. While the number of tenants we can host on our IBS network depends on the radio equipment, TAWALs standard designs can support all 3 MNOs in the Saudi market.”
Traditionally IBS systems have been owned by the MNOs and towercos have been less interested in exploring an IBS ownership model. However, as towercos are becoming increasingly skilled in building and managing IBS, and demand from MNOs is increasing, the economics of an IBS leasing model is becoming increasingly feasible.
Having acquired a license to deploy IBS in 2020, the towerco is already working on the next stage in towerco services. Although macro sites will remain the staple of TAWALs portfolio, towercos will need to look towards new service verticals to support their customers growing need for 5G connectivity solutions.
Want to hear more about TAWALs commercial strategies in exploring new smart infrastructure solutions? Join us at TowerXchange Meetup MENA on 13-14 March in Dubai alongside the MENA tower ecosystem.
