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Position: Power Ethiopian Telecommunication with Chinese Speed
——ZTE built the largest-scaled solar site project for ETC
Background
Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation (ETC) is the largest telecom operator in Ethiopia, running the nationwide telecom networks including all voice and data networks such as transmission, fixed network and mobile.
ETC formulated a four-year package plan according to the government’s telecommunication blueprint, which is the No.1 project of Ethiopia to improve national economy and people’s living standard. As the exclusive partner of this project, ZTE customized networks planning for Ethiopia.
Challenge for ETC
Telecommunication requires stable power supply, which raises great challenge for ETC as there is no adequate power supply nor sufficient traffic means in the vast remote areas. ZTE adopts solar power solution, fully utilizing the sunshine resource to solve power supply and maintenance problems. Around 800 sites with capacity of more than 6000KW are to be deployed over the country, which is a 1.1 million square km territory. This is the largest scaled solar telecom networks.
Delivery and engineering is crucial for the success of this project. ETC and ZTE have to confront the following situations:
- Large-scaled project with short construction period
Hundreds of sites are distributed in locations with diversified application and geographic conditions, requiring different configurations and solutions. As a result, products with various specifications and categories, and a great deal of secondary transportations are needed. It is only 18 month from contract signing to project completion, and even shorter for engineering as production and delivery are both time consuming. - Harsh natural environment
Ethiopia is known as the peak of Africa with an average elevation of over 3000m. Most of the sites are located in the mountain where man labor is a must to carry the heavy solar panel and batteries, and some of them are more than 4000m high that causes altitude sickness. And the climate plays tough here: there is severe water shortage in the drought so that water has to be transported from a long distance, and in the rainfall season, shower comes everyday with strong wind that sometime cause landslide. All these not only jeopardize the construction, but also life-threatening.
Solutions
ZTE take the following measures to handle these situations:
- Risk prediction and management
ZTE predicted possible risks in the project and takes prevention measures. For example, long lead time from diversity of solution and production specification has been taken into consideration in design phase: models were established for classification and make it easier to production and logistics. - Effective project management
This whole project was conducted by six independent project teams by region, to ensure the timeframe, meanwhile, resources and experiences are shared to avoid any necessary risks.
Contractors were verified and trained by solar experts from the headquarters to ensure the quality of engineering.
These measures are proved to be effective: ZTE provided design drawing two weeks after the contract is signed and the first batch of parts arrived site field for installation two months later. - Teamwork
Squads for vehicles, materials, medical and so on are established to ensure delivery and to assistant engineers in harsh natural conditions. The all-round planning and cooperation keeps the project on schedule.
Benefits
Nearly 800 sites are completed in May 2009; this is a miracle in telecom industry. Samuwel, GSM project manager of ETC side that: “ZTE is great. I get what is Chinese speed from you.”
This GSM project raised ETC’s subscribers from 1.2million to 4.3million in less than two years. And the network coverage would amount to 64% when the next phase is completed. This accelerated local economy and improved living standard, and makes Ethiopia one of the most developed African countries in Telecom.
More than 6000KW powered solar is unprecedented. It is not only powering telecommunication in Ethiopia, but also the largest green network in the world. Mr. Yonas, the person in Charge for power supply in ETC expressed his pride:”Low-carbon telecommunication era is coming. Let’s start with this project.”
