PhilTower drone application elevates infrastructure and operational effectiveness, boosts digitalization
PhilTower Consortium Inc., the country’s leading digital shared infrastructure provider, announced an operations partnership with SiteSee and QNSI to digitize 1,350 cell towers purchased from Globe last September 2022.
The SiteSee digital twin platform, combined with QNSI field surveys and audit tools, is enabling PhilTower to optimize its infrastructure and capture new revenue opportunities faster. The combination of SiteSee’s advanced tools and QNSI local service delivery capability is step by step replacing traditional engineering inspections and enhancing asset management practices.
The digitization of Philtower cell sites began in December 2022 with the aim of improving the information exchange and collaboration with its clients (the MNOs) by providing a more comprehensive and streamlined process for asset management, more accurate co-location identification and built quality compliance. Drones based survey by QNSI are full integrated in the comprehensive site audit services. SiteSee processes the drone images into accurate 3D models. For each cell site the SiteSee Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms are applied to render a digital twin of the assets.
This partnership with SiteSee as the technology principal and QNSI, a local project management and service provider partner, has quickly enabled this new technology to be integrated into PhilTower workflows.
Devid Gubiani, CEO of PhilTower, said, “Digital transformation is revolutionising our industry, and I am proud that PhilTower has taken the lead on this. These state of art technologies like drones and AI help streamline and accelerate our operations and provide enormous benefits for our customers as it creates transparency and speeds up transactions. Apart from the advanced technology applied, digitalizing our tower portfolio is a demanding task in terms of logistics and managing large field operations. QNSI’s local knowledge in rolling out large-scale field operations nationwide has proven to be a critical success factor in getting the program off the ground.”
P T Pawar, Chief Operations Officer of PhilTower, said “The drone audit resulted into operation efficiency in terms of accurate and detailed asset registers, reduce truck rolls and audit time, accelerate loading analysis, ease of co-location process and deployment. We also anticipate the potential saving in future tower preventive maintenance cost. This strategic partnership is one of our steps towards digitalisation and modernisation of distributed assets.”
Matti Jokinen, Director of QNSI, said, “Deploying drones as part of our services was new to us, but from the onset, the advantages were clear. We have quickly trained our existing staff for the technology and equipment. It has become just ‘another tool in the box’ that makes our work more efficient and safe for our staff while providing us the capability and scale to support the industry in its digitalization drive. We currently operate a fleet of 20+ drones, which allows us to audit over 200 sites per month with more pilots in training to meet the market demand. We typically capture over one thousand photographs or well over one gigabyte of data per site, which will ensure the AI algorithms can provide close to 100% accuracy in the automatic detection of antenna loading and structural issues such as missing bolts or corrosion.”
David Pash, Director of SiteSee, said, “We are delighted to partner with PhilTower and QNSI in the Philippines. Our digital platform has been built from the ground up over the last six years to cater to the specific needs of the global TowerCo industry. We now have a global customer base and are excited to be introducing our technology to the Philippines wireless telecom market.”
About PhilTower
PhilTower is an Independent Tower Company in the Philippines registered with the DICT. PhilTower designs, builds and operates digital infrastructure in partnership with Mobile Network Operators (MNO). It is a joint investment between Macquarie Capital and Pan-Asian Digital Shared Infrastructure group: Global Network, Inc. With a comprehensive portfolio of deployment, PhilTower also provides innovative outdoor solutions such as camouflage sites, micro poles, green towers, and Smartpoles.
About SiteSee
SiteSee is an Australian technology company that offers global TowerCo operators (TowerCos) a unique solution built on proprietary AI and digital twin technology. The advanced SaaS platform has been designed to accelerate revenue generation, maximize new revenue opportunities, and streamline the asset management process. The platform provides a ‘single point of truth’ for asset management decisions by accurately capturing equipment type, position, elevation, antenna tilts, and other important data on the first attempt. SiteSee’s AI engine then automatically generates important data such as equipment comparison, EME radiation plumes, rust reporting, and bolt-hole anomalies.
About QNSI
QROI Network Services Inc. “QNSI” offers a comprehensive service portfolio for mobile network operators, independent tower companies, and network equipment vendors and has grown to be a leading Telecom Service Provider in the Philippines with a nationwide presence and field services team pool of over 200 multi-disciplined engineering teams engaged in various projects ranging from Project Management Consultancy, Operation and Maintenance Services, Asset Audits and Deployment services covering common towers, mobile networks, and renewable energy solutions.
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