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The telecom sector, especially the wireless part of it, is witnessing an exponential growth in India. Current industry statistics put the growth at 54% a year. The flip side of this market boom makes it absolutely critical for telecom service providers to ensure that their services are up and running at all times. Today, power management has become so vital that the reputation and success of the service provider depends on consistent and uninterrupted power for the network. Adequate backup is required for power outages.

Thus, reliability becomes the foundation of the system. Power failure can lead to system downtime, resulting in huge revenue losses. And telecom as a segment cannot afford even a second's downtime. With increasing need to provide more content , the need to streamline the power infrastructure becomes even more important for service providers. Increased call handling capability and growing telephone subscriber base has also led to the need for more power at each of the cell sites.

The telecom industry has primarily two kinds of power needs; AC power for Multi-Service Operators (MSOs), data centers and disaster recovery sites, and DC power for Base Transmitting Stations. The power needs of service operators also vary (the power consumption of mobile towers is comparatively less than exchanges).

For fixed-line service providers, the main switch center (MSC) consumes a lot of power and needs precision air-conditioning. Besides, there are billing computers which need to be fed with power backup. Compared to centrally located installations, BTS have different power requirements. Because they are unmanned and exposed to changing climatic conditions, managing remote sites is a big challenge. There are also varying levels of reliability and monitoring required, depending on the criticality of the facility. The total power consumption depends on the BTS configuration at a particular location depending on traffic and subscriber density.

Depending on the requirement, the range of power solutions used by service providers includes UPSes, inverters, gensets, diesel generators (DGs), surge protection and power conditioning solutions.

• Reducing capex and opex: One of the biggest challenge before service providers is how to reduce capex and opex.

• Greater power density: With real estate prices hitting an all time high and the number of cell sites increasing, the challenge for the service provider is to ensure more watts per cubic cm, resulting in higher power density.

  Experts panel

  Pankaj Sharma, country general manager, APC Pradeep Pimpley, vice president, DB Power Ravi Badwal, vice president, telecom business, Emerson Network Power

• Remote power manageability: With multiple locations, it is now important for service providers to have a solution which enables control and monitoring of both software and hardware over the Web.

• Greater redundancy: Power management solutions to have inbuilt redundancy to ensure availability and uptime at all given time.

• Increase in the scale of deployment: The size, along with the number of deployment, has increased substantially. Also, outsourcing of cell sites for deployment, roll out and management is emerging as a huge trend to ensure increased focus on core competencies.

• Network Equipment Providers: There are seven key NEPs; all telecom equipment providers need to ensure to meet NEP requirements.

• High cost of maintenance: The present usage of DGs in some areas will become uneconomical due to their high maintenance costs. For long term usage, service providers have to look at other non-conventional alternatives.

SOLUTIONS
Next generation mobile wireless technologies are being deployed around the world as they can offer both voice and data services at affordable costs and thus can provide even greater access to communications services. With the rollout of 3G services in India by the end of this year, there will be more on-demand data capability on the mobile phone. Increased data exchange would mean need for better quality of power and data availability at all times.

As 3G technology basically revolves around data communication, the power requirement will go up. Apart from more number of cell sites, the power consumption per site would also go up. Power management applications will involve increasing the power density, which is compressing more power in the same space, plus putting in value additions like energy management and prioritizing loads.

The service provider is now seeking an integrated power management solutions rather than point products. PM solutions that ensure minimum downtime along with prompt service and sales support are seen as the need of the hour. The embedded AC/DC power supply grid present in servers, switches, and other devices needs to be monitored. Remote management solutions will thus allow for pre-failure alerts. Service providers are already using solutions that are remotely manageable, easily serviceable, provide predictive failure alerts, and solutions that have lesser components and therefore lesser chances of failure.

Air conditioning systems and large-scale power protection for central office and network switching centers, and surge protection systems for complete protection from power spikes have become the need of the hour.

TECHNOLOGY TRENDS AND DEPLOYMENTS
Mobile service providers are already looking beyond the presently available power sources realizing the fact that any investment done on long term power requirements will reduce the cost of operation in future. Overall, solutions are becoming modular and scalable with focus on remote manageability becoming increasingly important. With increase in efficiency of power management solutions, running costs have taken a downward curve.

Many service providers have installed inverters, from 3 KVA to 20 KVA, having three-phase and single-phase output ratings, compliant with stringent requirement of EMI/EMC interferences required in telecom operations. These inverters work with 48 VDC input and have high DC to AC conversion efficiency.

With the increase in size of networks, the need for centralized and remote monitoring has become increasingly necessary as it helps in lowering the cost of operation and maintenance. However, to manage complex and far-flung networks from remote control sites, UPSs need to be equipped with heterogeneous network management protocols, be flexible enough to incorporate diagnostics and predictive failure technologies such as SNMP, RS-232, HTTP, JMODBUS (building management integration interface). Serviceability of solutions is also a concern so hot swappable batteries are decreasing the mean time to recover (MTTR)

Current trends indicate IT compaction and consolidation of infrastructure. With increase in the number of cell sites and increased power density, the challenge today is to pack more power per cubic cm in the available space. In addition to this, the spiraling real estate prices has led to power management solutions with smaller foot print and in rack mountable format becoming critical.

Also, increased power consumption cost at the service providers' end has led to the need to reduce wastage and look at more cost effective and environmental friendly power sources like solar energy, wind energy and fuel cell technology.

Ratnadeep Gupta
ratnadeepg@cybermedia.co.in