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Know Your Tower

How Well Do You Know Your Telecom Tower? From a distance, a telecom tower might look like a simple structure situated on the side of the road or mounted on a rooftop. However, those who manage telecom towers know there is more to the story. That story includes shifting equipment, revolving tenants, evolving compliance demands, and the constant need to improve performance and return on investment. For tower owners and operators, clarity is everything. You can’t manage what you can’t see. Too often, what’s listed in a spreadsheet doesn’t match what’s in the field. That’s where the real challenge begins, and why applications designed for visibility and accuracy are no longer optional. To address this challenge, owners, managers, and operators must begin with a clear understanding of what is actually on the tower today, requiring them to go beyond outdated records and assumptions to capture the current, real-world state of the structure.  The right tower technology Teams often start with drone surveys, image capture, and 3D modeling to generate a high-fidelity view of the tower and surrounding site. Yet, without the correct technology, what happens next is often manual and unreliable, leaving gaps in equipment records and structural insight. With

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Smart Mobility Planning: Tools for Modern Cities

As urban populations surge and transportation systems strain under increasing demand, cities around the world are grappling with mounting challenges in mobility planning. Mobility Simulation is becoming essential as agencies strive to address issues, such as congestion, safety concerns, and environmental impact.  The need for equitable access is pushing agencies to rethink traditional approaches which often fall short in managing the complexity of today’s multimodal networks. Planners are now under pressure to deliver data-driven solutions that are ready for the future. What is Mobility Simulation? Imagine a city where traffic jams are a thing of the past, and public transportation runs seamlessly. Mobility simulation is a process that helps cities and transportation agencies address challenges in mobility planning by letting you model, analyze, and optimize transportation systems to create more efficient and sustainable urban environments. It involves the use of advanced tools and software to simulate various scenarios. Imagine a virtual model of a city’s transportation network, including roads, buses, trains, and even pedestrian pathways. This model allows planners to evaluate different scenarios, such as adding a new bus route or closing certain roads for construction. By leveraging mobility simulation, cities can create more efficient, safe, and sustainable transportation systems

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Exploring AI-driven Tower Automation at TowerXchange Europe

As part of our ongoing participation in TowerXchange Europe, Bentley joined telecommunications tower owners, operators, and technology providers from across EMEA to explore how telecom infrastructure is evolving.  At the recent London TowerXchange event, we brought forward a critical perspective: how AI and automation can help transform disconnected tower data into intelligent, actionable insight. Apurba Tribedi, Bentley’s senior director of tower products, took the stage to share the latest advances in AI-powered infrastructure modeling. With decades of experience in infrastructure software and a leadership role shaping OpenTower’s development, Apurba offered insight into how teams can bridge the gap between raw data and high-precision tower models. This wasn’t a presentation about software features. It was a call to rethink how tower infrastructure can, and should, be managed in an era of accelerating complexity and ever-expanding data. From Data Overload to Intelligence: The Case for AI-driven Tower Twins Tower owners, operators, and engineering teams across the telecom space all have data for assets and how they perform. In fact, sometimes there’s simply too much to handle. But when that data is trapped in disconnected formats, departments, or systems, it can’t be acted upon, creating a significant problem.  The presentation at TowerXchange Europe

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From Data Chaos to Clarity: Cell Tower Digital Twins in Action 

In our current time of rapidly evolving technology, maintaining accurate data for any organization, independent of industry, is a constant challenge. With the expansion of 5G, 6G, and beyond, the challenge of data management is no stranger to those within the telecom sector. And if “data is the new gold,” then it is of utmost importance to have a plan to ensure that data is accessible, accurate, and actionable. Late last year, AT&T announced a plan to create a digital twin for each of their tower sites. In an interview with RCR Wireless, Jeff McElfresh, AT&T’s COO, stated, “We’re going to touch every cell site that we’ve got in AT&T’s footprint […] as AT&T does so, it will be creating digital twins of each site, using technologies, such as drones and artificial intelligence, in order to insure that it has the right network assets at the right locations and right height.” AT&T will leverage their tower digital twins to ensure the accuracy of their asset inventory data and confirm that, according to McElfresh, “the right network assets [are] at the right locations and the right height.” Having access to accurate tower equipment information is critical for network providers like AT&T

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New Study Verifies the Accuracy of OpenTower iQ Digital Twin Data

A new study verified that the data generated by OpenTower iQ Digital Twins is accurate, certifying it for use in cell tower maintenance. The study, sponsored by Bentley, in partnership with a major U.S. carrier, used OpenTower iQ to mimic the post-construction audit process of recent tower installations by the carrier. The data generated by OpenTower iQ was compared with the best-available, pre-existing data of those towers to establish a measure of accuracy.

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Why do you need a Digital Twin?

Ahead of TowerXchange Meetup Asia 2022, we sat down with Apurba Tribedi from OpenTower iQ to exchange ideas on why towercos need digital twins. To learn more about all the ways that towercos are digitising operations make sure you sign up today.

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How a Cell Tower Digital Twin Automates Lifecycle Management

Telecom towers have been categorized as critical assets as they provide “enabling functions” across all critical infrastructure sectors. Today, there are over 300 thousand cell towers in America alone which are expected to support an increasingly complex set of requirements from stakeholders. As carriers compete to establish the fastest and largest 5G network, existing cell towers will continue to be key infrastructure assets for the secure and efficient transmission of information, and they’ll be required to carry higher loads.

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How to Centralize Cell Tower Data, Saving Time and Resources

​Having accurate data available when you need it can make a huge difference in the realization of revenue for both carriers and tower owners. It can also improve efficiency in managing towers, especially at scale. However, the telecom tower industry is currently plagued with a lack of reliable, accessible data.

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