SOLUTION TO POWER PROBLEMS AT BASE STATIONS, BY AKINLABI, INFOTEK BOSS

By Nnamdi Oojiego
The Chief Executive Officer of AAA Infotek Limited, Mr Akinbo Akinlabi has said that his company has developed a solution that would assist telecoms operators to optimize their services and reduce costs.

According to him, it has become worrisome that over 70 per cent of telecoms operators' revenue for BTS and switching sites is spent on power generation and maintenance.

He said to worsen the situation, telecoms operators install power generators with excess energy capacity to avoid network services being shut down due to occasional power surges from some of the components on sites thereby incurring more costs.

'Some base stations across the country are powered with over 17 KVA generator capacity. But in actual fact, what the station needed is 8 to 10 KVA generator. This leads to wastages and constitute environmental and health hazards from the fumes emitted by the generating sets. Bigger generators consume more fuel and emit more carbon monoxide.

'To solve this problem, my company has come up with a solution to help operators optimize and reduce their operation and maintenance costs. Our solution was designed to prevent these surges or normalize them so that power surges are eliminated all together and the station will not shut down nor services disrupted. '

He stated that operations and maintenance determine the life span of any telecoms infrastructure hence, the need for routine checks, which include condition monitoring to verify the stability of performance as compared with commissioned parameters, corrective maintenance as well as repairs to ensure that equipment were operated optimally to last longer. He added that if base stations were properly managed and optimized, over 60 per cent of operational energy can be saved and conserved.

'Operators in Nigeria needs to optimize and improve on energy consumption of their sites installations. With this, over 60% of operational energy can be saved and conserved. When operations and maintenance are properly managed and optimized, it reflects on the environment. When we optimize and save energy, carbon foot print is reduced.'