Phil-Tower Consortium Inc. (PhilTower), in partnership with PowerX, a data intelligence platform for optimizing tower energy infrastructure, announced groundbreaking results from their year-long strategic collaboration.

This partnership, which began in late 2023 and expanded from the original 1,350 sites to 3,500 sites, brought significant savings in capital expenditure (Capex) and operating expenditure (Opex), improved operational efficiency, and a significant reduction in energy consumption across PhilTower’s network.

The company said that in the six months since PhilTower began using PowerX’s AI-driven data intelligence, it has identified and eliminated diesel generators at 50 percent of its sites and switched to battery backup systems.

This resulted in savings of nearly half a million US dollars in open generator operations and a reduction in annual carbon dioxide emissions of over 700 tons.

The optimized operations, enabled by reduced DG utilization and complete visibility into the tower inventory, also reduced maintenance costs, reduced mean time to repair (MTTR) by 30 percent, and increased network availability to 99.98 percent.

This increased telecom customers’ data usage and revenue while reducing annual operating costs by an additional half a million dollars.

“Applying data science tools and optimizations to over a thousand sites within half a year is a significant milestone for PhilTower. Our commitment to digitalization has transformed our network, enabling fast sale and leaseback transitions, complete remote asset visibility, efficient operations, and data-driven decisions that optimize capital and operating costs – savings we pass on to our customers while increasing uptime by three hours per site per month,” said PhilTower Managing Director Devid Gubiani.

“We now have the tools to maximize asset utilization and increase revenue by creating a 21st century tower network with next-generation maintenance plans and proactive energy efficiency plans. With PowerX, we are optimizing our distributed assets using a range of KPIs and have set ambitious goals to deliver significant growth and value to our stakeholders, including unparalleled service to our mobile operators and ambitious carbon reduction initiatives,” he said.

PhilTower said comprehensive battery health assessments and targeted investments of over $2.8 million in battery replacements and upgrades will serve to optimize backup capacities while right-sizing capital expenditures.

Automating reporting and decision-making processes also reduced operational overhead and improved the efficiency of alarm and trouble ticket management through closed-loop operations – reducing the need for human intervention.

PhilTower said it will continue its modernization drive with initiatives such as the installation of hybrid power plants, solar energy integration, cooling optimizations and power system consolidation.

Armed with key insights into the health of its network and its energy growth projections, PhilTower expects to save over $1.5 million in the coming year and reduce carbon emissions by nearly 10,000 tons per year – underscoring PhilTower’s commitment to sustainable, efficient and cost-effective tower operations.

These initiatives will be expanded to include another 2,000 towers across the region when PhilTower completes its planned merger with Miescor Infrastructure Development Corporation (MIDC), bringing the complex’s total to 3,500 optimized towers.

“We are excited to see PhilTower realize immediate and strategic benefits from the data-driven optimizations and automation provided by the PowerX platform. This collaboration underscores our leadership in leveraging deep data analytics, AI and machine learning to achieve outstanding network efficiency,” said Andrew Schafer, CEO of PowerX.

“The PowerX platform has enabled PhilTower teams to achieve operational excellence, improve asset and energy efficiency, and integrate data intelligence for future energy programs. Together, we are raising the bar and setting a new standard for network intelligence and site efficiency in the Philippines,” he said.