Cougar Co-location Services and Logistics

Co-location or sharing of telecom infrastructure among telecom service providers is becoming the requirement and process of business in the telecom industry where competitors are becoming partners in order to lower their increasing investments. The degree and method of infrastructure sharing can vary in each country depending on regulatory and competitive climate.

Telecom Infrastructure

Basically a cell site consists of electronic (active) and non-electronic infrastructure.

• Electronic infrastructure includes base tower station, microwave radio equipment, switches, antennas, transceivers for signal processing and transmission.
• Non-electronic infrastructure includes tower, shelter, air-conditioning equipments, diesel electric generator, battery, electrical supply, technical premises and easements & pylons that account for nearly 60 percent of network rollout costs.

Infrastructure Sharing

There are multiple possible options of sharing amongst telecom service providers. However this sharing also depends on telecom regulatory and legislation.

Passive Infrastructure Sharing, is sharing non-electronic infrastructure at cell site and it is becoming popular in telecom industry world wide.

Active Sharing, is sharing electronic infrastructure.

Spectrum-sharing concept is based on a lease model and is often termed ‘spectrum trading’. An operator can lease a part of its spectrum to another operator on commercial terms. Though this mechanism, along with that of MVNOs, exists in the US, Europe, Singapore and Australia.

Node B Sharing (Base Station Sharing) Base station sharing is prospective while each operator: maintains control over logical Node B so that it will be able to operate the frequencies assigned to the carrier, fully independent from the partner operator and retains control over active base station equipment such as the TRXs that control reception/transmission over radio channels. Radio network controller and core network are not shared here.

Site Sharing, Sharing site including antennas and mast; this may also hold BTS, Node B in UMTS context and common equipments such as Antenna system, masts, cables, filters and shelter.

Cougar’s core business is providing but not limited to antenna space on her towers that can accommodate multiple tenants (“co-location”). Cougar intends to capitalize on the continuing increase in the use of wireless communication services by actively marketing space available for provisioning on her existing cell sites and selectively developing or acquiring new cell sites that meet her return on investment standard.

Cougar is registered with the National Communication Commission (NCC) as an Infrastructure Provider. The Company builds, leases, buys, owns, operates and maintains Passive and Active Network Infrastructure on a shared basis in order to cater to the rapidly growing infrastructure needs of telecom operators in Nigeria.

Benefits to Telecom Operators

• By outsourcing their infrastructure requirements to Cougar, operators are able to save on CAPEX and OPEX.
  
  
• Availability of ready infrastructure from Cougar enables the operators to reduce their time to market
  
  
• By outsourcing their infrastructure requirements to Cougar , operators are able to focus on their core activities of providing quality service, brand building and customer relationship
  
  
• Operating and maintaining the passive infrastructure in the cell sites is a cumbersome task, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas where power supply is intermittent.
  
  
• Cougar serves as a single window one-stop-shop provider of infrastructure and services to telecom operators by undertaking the full range of responsibilities in building and maintaining the sites.
  
  
• Site acquisition, site design, equipment sourcing, material logistics and supply chain management, site construction, vendor management, labour management, project management, site operation and maintenance, Site security and Site uptime are the areas where the operator has to focus today, though these do not fall into operator’s core business. Cougar provides one-stop-shop for passive infrastructure needs as listed above allowing operators to channel their time and sundry resource to their core business.
  
  

One stop shop for passive infrastructure

Cougar infrastructure management aims at fulfilling the outsourcing out tracking requirement of telecom operators in managing their networks. Cougar’s role in partnering with Telecos, assist them to increase the profitability and gain competitive advantage by taking care of non-core business and facilitating new services.

Cougar takes full responsibility of network and services operation activities on behalf of customer, i.e. Operator or OEMs. The undertaking can range from planning, design and deployment of the customer’s network as well as management of the day-to-day operations which includes field services according to set SLA’s. Infrastructure management, network availability and network performance optimization. Our customers benefit from continuously improving technical and operational capabilities that boost network efficiency and quality and substantially reduce OPEX and CAPEX demand.

Cougar is positioned to work with our customers through different business models that are tailored to meet the operational and financial thrust of the customers.

• Cut OPEX and CAPEX while boosting efficiency.
• Predictable Network and operations performance
• Flexibility to focus on revenue-generating activities.