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WirelessDevNet.com Press Release
STL Releases a Database Containing the Accurate Location of over 3,800 Wireless Masts/Sites
STL had been gathering intelligence and competitive data regarding the location of sites/masts used by all GSM operators in Nigeria. This database contains such details as owner (operator) of mast, geographic coordinates, city, LGA, state, and mast height. This intelligence database covers the whole of Nigeria for all the major operators in Nigeria
The database contains the location of over 2,000 operational sites for MTN, about 1,400 operational sites for Celtel and some 1,600 sites for Globacom . It also contains details of over 100 masts for Starcomms' and some 70 for intercellular and Multilinks.
Database To Empower Independent Site Providers
In recent years, the emergence of independent site providers, which finance, build and own site networks that can be shared by multiple operators have revolutionized the way in which such operators do business.
While explaining how this database could assist these independent site providers, Ireti Ajala, STL's CEO said, "by leasing existing sites/masts from independent providers wireless operators can direct more of their scarce financial and human resources to more critical needs. The onus is therefore on these providers to make a good business case that will convince the operators enough to patronize them. This database will contain all they need to make convincing business case in some specific areas especially where they notice the need such as coverage holes without having to bother the operators requesting to give them such data. Hey, everyone knows how the operators guard jealously any data regarding the location of their sites. This approach is effective and direct "
Intelligence Offers Competitive Advantage
Intelligence about a competitor is the key to a company's performance in a highly competitive market such as telecom. This is very important in Nigeria's telecom industry where operators face serious competition. This database can be useful in providing competitive information regarding :
Competitor's Coverage Analysis. Knowing the actual site coordinate for an operator can assist in working out the extent of that operator's coverage. To illustrate, as at January 2007, STL had gathered the coordinates of about 1,492 Celtel's sites across Nigeria. Using the power of GIS and the location of these 1,492 sites as the basis for this analysis, STL discovered that as at January 2007 Celtel had effectively covered about 357 LGAs in Nigeria either wholly or completely. This translates to about 293,116.311Sqkm in area representing about 31.69% Nigeria's total landmass.
Subscriber Analysis: Using the power of GIS, STL's analysis reveals that Celtel's has effectively provided coverage for about 64,529,150 people in these 357 LGAs representing an estimated 46.09% of Nigeria's total population. This figure does not represent the total number of subscribers in Celtel's network, rather it represents the total number of people that have access to Celtel's coverage by virtue of where they live. This analysis also does not show the quality of coverage (-dbm) received.
Commenting on the reliability of the methodology used in producing this analysis, Ireti Ajala who once headed MTN's GIS unit for over 5years and who was responsible for producing similar coverage analyses for MTN Nigeria has this to say, "the key to producing such an analysis is knowing the exact location of an operator's site. The rest is simple as overlaying these sites on Nigeria's demographic GIS data using the visual power of GIS will make it possible to map the coverage of each site to an area and people living within the covered area. The rest is just a matter of statistical calculation". Ajala said "this methodology is reproducible and the result is dependable as a level of confidence of 97% is attached to this result"
Anthony Lawrence, STL's Business Development Manager said that "the gathering of this intelligence data is one of the most extensive data gathering exercise ever undertaken by any GIS company in Nigeria as it required sending several field analysts to every cranny and crevices of Nigeria to map the location of these operators' sites using GPS enabled PDAs with a GSM SIM slots. The data gathering solution architecture allowed each field analyst to send the field data within any available GSM coverage to a server in our Lagos headquarter OTA (Over The Air) where the data integrity is checked and subsequently added to the database. This way, we eliminate common errors like typo, omission, commission, etc in field data gathering"
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