WebNMS, the telecom software division of Zoho Corporation, delivers green telecom solutions empowering telcos to compete in hyper active markets like India, the Middle East, and Africa. They allow remote monitoring, fault management, energy efficiency, alert systems, analytics and more.
Recently Greentech Lead interacted with Prabhu Ramachandran, director, WebNMS, to discuss the challenges faced by telcos in India in achieving carbon neutrality and how WebNMS helps them overcome these challenges. Â The interaction follows:
What are the challenges faced by telecom operators in achieving carbon neutrality?
According to TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), telecom towers in India consume nearly 2 billion liters of fuel and emit 10 million tones of CO2 every year. Since 60 percent of the towers are located in energy deficit areas, telecom operators are pressurized to solely depend on diesel generators for powering the towers.
TRAI green telecom telecommunications program has imposed telecom operators to reduce their greenhouse gas emission by 5 percent in the current financial year, with a 17 percent reduction target for 2019. Other issues that are of major concern for the telcos are fuel pilferage at remote site, logistics on fuel replenishment and maintenance of Diesel Generator (DG) sets.
What practical recommendations do you have for them to reduce carbon footprint?
M2M applications have the potential to transform every sector of business and society by enabling proactive decision, process optimization, and creating innovative business models.
As the cell tower sites are spanning across the country in a rapid pace, major challenges faced by cell tower operators are the shrinking margins, increasing carbon footprint and escalating operating costs in maintaining the remote sites.
Optimizing energy consumption and monitoring passive assets across the remote sites by deploying M2M solution will facilitate energy efficiency and effective utilization of passive assets.
Deployment of M2M applications will enable the operators to improve margin by energy management, effective logistics, centralized control of passive assets and secured remote sites.
What are WebNMS’ offerings to help telcos achieve their carbon target?
The role of M2M solutions in a Cell Tower site facilitates to overcome the bottlenecks of operators by drastically reducing operational costs (which includes security, power, and logistics) and averting downtime.
Telcos can achieve their carbon target with WebNMS Cell tower Manager by effective energy management of passive assets and optimum utilization of the battery. Big data and advanced analytics capabilities of WebNMS Cell Tower Manager comprehensive visibility of energy consumption across sites.
WebNMS also provisions operators to switch from diesel generator to battery remotely thus reducing the carbon emission.
Please elaborate on your M2M technologies for the telecom sector.
The massive growth in the telecom industry coupled with telecom tower sharing by multiple service providers increases the need for advanced remote monitoring solution for the thousands of cell tower sites.
WebNMS Cell Tower Manager (CTM) consists of RTU (Remote Terminal Unit) and central monitoring software. The WebNMS CTM enables telecom tower companies to specifically address the operational pain points like fuel and power pilferage, escalating operating costs and environmental concerns, and derive at a solution to optimize asset utilization and reduce carbon footprint.
The easy–to–use client interface coupled with big data analytics capabilities of WebNMS Cell Tower Manager provides a clear picture of the remote assets, their location, performance, energy consumption and  alarm details of the telecom tower site, along with continuous watch on the power input sources at the site, which is the major concern at any cell tower. WebNMS CTM enables improved availability coupled with less downtime and faster replacement of faulty modules.
WebNMS powered telecom site can slash operating costs more than 50 percent, carbon footprint by 35 percent and can surge asset utilization by 98 percent.
How do WebNMS’ offerings differ from competitive products?
WebNMS Cell Tower Manager is a distinctive, ready-to-implement M2M solution for telecom operators from WebNMS. We don’t have direct confrontation with any of the current solutions available in the market.
What are your key markets?
Our key markets are India, Middle East, and Africa. Though M2M is at nascent stage in India comparative to other developing countries, we are realizing growth traction in Middle East and Africa with government initiatives in M2M.
What are the prospects for green telecom in India? How is the market expected to grow in the coming years?
The government has made mandate that all the telecom products, equipment and services have to be assessed on energy for “Green Passport” certification by the year 2017. So, we predict the market size of M2M solutions in telecom industry to be more than $ 800 million with a inclined year-on-year growth.
What is your target (growth/financial) for the next five years? Any expansion plans?
Growth expectations are bullish. It is too early to reveal the target financial for the coming years.
What would be the next innovation from WebNMS for Indian telecom industry?
After extensive R&D, we have launched ready-made solution ‘Cell Tower Manager ‘ for Indian telecom industry.
WebNMS offers award-winning WebNMS M2M Platform that provides cloud-based data integration and application development environment for rapidly building and implementing wide range of M2M applications. Telecom companies can take our M2M Platform and build innovative M2M applications that suit their highly-specialized needs.
Rajani Baburajan