Tower infrastructure
Pan-African Tower Infrastructure Operator
Geography
Multiple African countries
Engagement
2016 to present
Status
Active, scaled from 11,000 to 30,000+ sites
Tripled. Halved.
Site count tripled from 11,000 to 30,000+. NOC headcount halved from 300 to 150.
Site count tripled while NOC headcount halved. The operator runs three times the estate at half the operations cost, with 20%+ ROI in year one and 50% fewer SLA transgressions on the alarm classes that drive financial penalties.
The challenge
What the operator was trying to fix.
- Persistent SLA transgressions with significant financial penalties on alarm classes the operator could not detect fast enough.
- Legacy operational systems producing inaccurate reporting, with no single source of truth across 11,000 sites at engagement start.
- Equipment theft and asset recovery problems compounded by limited visibility across remote locations.
- NOC operations scaling near-linearly with site count: more sites meant more headcount, with no leverage in sight.
Results
What the platform delivered.
20%+
ROI in year one
50%
Reduction in SLA transgressions on penalty-driving alarm classes
Sub-second
Mean time to detect on the same alarm classes
300 to 150
NOC headcount halved while site count tripled
$4M to $5M
Indicative annual NOC operating cost saved, based on prevailing African telecoms market rates for fully-loaded NOC technician cost
31 million
Internal emails per month eliminated through automated workflows
99.9%
Average system availability
850,000+
Endpoints monitored, ingesting 1.6 million records per hour
Capabilities deployed
- Customer asset management
- Customer billing
- Site access management
- SLA monitoring and reporting
Narrative
Site count tripled. NOC headcount halved. That is the operational leverage gain the operator bought with the platform, and it is the proof point that travels furthest with a CFO looking at infrastructure operations.
The client is a Tier 1 publicly listed tower operator running across multiple African countries. At engagement in 2016 the operator was running approximately 11,000 sites with patchwork legacy systems, persistent SLA penalties, and a NOC organisation scaling near-linearly with site count. The commercial problem was the linear scaling, not the technology gap. Adding more sites meant adding more NOC staff and accepting more SLA penalties, and the unit economics of the business deteriorated with every expansion.
Affectli was deployed as the operational intelligence layer. Telemetry from across the site estate consolidated into a single decision surface, assets and customer leases and SLA tracking integrated, and the NOC moved onto a unified real-time view of the operation. Over the following eight years the platform scaled with the business from 11,000 to over 30,000 sites under management, ingesting in excess of 1.6 million telemetry records per hour from more than 850,000 endpoints.
The financial outcomes landed inside year one and compounded from there. ROI of 20%+ in year one, drawn from operational cost reductions and avoided SLA penalties. SLA transgressions down 50%, with mean time to detect dropping to sub-second on the alarm classes that drive contractual penalties. NOC headcount halved from 300 to 150 staff while site count tripled, an operating cost reduction estimated at $4M to $5M annually at prevailing African telecoms market rates for fully-loaded NOC technician cost (indicative figure, derived from open market rates rather than from the operator). 31 million internal emails per month eliminated through automated workflows. 99.9% average system availability across the consolidated estate.
The engagement remains active. The operator listed publicly in 2021 with multi-billion USD market capitalisation and continues to expand site count year on year. Continued use of the platform across an active public market listing is the operator’s strongest available signal that the leverage gain is durable.
Scale
- Sites at engagement start
- 11,000 (2016)
- Sites today
- 30,000+ (2023 onward)
- Endpoints monitored
- 850,000+
- Records ingested per hour
- 1.6 million
- Public listing
- Listed in 2021, multi-billion USD market capitalisation
In the operator's words
"We have experienced a transformative benefit. We are more reliably and rapidly informed about the status of our assets and have considerably reduced our reaction times to deal with arising situations."