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1. From the onset, I often asked the proponents of tower sharing by Mobile Telecom operators, as to why TM and Bon Marche’ Supermarkets never shared their buildings, though for instance, they were both at Sam Levy village. Never got an answer to this day! https://twitter.com/allthingsict/status/1347908026917920769
2. PTC and subsequently @NetOneCellular have always structurally designed their Telecommunication towers to withstand a certain number of microwave radio antennae at the very top of the tower, under the maximum recorded wind speeds in Zimbabwe, to avoid twisting or collapse.
3. Picture below, from a neighbouring country, shows a telecomms tower that collapsed, obviously due to its structural design strength not being able to bear the load, under high speed winds! Loading is dependent on antennae sizes, no, weight, position on tower & wind speeds.
4. PTC were obviously the first to provide telecomms towers for linking telephone exchanges for Subscriber Trunk Dialled (STD) calls by microwave radio. Towers needed to be sufficiently high for point to point line of sight requirements, whereas Mobile is for omnidirectional!
5. Here is a site near Nyabadza on Rusape to Nyanga Road. Site called Oliphants Kop was established by PTC first for VHF radio to Mutare & later for microwave radio, with the shortest of the towers. PTC tower not only full but too short for Mobile Comms, hence others were put up.
6. The cost was very high for a mobile operator to design & erect towers that not only met structurally own needs but also for competitors, whose requirements were unknown. In any event, capital funds for @NetOneCellular were barely sufficient to meet quality of standards.
7. To provide adequate communications within Harare International Aiport, we identified a suitable tower at the back, that belonged to Air Ground Services but the Manager I went with, went to competitor & competitor quickly established their network on that same tower!
8. Then organized a second visit with Airport Manager, who gave us permission to use one of their towers, close to the runway. Got @NetOneCellular equipment installed but one night, high speed winds blew & collapsed the tower!
9. With the collapsed tower at Harare International Airport, @NetOneCellular had to go for some time without service until we constructed & erected a properly & structurally designed tower by SSCT structural engineers. Tower is very short to meet Civil Aviation requirements!
10. Evolution of GSM mobile (from 2nd Generation to 3G, to 4G and now 5G), unfortunately, results in coverage shrinkage from a base station, as the data carrying speeds increase, which means more base stns are required & more towers are also required to maintain same coverage!
11. High data speeds for 4G & 5G Mobile also means that microwave radio as a backhaul link (from base stn to Mobile Packet Switch Core), in Harare or Bulawayo, is no longer adequate but now requires optical fiber links, with unlimited capacity, therefore reduced tower loading.
12. There are now also available Multiple Inputs, Multiple Output, MIMO antennae that allow for tower sharing by operators. Thus, optical fibers for backhaul links & MIMO antennae, promote sharing of tower infrastructure. Also important to use towers that blend with environment.
13. Finally, I wish to urge @TelOneZW to remove most of the antennae at the top of its tower at 2nd Street, Harare, which were long de-commissioned & only now serve to unnecessarily load that tower! Would need @cohsunshinecity authority to close the roads for that operation.
