Lowering OPEX Through Intelligent Decommissioning

The Intelligent Decommissioning Concept

The aim of intelligent decommissioning is to seamlessly migrate services from old platforms to new platforms that continue to support legacy services when the cost of supporting services on the old platforms has become excessive and/or obtaining and maintaining spares is no longer realistic.

Controlling migration from old to new platforms results in several advantages:

• Pays for itself – the cost of the new equipment is paid for by the savings made in OPEX. The project could either be charged as a CAPEX investment to achieve OPEX savings or the costs could be absorbed into the OPEX budget, resulting in ongoing OPEX savings without a CAPEX investment.
• Substantial Operational Savings – newer equipment uses much less power per transported bit. This means a massive reduction in operations costs associated with powering the equipment and the air conditioning required to remove the heat generated.
• Network rationalization - in migrating the services from the old nodes to the new network there is an opportunity for rationalization. This results in opportunities to collapse the total number of nodes required and tidy-up service paths that have become fragmented over the lifetime of the network.
• Reduction in repair and maintenance costs – as the number of nodes is reduced the repair and maintenance cost associated with maintaining these nodes also reduces.
• New services – Newer equipment supports the newer packet services as well as the legacy services. In performing intelligent decommissioning the service provider can enhance its network, provide new services and generate new revenues, all while reducing OPEX. As legacy services decline, the new equipment is able to support more packet services, extending the life and benefit of installing it.

Intelligent decommissioning should result in considerable OPEX savings. Be sure to agree on a baseline of existing costs and a means to measure the savings. This will show the return on investment and the proof of success.

Alpha 1 Telecoms has successfully executed a project for 2 of the largest telecoms providers in South Africa and has saved them in excess of R20 million per annum.