Glossary > Tower Asset Monitoring
While cellular towers play a critical role in ensuring the availability of a telecommunication company’s services — the majority of these towers are owned and operated by real estate and private equity companies who lease tower space to telecommunications companies.
Having an accurate snapshot into the current state of a tower, available space, and current leaseholders remains a top priority for companies overseeing cellular towers across the globe.
The latest advancements in key technologies, including drones, autonomous drones software, and digital twin technologies have allowed companies managing cellular towers to gain a greater understanding of their entire infrastructure to identify any potential issues and manage maintenance schedules.
Learn more about tower asset monitoring and how transformative technologies like autonomous drone software are changing telecom asset management.
What is Tower Asset Monitoring?
Tower asset monitoring is the practice of staying aware of the current state of towers throughout the telecommunication infrastructure.
Tower monitoring leverages a wide range of technologies so that operators are always aware of the status of each tower. Telecom infrastructure can span significant distances, including remote areas, so it’s crucial to have the right systems in place to prevent downtime or low-latency services.
Specific Elements of Comprehensive Tower Monitoring
Tower asset monitoring is an umbrella term for the entire practice, but it’s typically composed of several technologies with specific use cases to help providers have full insights into their infrastructure. These elements include:
- Asset monitoring:
Sensors and equipment that allow you to monitor specific parameters, such as humidity, wind, and temperature.
- Transformer monitoring:
Embedded software that provides you with real-time alerts if unsolicited data is detected.
- Generator monitor:
Be aware of fuel levels and power consumption to ensure towers will remain active. This also allows for staying aware of any potential theft.
- Electricity monitoring:
Have a detailed understanding of the energy consumed by the tower’s base stations to identify potential energy theft or overbilling.
- Power outages:
One of the most common reasons for service downtime is power outages. The right monitoring systems provide comprehensive alerts if a power outage occurs so corrective action can be begun.
- Security:
Telecom towers are increasingly targeted by cyber attacks, so having the right cyber security monitoring systems in place is vital to protecting assets.
- Digital twins:
Creating a digital twin not only provides accurate mapping of assets, annotation and tagging opportunities, and measurement, but also detailed reports into all assets under management.
Combined, all of these involved systems give tower companies a comprehensive understanding of their entire infrastructure.
Benefits of Tower Asset Monitoring
Tower asset monitoring is an essential component of dependable, cost-effective operations. Tower companies need to be aware of every tower in their infrastructure so they can take corrective action to keep services online. Some of the key benefits of tower asset monitoring are:
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Stay on top of any power outages throughout the network to deploy service technicians, plan refueling operations for generators, and take other corrective measures.
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Identify any cyber attacks before they become more detrimental, ideally preventing them as a result of monitoring.
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Develop a digital twin, providing you with a portfolio dashboard that gives you a single source of truth for all assets under management and access to inventory AI analytics. Digital twins allow companies to achieve accurate, 3D visualization of your towers so they can identify faults, severity, discrepancies between your asset management system and installed equipment, and to detect unutilized space where additional, revenue generating mounts could be installed.
The latest technologies have enabled organizations to identify additional revenue generating opportunities resulting from unused mounts, as well as the ability to map out equipment so a tower operator fully understands what equipment is currently installed.