The Problem

While a variety of individual technologies exist today that can be applied to rural sites, deploying solutions in ultra-rural communities is complicated and expensive. Ultra-rural sites are difficult and costly to deploy, operate, and maintain, given the low level of existing infrastructure. Deploying typical mobile services using urban cell sites are not economically sustainable in ultra-rural regions, primarily due to CAPEX and OPEX considerations and low average revenue per user (ARPU) in ultra-rural regions.

Ultra rural use case

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The Solution

Starting with a use-case based approach, TIP-TSS is working with partners to create economically sustainable, optimized, pre tested, and remotely managed rural site configurations. These configurations leverage existing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products and passive elements (e.g. towers, fencing, concrete, etc.), catalyzing industry to connect more people in rural areas.

After TIP incubates a site configuration with a specific Service Provider that is motivated to rollout this configuration on their network, this configuration can be scaled to the broader ecosystem via TIP PlugFest and TIP Exchange, enabling additional Service Providers to leverage this use case for unconnected rural settlements in their respective regions.

TIP PlugFest invites OEMs and other vendors to “plug” and “play” their products to demonstrate interoperability and performance for the specific Site Solution configuration. Once proven, these products will be showcased on TIP Exchange for procurement from prospective service providers.

Key benefits

Economic Benefit
  • Customized configurations for regional needs
  • Demand aggregation for suppliers
  • Planning insight
Reduced Integration, Test & Trials
  • Integrated, optimized & test rural configurations
Stronger Rural Ecosystem
  • Aggregated opportunities for small vendors
  • Platform for integration across elements
Ease of Operation & Support
  • Unified, vendor-neutral remote management
TIP Total Site Solution

Ultra Rural Use Case

Our first TSS use case targets Greenfield deployments to off-grid settlements of 1000 – 3000 people, providing a “Town Center Model with a single cell site” for 4G coverage with VoLTE for voice service. With modest deployment volumes, a profitable business model is achievable.

TSS-Ultra-Rural-Site-Optimization-Elements-Infographic.46fee61f

OEM partners that have collaborated on the Ultra Rural Use Case

Rural Site Configuration PlugFest workshop

The Rural Site Configuration (RSC) PlugFest concluded in October, 2020 after six months of integration and nine weeks of testing. Eight OEM partners provided support remotely, due to COVID travel restrictions. This PlugFest effort took the initial Total Site Solution (TSS) rural site configuration blueprint developed for TIM Brasil and tested in February, 2020 at the TIP Community Lab in North Los Angeles, and validated a total of 8 solutions into 8 different variants.