3
Base stations run on
Ethiopian sun
Solar-powered base station sites are
helping to bring communications to
Ethiopia’s rural population. With low maintenance
costs, solar power is also helping to lower the
total cost of ownership of the network
In new growth markets like Ethiopia, station and transmission node sites.
where the network is expanding into Nokia Siemens Networks planned
rural areas, a power grid is not always and built more than 50 solar-powered
readily available and equipment autonomous sites which include
sites need to run autonomously. battery banks that assure power
A sustainable alternative to diesel for at least three days during cloudy
generators is to use renewable energy or rainy weather.
sources such as solar power. To build
solar-powered autonomous sites, “There are two reasons for using
the Ethiopia Telecommunications solar power: one is economical, the
Corporation (ETC) turned to Nokia other is environmental. Using diesel
Siemens Networks for consulting, generators would have been very
planning and project management. expensive, especially the maintenance
and handling costs. Although the initial
The GSM and GPRS mobile networks cost of solar power is rather high, in the
with fiber optic backbone supplied by long term its use is very inexpensive
Nokia Siemens Networks required and rewarding. After installing the
approximately 300 sites in the northern solar-power system, the only thing
and central parts of the country. Half we’ve had to do is keep the panels
of these sites are located in hard-to- clean. Other than that, they will not
access rural areas which have no cost us a thing and will serve us for
electrical supply. many years to come,” says Ato Amare
Amsalu, CEO of ETC.
Being near the equator, Ethiopia is one
of the sunniest countries in the world,
making solar power viable for base
A partnership that pays off
Nokia Siemens Networks’ success in Ethiopia
is based on a dedicated workforce of nearly 40
qualified professionals including project management,
technical experts and support staff who help the
company offer value-added professional services to
its customers.
“Everybody is satisfied with the overall performance
of the Nokia Siemens Networks project management.
The roll-out was completed within the specified
contractual period. We haven’t experienced any
problems on the sites built by Nokia Siemens
Networks. They are all working properly and we
assume they will continue to do so in the future,”
Ato Amare Amsalu says.