Planex on the Argentinian tower industry

Planex Technology started its operations in Argentina over twenty years ago and since then has become an established service provider in over fifteen countries. We had the pleasure to discuss the Argentinian telecom sector in general, the opportunities for the tower industry with LTE imminent, and the challenges of import limitations with Planex President, Marcelo Krimer.

TowerXchange: Please tell us about Planex Technology, its activities and geographical footprint

Planex Technology was established in Argentina in 1992 with the mission to provide technology solutions for the telecom industry.

To date, we are active in various Latin American countries with offices in Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, Venezuela and Colombia as well as operations in Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, St. Martin, Belize, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Moreover, we have had an office in Miami since 2002.

We offer engineering and technology services to carriers, OEMs as well as telecom cooperatives, corporations and governmental entities. Our array of services include project engineering, site analysis, installation and integration of services, support and maintenance of systems et cetera.

Planex employs over one hundred employees and the majority of our staff are engineers with a very wide range of expertise on network access, satellite and wireless networks as well as fibre optic installation. We started with a focus on testing services for network quality control and since then we have been able to add more specialised services to our portfolio.

Since 1996, we have started offering value added services in Argentina which include voicemail platforms, SMS and pre-paid service platforms, and we are now actively supporting clients all over Latin America.

Five years ago, we got involved in the machine to machine business which we foresee as a growth area in the market. Therefore, we support our customers to manage remote services, monitor the status of their equipment as well as towers through specialised software.

Our key clients are carriers from across Central and South America but we are starting to work with tower companies on a variety of issues.

TowerXchange: Can you give us a brief overview of the telecom market in Argentina? 

Argentina hosts four active carriers and one MVNO.

In 1990, the government decided to privatise the telecom sector. Breaking the previous monopoly of ENTel resulted in the market being split into two areas with the north managed by a consortium between Telecom Italia and France Telecom - Telecom Argentina - and the south controlled by Spanish Telefonica.

To date, América Móvil’s Claro is the leading carrier with approximately 21 million subscribers, followed by Telefonica’s Movistar (17 million subscribers), Telecom Argentina’s Personal (16 million subscribers) and Nii Holdings’ NEXTEL with around 2 million subscribers. Argentina has one of the highest penetration rate of the region at 147%.

A few years ago, the government established ARSAT as part of the Argentina Connected Program with the aim of installing over 50,000 Km of Federal fibre-optic network in the country. This project will allow access to areas yet to be covered and will enable municipalities to build their own local network to connect to the main fibre-optic backbone.

TowerXchange: Is there much activity in the independent tower industry in Argentina? 

With regards to its tower industry, Argentina has not yet developed a strong market for tower companies and I believe that the process will gain speed once 4G LTE becomes a true priority for carriers. At that point, the country will need thousands of new towers and the logical solutions will be to welcome tower companies with the right expertise and knowledge. The development of 4G LTE network in Argentina is a political decision which will be reached in the near future in light of the growing demand of broadband services.

TowerXchange: Which of your offered solutions are currently most in demand in Latin America and what are the drivers behind that growth in demand?

I would say that our offering varies depending on the country we are focusing on. One of our key strengths is the ability to diversify our portfolio of technology and engineering solutions so to be fully aligned with the demands of all the regional carriers.

A key solution clients often demand is the network quality measurement which serves as a detector of congestion issues in the network that can result in dropped calls and bad service.

Governments in the region have been very strict with regards to the quality of calls and services offered by carriers and there are severe fines in place to ensure carriers perform quality checks on their networks. Planex offers several solutions to help carriers maintain network performance complying with QoS standards at all times.

Nevertheless, active and passive network measurement is just the feedback piece of a chain of tools that contributes to ensuring QoS/QoE. The market is evolving and adopting solutions that proactively improve customer satisfaction while reducing opex happens not just at the network layer, but also through automatic verification and repair tools on the user terminals themselves, along with customer support infrastructure that is able to proactively and automatically monitor terminal behaviours and trigger solutions from a distance.

Latin America operators are showing increasing interest and demand for remote site monitoring solutions for attended and unattended cell and central sites, which strongly contributes to reduce network and operating costs while improving network performance. Aforementioned device repair solutions take care of issues inherent to the new protagonists of the mobile era – smartphones – by combining automatic health checks and resolutions with assisted remote take over and support, community collaboration, peer-to-peer remote resolution and control through friends and family assistance.

TowerXchange: Tell us about your R&D laboratories. Which technologies are you working on and how does the R&D business add value to your existing offering?

Our R&D laboratories started as an in-house solution to integrate our offerings with the existing products clients want to connect to: pieces of equipment, software, platforms et cetera.

Our R&D team executes tests and verifications on internal feature applicability on the IP/PBX centrals, DWDM equipment, control and access systems, homologation cross references, O&M front end systems, FTTX terminals, optical line units, monitor and measurements control units, L2/L3 switches, routers, remote terminal units among others. The goal is to make them work together following normative standards and customer requirements.

With constantly evolving technology and continuous challenge of new mature products, it is very important to ensure that our solutions communicate properly and don’t interfere with other equipment the carrier wants to use, especially if they are from another supplier, and use different protocols etc. This is the key focus of our R&D unit - to ensure that our products are interoperable with any existing device, and to certify that any change on the provided solution will fulfil the expectations of our customers.

TowerXchange: What proportion of your business comes from carriers and what from tower companies or OEMs?

We work with most carriers active in the region so Planex is definitely a carrier-oriented company and 80% of our revenue comes from work developed for them.

However, we also work with governments, corporations and we hope to work more with tower companies in the near future. Our goal is to grow the “non carrier segment” of our business to the point it surpasses the carrier segment.

TowerXchange: Is O&M outsourcing a big trend in the region? If so, what are the key characteristics of an outsourcing contract you sign with a client? Which KPIs need to be achieved?

This is definitely a growing trend in Latin America. Carriers are reducing their focus on infrastructure, operational issues and maintenance and trying to optimise the ratio between revenue and headcount by outsourcing anything not strictly related to their core business.

Therefore, this is an opportunity for us to serve as an outsourcing partner while carriers focus on marketing, customer experience and other core competencies.

In terms of KPIs, geographical coverage plays a big role. It is fundamental to ensure our clients’ ability to reach and serve remote areas with a good QoS supported by excellent O&M processes.

The level of expertise is another factor. O&M contractors often use in-house teams in conjunction with subcontracted personnel. Therefore, we need to ensure that the team is up to speed and capable of meeting expectations even if they are subcontracted from third-party companies and not part of our in-house team.

Coordination between the various parties involved is highly relevant. Our customer service personnel, operational team, the account executive in charge of a specific client all need to be able to communicate and work together while keeping the SLA’s and KPIs in mind.

TowerXchange: How do you differentiate your offering from the competition? And which factors ensure your products and services are delivered on time and respect high standards? 

We are a flexible team of engineers, very technology savvy with multi-specialty backgrounds.

You see, in any other part of the world, highly specialised teams are expert in their own niche sector. However, in Latin America, it is of paramount importance to reach high levels of expertise in multiple areas, otherwise companies will struggle to achieve economies of scale. It is a simple equation: the more services you are able to provide while ensuring high standards, the more business you will acquire.

Planex has experienced a very low staff turnover and has several Director-level employees that started in the company as technicians or trainees while still completing their studies. I believe our personnel development and succession planning gives us an added value when it comes to proving our credibility to a potential client.

We are constantly innovating and adding services to our portfolio. While the market evolves, we go with it.

TowerXchange: How do you see your business evolving in the next 3-5 years?

We would like Planex to become a more global company with a stronger and larger presence in the countries where we operate.

Moreover, we would like to deepen our involvement in areas such as renewable energy and its potential for the telecom sector. We are already working with partners able to offer renewable energy solutions and we hope to do even more in this area.

Hybrid energy can serve the tower industry by complementing traditional sources of energy in off-grid sites but this is yet to become a widespread solution in LatAm. As I foresee energy becoming a problem in the next five years, we want Planex to keep exploring solutions to be ready when clients will start requesting them.

Over the next few years, governments and carriers will put added emphasis on the Quality of Service of networks. Therefore, solutions and tools to address this crucial matter will have to follow evolution and Planex is playing an important role in consulting and providing cutting edge QoE solutions.

Moreover, tower companies and carriers will keep focusing on reducing operating costs while adding efficiency and cell site density to LTE networks over the next five years. Planex will keep supporting companies involved in the telecom sector by adopting enhanced remote monitoring and automated M2M solutions along with offering outsourcing services.

In-building wireless network design and deployment of in-building solutions is currently under investigation to cope with the QoS and bandwidth demands of the 4G networks.

In conclusion, the telecom industry is changing at a very fast pace and we need to be extremely open to changes.