Phil-Tower Consortium Inc. (PhilTower), in partnership with PowerX, a data intelligence platform for optimizing tower energy infrastructure, announced the transformative results of their year-long strategic collaboration.
This partnership, initiated in late 2023 and extended from the original 1,350 sites to 3,500 sites, delivered substantial capital expenditure (capex) and operational expenditure (opex) savings, enhanced operational efficiency and significant reductions in energy usage across PhilTower’s network.
The company said that in the six months since PhilTower began leveraging PowerX’s AI-driven data intelligence, it identified and eliminated diesel generators (DG) at 50 percent of its locations, transitioning to battery backup systems.
This yielded nearly half a million US dollars in generator open savings and reduced annual carbon dioxide emissions by over 700 tons.
The streamlined operations, enabled by reduced DG usage and full visibility into the tower estate, also lowered maintenance costs, decreased mean time to repair (MTTR) by 30 percent and increased network availability to 99.98 percent.
This boosted telecom customer data usage and revenue while reducing annual open by an additional half a million US dollars in fuel savings.
“Applying data science tools and optimizations to over a thousand sites within half a year is a significant milestone for PhilTower. Our commitment to digitalization has transformed our network, enabling rapid sale and leaseback transitioning, full remote asset visibility, efficient operations, and data-driven decisions that optimize capex and open – passing those savings to our customers while increasing uptime by three hours per site per month,” said PhilTower chief executive Devid Gubiani.
“We now have the tools to maximize asset leverage and drive revenue, creating a 21st-century tower network with next-generation maintenance and proactive energy efficiency plans. With PowerX, we optimize our distributed assets using a range of KPIs and have set ambitious targets to deliver substantial growth and value to our stakeholders, including unparalleled service to our mobile operators and ambitious carbon reduction initiatives,” he said.
PhilTower said comprehensive battery health assessments and targeted investments of over $2.8 million into battery replacements and upgrades are set to optimize backup capabilities while right-sizing capex.
The automation of reporting and decision-making processes also reduced operational workloads and improved the efficiency of alarm and trouble ticket management through closed-loop operational workflows – reducing the need for human intervention.
PhilTower said it is set to continue its modernization journey with initiatives including hybrid power installations, solar energy integration, cooling optimizations and power system consolidations.
Armed with critical insights into the health status of its network and energy growth projections, PhilTower anticipates saving over $1.5 million in the coming year and reducing CO2 emissions by nearly 10,000 tons annually – reinforcing PhilTower’s commitment to sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective tower operations.
These initiatives are extended with an additional 2,000 towers across the region when PhilTower completes its anticipated merger with Miescor Infrastructure Development Corporation (MIDC), bringing the estate to a total of 3,500 optimized towers.
“We are delighted that PhilTower is seeing immediate and strategic benefits from the data-driven optimizations and automation provided by the PowerX platform. This collaboration highlights our pioneering role in leveraging deep data analytics, AI, and machine learning to deliver outstanding network efficiency,” said PowerX chief executive Andrew Schafer.
“The PowerX platform has empowered PhilTower’s teams to drive operational excellence, enhancing asset and energy performance and integrating data intelligence for future energy programs. Together, we are raising the bar, setting a new standard for network intelligence and site efficiency in the Philippines,” he said.
