Erratic power supply, still major challenge facing telecom industry
Written by Miebi Senge
Monday, 13 October 2008
AT the worldwide launch of the ZAIN Group brand last August in Lagos, the company’s chief executive officer, Mr. Bayo Ligali listed power supply as the bane of Nigeria’s poor quality of service in the telecom industry. It has become a central theme, unfortunately, government functionaries who
Ndukwe
should know have refused to calm public nerves. The issue of irregular public supply runs across in the country and has cost several industries to shut down due principally to the high operational cost.
But telecom for obvious reasons seem to be taking the bashing as the only functioning utility. Nigerians have grown use to mobile phones since its inception in 2001, and the reliance on this service has led to public outcry against any perceived drop in the quality of service. Operators cry for improvement in the quality of public power supply have not doused the public call for improvement in the QoS of mobile services. Now with subscriber base at over 55 million, Nigeria is the biggest mobile market in Africa and one of the fastest growing in the world. Last week, Ahmad Farroukh, CEO, MTN Nigeria reinforced the argument for improved public power supply as panacea for attainment of sustainable development and improvement in the QoS of the mobile services.
“OUR major challenge is the public power supply at the root of over 70 per cent of all network threats/failures. Erratic power issues drastically affect the efficiency and effectiveness of the network availability and roll-out,” said Mr. Farroukh, at the just concluded Commonwealth ICT Summit (CTO) held in Abuja. He stated that the company presently combines “utility electricity and self provisioning as a means of meeting it’s AC power requirements.” Farroukh noted that the effect of the erratic public power situation in Nigeria affects the mobile operations in five principal/critical areas of:
* Erratic networks availability * Huge/persistent capital expenditure * Huge/persistent operational expenses * Insecurity and vulnerability of telecom infrastructure, and * Environmental and community challenges.
To overcome the above challenges, Farroukh who spoke on the subject: ‘Powering Telecommunications Infrastructure’ at the CTO 2008, said the country requires an efficient reliable public power supply system to meet the telecom needs nationwide at a cost efficient pricing rate, which would eventually curtail reliance on alternative power generation and supply.
The MTN power generation in comparison to the public power supply, Farroukh noted, is placed at ratio 1:3 which impacts greatly on its overhead running cost. The resultant effect is a huge capital expenditure with “very high swap-out of generator units i.e, over 1, 500 units/annum (MTN Nigeria has over 9500 generator units in the system). Very high swap-out of Auto-transfer switch (ATS) pannels due to continuous damage from sporadic PHCN (public energy company) supplies. The panel switches between generators 1 & 2 on site with a public mains power inlet to serve as the overriding channel.
“High rate of swap-out of air-conditioning units due to incessant damage from public mains power system quality; and high rate of swap-out of all power systems/ratio/TX equipment due to intermittent PHCN supplies”.
With all it’s units running on generators on a 24-hour daily basis on over 80 per cent, the operational cost analysis he said, is astronomical. Diesel is priced at over $112 million pa, which is only a part of running the plants. Other factors include: High generator maintenance cost; high and inconsistent PHNC connection charges nationwide; and cost of frequent movement back and forth (by MTN staff) to various sites to rectify power related faults. Cost implications
The daily maintenance of these plants across the country shows an average of N160.00 per unit of kWh running an independent power generator. But matched against the public power supply, which includes vat, metre mtc, would only cost the company N8:00. The daily BTS consumption is 365, 000 lts; 12 switching centres at 29, 000 lts, totaling 394, 000 lts. Monthly it adds up to 10, 089, 000 lts (BTS), 864, 000 lts (12 switch centres) totaling 10, 953, 000 lts. It adds up annually to (BTS) 121, 072, 000 lts, 10, 368, 000 lts (for 12 switch centres) which totals 131,440, 000 lts.
Looking at the above cost implications, Farroukh stated that MTN Nigeria is in the “process of testing a variety of hybrid solutions combining solar, wind, batteries and inverters in a variety of combinations to ensure a renewable energy system that will provide clean and reliable electricity.”
He listed advantages of using biofuels as alternative source of energy to power the base stations to include clean energy and environment friendliness. “Collectively, biofuel includes a wide range of materials that are digested or gasified to produce methane or biogas, or those that are burned directly such as wood chips and pellets. Standalone solar and wind solutions have disadvantages such as being unable to carry cooling systems and also due to substantial cost implications. Environmental safety is also an issue as certain batteries are sensitive to temperature variations and can contain or produce highly corrosive and harmful substances/gases demanding constant monitoring”.
To ensure a long time sustainability in the phenomenal growth of the country’s telecom industry in the last seven years, Farroukh submitted that the Nigerian government should guarantee the “quality and availability of PHCN power supply to ensure sustainable telecom development by fast tracking and prioritising the proposed sector reforms of the Energy Industry.”
There is also the issue of insecurity of telecom infrastructure occasioned by the irregular power supply. The effect is a high demand for alternative ac power generation systems (i.e, diesel generators), high rate of generator, diesel, transformer and AC theft on all the base states which adversely affects the network output negatively.
“All MTN sites are manned by private security agencies but thefts occur because thieves tend to be adequately armed with ammunition, e.g; guns, self loading trucks,” said Farroukh.
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