A New Metric for Network Optimization: The Quintel Efficient Frontier
The Quintel Efficient Frontier (QEF) methodology optimizes the most capital-efficient quality of service (QoS) performance relative to wireless network operator’s investment profile. By identifying maximum QoS for a given network cost structure, QEF allows technical and business stakeholders to assess performance tradeoffs and opportunity costs to accurately project investments required for future growth.As wireless network sites are increasingly shared, expanded, or consolidated, several factors determine the suitability of shared site assets:
- Masthead space availability
- Wind-load or structural-load limitations
- Site-lease restrictions, such as space or additional antennas
- Re-negotiated rentals
- Permits and planning authority approvals
Operators may strive to achieve a 10-15% savings in operating expenses by “matched pairing”, where two nearby sites are consolidated onto a single site for lower rentals and associated maintenance costs. However, to achieve optimal QoS, operators must still optimize networks across many parameters which are not addressed by matched pairing.
Quintel’s methodology supports a unique and significantly more efficient technique than matched pairing. With QEF, your network is optimized for automatic cell planning (ACP), enabling up to 40% savings in recurring operating expenses and up to 25% reduction in capital expenditures.
Here's how QEF optimization works to your advantage:
- The ACP engine efficiently finds the best combinations for the deployment of one operator’s base stations across a portfolio of two operators’ sites. The ACP optimization identifies the minimum network rental cost while maintaining QoS targets for both operators across all network technologies.
- The practical number of potential sites for consolidation grows dramatically with Quintel, yielding a much greater “Efficient Frontier.” It’s a general rule that if you have more potential solutions the outcome can only be the same or, more likely, better. Previously, consolidated network combinations were constrained by the number of potential “shareable” sites. Perhaps only 18 out of 25 conventional sites are shareable for each operator; consequently there are a total of 9 billion possible practical sharing combinations. But, Quintel technology enables sites formerly considered unshareable, effectively raising the number of practical combinations to 126 trillion. That’s 14,000 times more possibilities for growth, consolidation and cost savings.
- When consolidating networks using the ACP and Quintel antennas, the consolidated outcomes select many of the otherwise unshareable structures, such as monopole sites. The ACP process selects such sites as they are often in ideal positions for traffic and dense urban coverage, while also having the benefit of relatively low rentals, and thus attractive if shared. By enabling operator sharing on these previously unshareable, high-value sites, Quintel’s Efficient Frontier methodology can more than double the typical recurring operational savings of matched pairing solutions.