Excl: Bharti tower arm plans to track assets

Airtel is connecting the dots, and planning to ensure they stay that way. Bharti Infratel, the company's infrastructure management division floated a few months ago, is actively considering a full-fledged RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device) solution to tighten vigilance over inventory and finetune its installation process.

Airtel's passive infrastructure is currently spread over 40,000 locations in India. Bharti Infratel is working towards setting up RFID testbeds to iron out various RoI issues involved in 'tagging' its telecom infastructure. This will primarily help Bharti Infratel in assessing per site installation costs, asset valuation and tag customisation requirements, according to Airtel sources.

Airtel has faced visibility issues while tracking its inventory process at each cell site. Often, when components are moved from one cell site to the other or upgrades are in process, there has been no accurate tracking. Sources said that when a cell site is being installed, components often find their way to a different site, leading to improper or faulty installation.

Sources said that Airtel is keen to evaluate possibilities of a full-fledged rollout at an estimated investment of $48-$50 million at a future date. This would involve tagging key elements of Airtel's passive infrastructure "� cell towers, base stations, power generation equipment, technical inventory and allied equipment held in different storage silos.

Sources estimate that over the next few years, 90,000-100,000 tags at an estimated cost of $7 to $9 per tag could be implemented with associated hardware across 40,000-100,000 locations.

If implemented, this should be the largest active RFID project so far in India. In such a case, Infratel would plan to track its variegated component inventory out of at least 40,000 of its installations in over 700 locations, sources said.