Best practices are nothing but smarter ways to maxmise returns in difficult times. However, to achieve the best results, they need to be followed by all stakeholders in the ecosystem. Passive infrastructure is a combination of several elements and each has its individual best practices as can be seen below.

Customer: A tower company faces several challenges including limited revenue streams (customer base being restricted only to operators), apart from cumbersome processes and sites getting built next to each other. So, a proactive approach should be followed where an operator can search and request for a tower company’s site using a web-based application.

Government: Each state has different norms for approvals. There is, moreover, no effective mandate from the government to optimise the use of the existing towers.Apart from uneven documentation, this also leads to a delay in obtaining approvals, which, for a tower player, poses the risk of losing a key customer. In this situation, the best practice would be to have the authorities step in to ensure a uniform, transparent and effective system.

Financial institutions: The tower industry is not considered an infrastructure sector. Therefore, investors do not get the benefits derived in other infrastructure segments. The best practices here will be for authorities to include the tower business as an infrastructure sector. This will result in increased investment in the industry.

Other tower companies: There is no formal cooperation in the industry. Towers are being built next to each other and multiple tower companies are approaching the same landlords simultaneously, leading to a reduction in tenancies and a hike in site rentals. The best practice to avoid these issues would be that cellular operators assign towers to a single tower company in a certain area/cluster.

Equipment vendors: There are limited tower types offered in the market, and they are mostly latticed. R&D in equipment is also limited. There should be an increased use of monopoles, guyed and camouflaged towers to reduce weight wherever possible. This will reduce the capex, hence improving return on investment for tower companies apart from improving the area’s skyline.

Fuel vendors: The current practice is to subcontract fuel management, which results in inaccurate accounting and pilferage as well as discontent among customers. To avoid this, remote monitoring and innovative fuel management techniques can be adopted. Tower companies should also try to reduce dependency on fossil fuels.

Power companies: The state electricity boards should provide singlewindow clearance to cellular operators and tower companies. Moreover, tower operators should engage rural power generation and distribution companies.

Landlords: Since there is a lack of uniform legislation, agreements with landlords are also not uniform and are mostly one sided. To overcome this issue, a landlord relationship management should be in place, a land bank could be created through a website and there should also be an access mechanism in place to raise grievances.
Nitin Doddihal, Vice-President, Business Development, Asia, ATC

The major objectives of infrastructure management can be listed as zero breakdowns, zero defects, optimal life and availability of equipment, low machine life-cycle cost, maximum productivity of resources and zero accidents.

Best practices in operations management include:

  • Realise the fact that telecom infrastructure management is unique and unparalleled compared to any other engineering service in any other industry
  • Deploy local manpower and create a loyal workforce
  • Synergise activities and offer more avenues for earning for the field staff
  • The principal employer should approach telecom infrastructure operations and maintenance as an opportunity to create more jobs rather than just achieving key performance indicators and service-level agreements.
  • Invest in orientation and grooming of resources, create leaders in geographical regions and support their well-being.

    Best practices for billing and collection include:

  • Split the internet protocol (IP) fee billing into two parts: certified invoice amount of the last month (the amount invoiced, certified by the user and paid by the customer in the previous month. This does not require any further certification, but can be directly paid by the customer’s finance department), and the differential bill amount for the current month (this invoice captures the IP fee of additional sites, loading charges, etc., of the current month, which requires user certification and can take more time for payment).
  • Application of the 80:20 principle in diesel reimbursement ?? agree on a percentage that the operator is willing to pay without user certification. Split the invoice accordingly to one that is paid directly by the finance department of the customer (say 80 per cent) and the other which goes for user certification.

    Best practices in infrastructure asset utilisation include:

  • Maintain transparency and continuity in the interaction between the landlord and the local community
  • Follow the law of the land with complete documentation
  • Pay attention to quality assurance during construction
  • Create a loyal and committed workforce
  • Take the advice of experienced management resources on optimum hardware deployment and shareability.

    These practices will help tower companies meet the commitments made to customers in terms of delivery, quality, time and cost; improve the tenancy ratio to achieve higher capex productivity and profitability; and lower the carbon footprint.
    Jacob Mathew, Vice-President, Network Services, Idea Cellular