Unbundling Turnkey Densification Projects to Save Time and Money

By Alda Licis, Tilson Infrastructure

Note: This blog was produced under WIA’s Innovation and Technology Council (ITC). The ITC is the forum for forecasting the future of the wireless industry. Participants explore developments in the wider wireless industry, from 5G network monetization trends and streamlining infrastructure deployment to future spectrum needs and cell site power issues. The group is publishing a series of thought-leadership pieces throughout the year. These views are not a WIA endorsement of a particular company, product, policy or technology.

Wireless carriers remain focused on densifying their networks by adding C-band, millimeter-wave and other capacity to their existing wireless coverage from the macro tower down to the small cell. This is being driven in part by fixed wireless access (FWA) growth along with increasing usage by typical mobile users.

At the same time, carriers are under an enormous amount of pressure to save costs. Traditionally, carriers have favored a turnkey approach to deployments that gives them one throat to choke – one vendor to handle everything. That has meant that fiber providers – like Zayo, Crown Castle, Extenet and Everstream/Uniti – have responded to requests for proposals (RFPs) for densification projects as turnkey vendors that install a vertical pole in the right of way and bring fronthaul fiber to that pole.

Tilson Infrastructure, on the other hand, is a truly independent vertical asset infrastructure provider working on a neutral shared infrastructure model. Because we’ve never been a fiber provider, we have not been able to respond to RFPs for turnkey solutions even though we very much want to develop the vertical assets in the right of way.

When the $42.35 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program was launched, Tilson Infrastructure team members began brainstorming ways we could respond to these RFPs. The solution we came up with was to unbundle the traditional turnkey approach to deployment by leveraging fiber infrastructure that is already deployed and capitalize on our expertise in vertical infrastructure to meet the carriers’ needs.

With a large amount of government subsidy coming to fiber overbuilders, there is a lot more fiber deployed in the right of way that we can tap into by working with our fiber partners to bring that fiber to the curb. At the end of the day, avoiding new fiber builds saves time by avoiding engineering, permitting and construction timelines and allows us to pass cost savings through to carriers.

Here is how the process works. When a carrier provides an RF search ring, we look for potential pole locations where fiber already exists. Typically, small cells are being built in areas where the population is dense and fiber is already in the ground.

For example, if we have a hundred sites we need to build, half might be served by one fiber provider, one-quarter by a second fiber provider and the remaining sites by a third fiber provider. We will package all three into a turnkey solution that provides the best fiber solution for each site, and in the rare event we can’t find anyone to provide the fiber portion, we work with fiber providers that are willing to build it. The cost savings vary depending on the market and how many providers are involved, but we had a project encompassing more than 300 sites that we were able to save $4.5 million for the carrier.

Of course, we have to be meticulous about which fiber providers we work with. They must be able to meet service level agreements (SLAs) when fiber is cut or other problems arise and they usually must have a network operations center (NOC) to ensure they can respond quickly. There are a lot of fiber providers out there besides the larger fiber companies. Carriers buy fiber from each other. They buy from cable companies and they will buy from small fiber overbuilders as well if they have a good reputation and a service backing.

This model has been highly successful for Tilson Infrastructure. We came up with the idea three years ago and started actively pitching it two years ago. For the past year, we have been working on those bids. Between 80% and 90% of our small cell and densification builds are now using this model, while the rest of the projects are purely vertical infrastructure work. It has been a great opportunity for us to showcase something new to the carriers that hasn’t been available in the market before. The fact that we can be agile and creative and provide something in a way that other vendors aren’t providing has been gratifying.

Others are coming in as just a fiber provider or a cable provider, and we’re hoping that more fiber companies and cable companies will come to us to partner with them to provide the vertical infrastructure. We recognize that vertical infrastructure is our strength and fiber is somebody else’s strength. We’re stronger together for the carrier if we partner.

The best part is seeing the carriers so happy because they are under an enormous amount of pressure to save costs. We’ve been talking about dig-once efforts forever, so this is really about leveraging what’s in the ground. Fiber providers are thrilled if they’ve put fiber in for one reason and we come in and buy a couple more strands. Everybody’s business model improves when the utilization of their assets improves.