THE cost of acquiring land, solar panels and vandalism are some of the reasons why telecom operators are not embracing renewable energy as alternative energy source to fossil fuels, which is costlier and less environment-friendly.
Chief Executive Officer, Prostar Global Energy Limited, Hyacint Udemba, said that subscribers should not expect any further reduction in end user tariffs because the federal government failed to provide the requisite infrastructure and security to the operators.
According to him, the threat of vandalism is one major factor operators cannot embrace the use of renewable energy even in the face of rising cost of petroleum products.
“The challenges associated with providing renewable energy to the BTS are many. Number one is the capacity of the BTS. The amount of solar panels required will occupy a large surface area and there are problems getting land. They have to pay heavily to all manners of persons and groups. To get a piece of land to install solar panel which will be able to serve about 12,000 watts of power required by each BTS, you require a solar panel of not less than 10,000 watts and that will occupy a surface area of between 50-60 square meters. This is not easy,” he explained.
Udemba, who spoke at the over the weekend in Lagos, also decried the level of insecurity in the country.
“You have to provide security to the solar panels because they will be stolen. If people steal bridge rails, iron pipes used to protect people from running into the Atlantic Ocean, if they steal streetlights, they certainly will steal solar panels. So another factor is the security implication,” he said.
He recalled that the late General Sani Abacha attempted to use solar to power the communication system of the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) but was frustrated as the panels were sabotaged by unscrupulous elements.
“When the late General Abacha was around, he commissioned the use of solar cells to power the railway communication gadgets but within six months of installation, they were all vandalised.
“Abacha was resuscitating rail transportation then and you cannot use the rail without having communication links as they move from one station to the other. Now to make sure that communication is enhanced, solar was used,” he said, lamenting that vandals ensured that it never saw the light of day,” he said.
However, “With the right infrastructure configuration at the cell site, a mobile operator can achieve both capital and operational cost savings, including a reduction in the cost per Watt of power to run each base station, whether from erratic grid supplies or when using diesel and alternative power sources,” says Peter Jackson, director for Communication Components, at Africa Com in Cape Town.
Jackson says: “Our message to operators everywhere is Optimise! Optimise! Optimise! Optimise the air interface, the RF plan, the network design, but don’t forget to optimise the cell site – how it’s equipped, configured and managed.”
Jackson said that while operators in countries such as South Africa and Nigeria were forging ahead with latest technology deployments and progress, many in the rest of Africa, whilst aspiring to latest technology roll-outs, were still relying, for the most part, on their existing 2G assets to deliver core services and revenues.
“Although we see many big operator groups in Africa, they don’t tend to dictate across the board that their regional companies adopt and use technology in a similar way because such an approach just won’t work; every country has its own unique challenges and effectiveness comes down to local decisions. Operating companies have their own legacies and no one size fits all. That’s why bespoke solutions and configurations of equipment at the cell site are so relevant.”
But Jackson has a key message to stress: “Bespoke is often a word which conjures up the image of being more expensive than an off-the-shelf solution. In the case of cell-site enhancement and optimisation solutions, however, bespoke does not need to be expensive and the dramatic improvement in network service capacity and quality such an approach will deliver, together with capex and opex savings, makes it an essential ‘no-brainer’ for operators.”
From using state-of-the-art Bi-Sector Array™ antennas and the latest power converter technology, together with effective engineering O&M regimes, including the latest in PIM (Passive Intermodulation) detection and rectification tools and procedures, cell site enhancement and optimization should be addressed as a matter of urgency for all operators.
Jackson concludes: “If you consider that Nigeria alone has some 20,000 base stations in operation and analysts project the country needs 70,000 to achieve optimum coverage for its rural and urban populations, for just a fraction of those to be underperforming without an effective cell site enhancement and optimization strategy, means operators are potentially throwing away major revenues and are unlikely to be delivering the quality of service they could.”
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