Tackling real-world cell tower operations challenges

In this recent article from RCR Wireless News, Radix IoT VP of Engineering Aaron Asbra discusses the unique challenges of managing Cell Towers, and what a data analytics solution needs to meet the telecom industry's specific requirements.

It’s no secret that today’s Cell towers are essential to everything from emergency services to our daily smartphone usage. With nearly two million sites managed by the top 100 global cellular tower companies, it’s no surprise that these critical infrastructure hubs face enormous pressures to maintain reliability while adapting to new and evolving technologies and systems.

The real-world challenges in maintaining uninterrupted cell tower operations that keep operators up at night are complex and practical. Operators managing thousands of towers spread across remote locations of critical equipment requiring 24/7 uptime, list five major challenges:

• High volumes of alerts and maintenance issues: a typical operations center receives over one million monthly alarms–from generator fuel levels to lighting system failures. Alerts from this information fire hose must be prioritized to identify those needing immediate attention.

• Regulatory compliance pressures: managing towers that affect air traffic safety requires operators to prioritize and then file FAA reports of these alarms––often in under 30 minutes. With millions of monthly alarms received, a dedicated team scrambles to prioritize, fill out forms for each alarm and submit them to the FAA while meeting a tight deadline. Missing the 30-minute deadline is not an option and can have serious consequences.  

• Modernization challenges: upgrading infrastructure without service interruptions for millions of customers requires special solutions that can evolve, and scale as needed. These solutions must seamlessly integrate with both new technology and legacy systems without interrupting connectivity.  

• Managing rising costs: energy consumption alone is a massive expense, and with exponential data usage growth, cell tower operators need energy-efficient solutions. Not to mention the costly new spectrum licenses and equipment upgrades, which further challenge balancing operational expenses with network expansion. 

• Cybersecurity: the more networks are interconnected the more vulnerable they become to cyber threats. Operators must protect not just their physical infrastructure, but the massive flow of sensitive data through their networks–not to mention that expanding coverage to remote or underserved areas where monitoring and infrastructure security remain logistically challenging. 

Meeting daily operational challenges

Meeting real-world stringent alarm management issues requires data analytics solutions that can intelligently filter through millions of alerts. These solutions must reduce the noise while still maintaining data aggregation down to the second. Operators can’t do this without solutions that zero in on issues needing immediate attention.

Also, the solutions selected must bridge legacy systems with new technologies to ease network modernization challenges. Seamless integration of old and new equipment into a single, unified monitoring system is critical to expedite modernization at pace without any operational disruptions. 

To manage the ever-rising costs, operators need solutions that can automate routine monitoring tasks to eliminate unnecessary truck rolls and reduce operational expenses. Real-time energy consumption monitoring can identify network inefficiencies, while predictive maintenance capabilities can prevent costly equipment failures before they occur.  Solutions providing robust protection in every layer can safeguard against cybersecurity by providing end-to-end data encryption, secure access controls and comprehensive audit trails.  

Meeting the telecom industry’s specific needs

Before selecting a data analytics tool, telecom operators must ensure solutions meet the telecom-specific industry needs and integrate with existing telecom network infrastructure–without equipment “rip and replace.” Interoperability with most hardware and support standard protocols will allow operations modernization without equipment replacements. These solutions should be able to manage millions of data points across thousands of locations and still reduce operational complexity. 

Since scalability is paramount to telecom operations, highly scalable solutions are important as new towers, devices, or entire regional networks are added. Providing polling engines that can scale to handle increased loads and maintain uninterrupted monitoring will ensure smooth operation critical to cell tower services.

Automating data analytics can allow operators to shift valuable staff time away from processing alarms to focus on coordinating maintenance visits and managing regulatory requirements across tens of thousands of locations. Automated processes can prioritize and handle actionable items such as automating FAA notification filing and tracking resolved issues and updating systems accordingly. Intelligent automation can also eliminate unnecessary repair visits and free staff to focus on more strategic tasks.

Intelligent automation and proactive management must be bolstered as we manage 5G (and eventually 6G) rollouts that further increase operational complexity. Market solutions must evolve constantly to meet industry-specific needs while staying ahead of trends.

Automation solutions, however, can’t be overly complicated–those that are profoundly intuitive are embraced most by tower operators needing to meet their current operational challenges in this rapidly evolving industry.