Solaris Technologies: The world’s strongest mobile tower?

You don’t have to spend long talking to Evelyn Torres for it to become apparent that she has a contagious passion for robust mobile towers! Evelyn and her management team at Solaris Technologies have over a century of field experience, and when they saw a gap in the market for a rugged, safe, user-friendly Cell On Wheels (COW), the renowned ToughTowers™ range was born. TowerXchange caught up with Evelyn and COO Steve Clark to find out more...

TowerXchange: Where does Solaris Technologies fit in the telecoms infrastructure ecosystem?

Based in Texas, Solaris design and manufacture the unique ToughTowers™ Cell On Wheels (COW).

When I was working at Nokia and NSN for nine years, I found there was a void in the marketplace for a tough, high quality, quick deployment tower solution for disaster response, events and to bridge gaps in network rollout. With no good inventory to go to, I decided to build it myself! So I launched my own company, Solaris Technologies, and developed the ToughTower™ range, which we believe to be the most robust and rugged, off-road tower solution in the world. ToughTower™ is certainly the strongest tower structure available in the US in terms of weight limitations and wind speeds - we have designs that are genuinely hurricane-proof.

ToughTower™ is high quality product range designed to be safe, user-friendly, technology agnostic and competitively priced.

In addition to our main focus on ToughTower™ mobile, fixed and mini towers, Solaris Technologies also have a repair centre for telecom equipment, we build our own fibre optics, and we manufacture transceivers.

TowerXchange: What is the market size and use cases for mobile towers or COWs?

It’s an event driven market. There are three main use cases: disaster recovery, supplementary capacity at live events, and interim replacement service provision when towers are damaged or upgraded.

ToughTower™ has been deployed in several disaster recovery contexts, such as in response to the recent hurricane, fires and tornadoes in the Philippines. ToughTower™ is also used to provide overflow capacity when fixed assets can’t cope with the additional traffic generated by live events, for example when the Pope visited the Americas there were millions of people along the route, and you can imagine what that did to the mobile network - we provided a solution to provide supplementary bandwidth.

In another example, we deployed ToughTowers™ at the Texas Motor Speedway to supplement carrier networks for the big Nascar event - ToughTowers™ were the only units big enough to handle upwards of 900lbs of antennas. In fact, we’ve developed even stronger towers for American Tower.

In terms of the size of the market for mobile towers, we’ve been told that AT&T has hundreds of such structures just for events, and T-Mobile has a similar inventory.

TowerXchange: How can ToughTower™ enable network extension and backhaul links where there’s no fibre?

In mountainous regions such as in Brazil, there may not be an opportunity to tie into physical fibre networks. Because ToughTower™ is head and shoulders above the competition in terms of robustness, it’s a great choice for microwave backhaul links, which have a small aperture (1% or less) for connectivity. ToughTower™ provides a direct point to point microwave link as well applications or AP options where there’s no fibre.

TowerXchange: Are ToughTowers™ available to lease or purchase?

We recognise that capex budgets are tight, so we’ve developed options to flex budgets. While preferences between capital purchase and lease options vary between geographies, we’re increasingly shifting to leasing models with towercos and turnkey infrastructure builders.

TowerXchange: Tell us about the logistics of deploying ToughTowers™.

We are a global partner, we’ll ship anywhere and we’ll respond fast! Solaris has all of Latin America and the US covered - we have agreements with all the wireless service providers and leading integrators - ToughTower™ is the go-to solution for any complicated site.

We have a hand holding process throughout the lifecycle of the unit. We may start with some custom design modifications, and we provide tech support through our 24 hour support line. We never deliver a unit without certification and training; education is critical to safety and to understanding the different usage applications of ToughTower™. I like to use a luxury vehicle analogy - when you go to the dealership they know your name, they have backup units if you need one right away. We’re very hands on, and everyone is involved - we don’t just sell units and look to the next deal.

Because my leadership team have been in the industry for over 100 years between us, we have real field experience, we understand the technology, how it’s changing, and the challenges of cash, location and timing. Solaris understands the applications and locations in which carriers, towercos and integrators use our solutions, we’re happy to make customisations, which is why we’re the first people our clients call.

Steve Clark, COO, Solaris Technologies: Tier one carriers have deep and wide talent; loads of RF engineers and cabling experts and NOC engineers, but they don’t always have portable tower expertise.

We don’t make any assumptions about deployment, so Solaris provide the initial deployment, as well as rigorous certification and training. Safety is at the heart of everything we do. I’ve heard some horror stories from the deployment of quick, inexpensive towers - there’s a risk of seeing these as disposable assets, and of not paying due attention to safety. That’s not the case with Solaris. We have redundancies and patented, proprietary safety features.

Logistically all you need is a Ford F350 and you can drive a ToughTower™ up the side of a mountain, into the desert, wherever - deployment logistics are simple. The key is understanding in advance the nuances of the location and environment in which it’s to be deployed - the geography, application and security requirements, enabling us to take measures to prevent vandalism and theft and keep it safe.

TowerXchange: What can you tell us about the cost of ToughTower™.

We’re not the most expensive and not cheapest solution on the market! To understand the real costs of deploying ToughTowers™, our clients would have to give you that number, as corporate overheads and real estate acquisition costs are also key components of any deployment.

To give you an example, we were able to respond within a week to use a ToughTower™ to replace a non-functioning tower, but the biggest challenge was the limited real estate available in this urban area and finding the distance necessary for guying - such deployments are very different from applications in the remote hinterland.

So while the total cost of deployment depends on the application and real estate, basic unit prices are available on our website, and we’re very competitive!

If there were a means of quantifying safety, we’d have the best ratio of dollars to safety units in the business!

TowerXchange: Response time must be a critical factor in your business.

Response time is essential to our clients, and we’re extremely passionate about this - we’re all about creating value for our clients.

There are a lot of people touting rapid deployment towers, but by the time you factor in time delays, and the cost of them nickel and diming you for different use cases, they can work out a lot more costly. We invite our clients to call us in the middle of the night if they’ve had an emergency - we always have ToughTowers™ in inventory, we’ll do our compulsory standard safety check, and they’ll be ready for delivery in 24 hours. We have drivers and utility vehicles ready to driver anywhere on the North or South American continent.

Solaris has a ‘just in time’ culture; we have a different attitude and we understand our customers because we’ve all been in their shoes.

TowerXchange: Can ToughTowers™ be used in multi-tenant contexts?

ToughTowers™ can handle two to three tenants, even four tenants on some models, without any problems. ToughTower™ has a better wind-load capacity than competitive cell on wheels solutions.

TowerXchange: Finally, how would you differentiate Solaris Technologies from competitive rapid deployment towers?

Most companies that design and sell mobile towers think about tower mechanics, design, lease costs, and efficient structural engineering. Solaris is different - we are former network engineers ourselves, so our solution is driven by the needs and Service Level Agreements of our customers. We design products to perform in the field.

Our team have spent years at Nokia and Lucent beta test sites - we know what goes wrong, and we knew there was a need for a robust solution; ToughTower™ - there’s nothing quite like it on the market.

Evelyn Torres, CEO, Solaris Technologies: We eat, breathe and (occasionally!) sleep the application of our mobile towers. Most companies make a product then try to match it to a market need - I was motivated by the market’s needs then made a product to meet those needs!