Telecoms are being asked to do more and more with less and less. On one hand, they’re being pushed to deliver an ever more complex set of products and services at ever accelerating speeds. On the other, says Phil Thompson, vice president of client partner executive, Spirent Communications, they’re confronting mounting energy bills, mounting OpEx and CapEx expenditures and in some cases, mounting public disapproval.
Demand for mobile data has grown fast. In fact, global mobile data traffic has grown from 11.51 exabytes per month in 2017 to 77.49 per month in 2022. As a result, telecoms operators are now in heated competition to roll out better services and new products to customers faster than competitors. In turn, OpEx and CapEx expenditures needed to improve those services are mounting.
These combined pressures are all bearing down on the industry in such a way as to make waste in any of these areas an unacceptable proposition. Thankfully, there’s a great deal of waste in telecoms that can be cut right out.
Waste in telecommunications laboratories
For an industry that is pushing the state of global mobile technology forward, the telecoms industry has plenty of space for internal modernisation. In fact, the industry deals with a tremendous amount of waste that by fixing, they could save tremendous amounts of time, money and energy.
We see this most clearly in the way telecoms operators manage their labs. Major operators will generally have a collection of labs which duplicate testing functions and are filled with equipment that is drawing power, even when it’s not being used. Having this inefficiently dispersed group of labs and equipment represents waste that the industry can no longer afford.
Most operators maintain a collection of labs that they use for testing and assurance. A large operator might maintain a few global labs to test products and services as well as a collection of smaller local labs which might test under local conditions. Each individual lab will come with baseline expenses including labour costs, energy costs and even ground rent on the actual sites they’re located. Although these labs often perform the same tests and carry out the same processes, they still exist as separate entities. Because those functions are duplicated, so are the energy, labour, money and time costs.
But within that inefficient arrangement of labs, there are more inefficiencies to be found. Most labs are filled with expensive equipment which draws a tremendous amount of power. In fact, Spirent data shows that 93% of the equipment of the lab gets used less than 50% of the time. To make matters worse, 77% of that equipment is used less than 90% of the time. This may be one of the largest sites of waste in the entire industry. McKinsey states that 85% of energy waste in telecoms comes from factors like idling equipment.
For those operators that are looking to cut costs, lab strategy is a good place to start. Labs are duplicated along with the costs that go along with running, staffing and renting the place. To boot, the expensive power-hungry and inefficiently-used equipment within those labs are also duplicated. This amounts to a poor use of global resources and a significant amount of waste that telecoms labs need to cut out if they want to rationalise their operations.
Efficiency with automation
While those resources are inefficiently used in the manual approach to lab strategy, automation can cut waste and make better use of those resources.
The current lab strategy of many operators disperses labs functions and resources, automation can centralise it. This will ultimately allow them to share those functions, data and resources.
Automation can connect those disparate labs to work in concert. By automating and then federating those labs, operators will be able to consolidate them into a more efficient arrangement which allows them to share data, resources and functions. In turn, they can then cut labour costs, energy consumption and allow de-duplication of equipment to that which is necessary. Spirent data shows that this can decrease operators energy expenditure by as much as 40%.
Automation within the lab will allow better use of equipment too. Instead of having unused equipment running all the time, equipment use can be scheduled as and when it’s needed. Because that equipment is being used more optimally, lab space can also be optimised thus limiting the required space for equipment.
The ability to centrally manage labs through automation will ultimately reduce the time that is required to manage those lab resources by up to 30%.
Furthermore, by maximising productivity of test teams, operators can reduce time to market for new products and services. When lab processes are automated into a Continuous Integration/Continuous Development/Continuous Testing (CI/CD/CT) pipeline they can speed time to market by up to 300 times. The increased throughput and scalability of an automated system can also broaden test coverage by up to 320%.
Modelling the benefits
We’ve actually modelled a large operator using customer data on its journey to lab automation. Before automation our modelled operator maintained 5 main labs along with 7 satellite labs. In bringing automation into labs, our model showed significant savings.
Firstly, the ability to schedule equipment and turn it off when not needed allowed them to save nearly €1 million per year. Next, the lab could save €3.9 million per year through labour savings by reducing the time necessary to carry out tests.
The operator also saved CapEx by requiring 35% less equipment and using necessary equipment more. This also meant they could cut down on licence and maintenance fees. This ultimately saved them €0.8 million per year. In total, this model showed that an operator of this kind could save up to €5.6 million per year.
Pressures will keep rising
It’s unlikely these pressures will abate anytime soon. As the world has globalised and modern life has become ever more interconnected, the telecommunications industry has become a central pillar of modern society. We now expect to be able to video call anyone from anywhere, we expect our mobile devices to connect to the other side of the world in fractions of a second and we expect all the information we want, whenever we want it.
It’s largely been down to developments within the telecommunications industry that have allowed that to happen. Now, we’re on the verge of yet another mobile communications boom: 5G. 5G isn’t just going to allow us to use our phones faster, but help transform the very physical world around us with massive IoT use cases like smart cities and autonomous vehicles.
That growth in relevance is now confronting another globally crucial consideration: Energy. Efforts to cut consumption are underway but collide with market demands for new technology products and services. 5G, for example, will nearly double the sector’s energy consumption, according to ABI research.
Operators need efficiency to keep these myriad external pressures at bay. They can start by looking at the lab.
The author is Phil Thompson, VP, client partner executive, Spirent Communications.
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