Salasar Techno Engineering Ltd has been providing high-quality, safe, adaptable and innovative telecom towers for more than 13 years. Based in India, but with operations globally, Salasar has made its name providing macro sites to Indian mobile network operators. Salasar also offers a range of smaller sites, camouflaged towers and smart poles and are gearing up for the extra sites required for the 5G-era. TowerXchange interviews their Managing Director, Shashank Agarwal and asks about the company’s origins, its innovations and its plans for the future.
TowerXchange: Please introduce your company and the typologies of telecom site which you offer.
Shashank Agarwal, Managing Director, Salasar Techno Engineering Ltd:
Salasar Techno Engineering Ltd started its journey around 13 years ago and is India’s leading provider of steel and infrastructure solutions, with customers spread across the globe. Working in 30+ countries, we have pioneered the design, manufacture and installation of all kinds of infrastructure for the telecom industry with full customisability.
Our diverse product portfolio comprises of everything that the telecom industry needs, including angular towers, tubular towers, hybrid towers, monopoles, camouflaged monopoles, smart city poles, cell on-wheels, skid-base towers, accessories, and more. All that we do is driven by the single purpose of “Building a Stronger World”. Not only are we experts in carrying out turnkey EPC of telecommunication towers, through which we kicked-off operations in just a short span of time, but also our product portfolio has grown to cater for all sorts of infrastructure needs, be it renewable energy, smart cities, power transmission, or India’s ever expanding network of roads and railways.
TowerXchange: How proven are your sites in the field, how many of your structures have been deployed globally?
Shashank Agarwal, Managing Director, Salasar Techno Engineering Ltd:
Since inception, our company has focused on providing safe, rigid and optimised towers to the telecom industry. Salasar Techno have deployed more than 25,000 structures, both in India and globally, for various telecom customers.
Because of our association with M/S Ramboll Telecom we have solidified our proposition in the market as a provider of safe and optimised towers. That has translated into a higher level of customer satisfaction for our various customers.
TowerXchange: As the Middle East enters the 5G era, how do you see the balance of macro sites and other site typologies changing?
Shashank Agarwal, Managing Director, Salasar Techno Engineering Ltd:
The demand for mobile broadband will continue to increase in the next few years, largely driven by the need to deliver ultra-high definition video. However, 5G networks will also be the platform enabling growth in many industries, ranging from the IT industry to the automotive, manufacturing industries, entertainment, et cetera.
5G will enable new applications, for example, autonomous driving, remote control of robots and tactile applications, but these also bring a lot of challenges to the network. Some of these are related to providing low latency in the order of a few milliseconds and high reliability compared to fixed lines. But the biggest challenge for 5G networks will be that the services to cater for a diverse set of services and their requirements. To achieve this, the goal for 5G networks will be to improve the flexibility of their architecture. To cater for the increased demand for seamless connectivity for mobile networks, the industry requires lots of infill sites which translates to demand for small cells and typically standalone towers.
To cater for the increased demand for seamless connectivity for mobile networks, the industry requires lots of infill sites which translates to demand for small cells and typically standalone towers
Towerxchange: When designing new sites and smart city poles how do you balance the concerns of camouflage, cost and structural capacity?
Shashank Agarwal, Managing Director, Salasar Techno Engineering Ltd:
Various ways of reducing the visual impact of mobile towers have been tried in many countries. These include the use of alternative support structures to hide the towers and the camouflaging of towers.
Local administrations in many countries have set standards for the installation of mobile towers in order to minimise any adverse visual effects. International experience indicates that local civic authorities are concerned about the skyline of cities and encourage various techniques like camouflaging and integration of towers with surrounding structures. However, for implementing such techniques additional expenditure is required.
We are focusing our efforts on balancing out the additional cost of camouflaging without compromising on the structural capacity by working alongside local bodies and the industry association. We are advocating that permits for sites and one time permission charges should be removed so that the desired objective of all stakeholders are achieved.
TowerXchange: Tenancy ratios in MENA are currently low, but tower sharing is growing, what are the most economical ways to strengthen a tower structure to accommodate more tenants and more wind load than it was originally designed to accommodate?
Shashank Agarwal, Managing Director, Salasar Techno Engineering Ltd:
Legacy towers during the initial tower rollout stage pose a big challenge for the MENA region because all these towers were typically designed and installed without any provision for additional tenants. This typical issue will pose a big challenge for MNOs in the region. The industry will require lots of safety and technical audits to validate if there is any possibility of accommodating additional tenancies on existing towers. According to our assessment, there is no common solutions or standard solution to provide to address this challenge. There is an urgent need for specific solution for the MENA region to address tower sharing to accommodate more tenants.
TowerXchange: Please describe any innovations you have developed that make your sites resilient to the difficult conditions present in much of MENA. How have these innovations helped reduce costs and improve the re-usability of towers?
Shashank Agarwal, Managing Director, Salasar Techno Engineering Ltd:
The MENA region has its own special requirements for the resilience of telecom infrastructure due to extreme weather conditions. Salasar has a technical collaboration with Ramboll, the world leader in telecom and high mast design. With collaboration from Ramboll, our tower designs are lighter in weight and cost 20% less than conventional towers.
Also, our innovative monopoles designs can endure all types of soil and wind conditions. With large scale deployment, land acquisition and tower aesthetics is becoming a costly challenge even for the telecom giants and monopoles are the need of the hour.
We also provide high quality aesthetic camouflaging for our monopoles, which not only make our sites look better but also make it easier to secure land permits due to less footprint for the monopoles installation.
TowerXchange: Worker safety is of critical importance, what can you tell us about your artificial intelligence solution for health and safety?
Shashank Agarwal, Managing Director, Salasar Techno Engineering Ltd:
Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) is a set of processes, rules, standards, and regulations aimed at the protection of the environment, company employees and society from any damage. The EHS industry is only starting to apply AI to its operations. Companies are slowly but steadily adapting their safety programs to keep pace with evolving technological advances. Our AI provides a significant number of benefits and improvements.
Currently, under our offshoot “Salasar New Age Technologies”, we are working on an AI-based safety program called “Salasar AI Suraksha” which aims to reduce human intervention in safety monitoring.
Our technology can offer intelligent databases with a built-in AI. That means that we can monitor and analyse sustainability data and then compare them to prescribed parameters in order to detect errors or areas that are to be considered. It also provides alerts if thresholds are exceeded or some anomaly is detected.
Another sector where our AI proves its efficiency is predictive maintenance. Based on the data it generates, AI systems can provide recommendations and forecast any failures or accidents.
TowerXchange: What are your visions for the future of your company? Where do you see yourselves in five years from now and what worldwide telecoms developments excite you the most in terms of business development?
Shashank Agarwal, Managing Director, Salasar Techno Engineering Ltd:
Telecom companies are competing in an increasingly fast-paced, complex, global economy. We aim to succeed by navigating where customer needs are fast changing, and extensive technology investment is required.
The transition to 5G is expected to generate a windfall for network, infrastructure, and equipment vendors. We intend to contribute effectively towards the economy as it moves towards 5G. We are trying to discover new markets and new customers, where we can offer our solutions. At the end of the day we want to be known as a company of international standards from India.
For Salasar Techno, the most exciting part of the 5G expansion is that industry will be needing higher number of the connectivity points which in turns converts into lots of infill sites. The additional requirements will provide us a big opportunity and we are fully prepared to ride on this growth opportunity for our future business growth.
