Telecom towers are an integral part of the telecom industry especially the cellular phone industry. Due to the height of many buildings and facilities for electrical and telecommunications services, one of the most complex tasks is keeping up to date with their proper maintenance. This difficulty becomes more evident when we are dealing with telecommunication towers and masts, electrical substations, transmission towers, just to name a few. Each one of these structures can easily reach over 100 to 150 meters which are 300 to 400 feet in height.
Traditionally the most common way for the health assessment of existing telecommunication towers is through visual inspection, the results of the visual inspection are highly subjective and are merely based on perception which may differ a lot from one expert to another.
Issues Cropping up in Telecom Towers
▪️Usually, these technicians have to climb up the tower ▪️The use of handheld devices for taking visual and thermal images ▪️Each tower inspection is time-consuming ▪️There is a big safety element which is involved when a man /woman technician climbs the tower ▪️The turnaround time for analysis and repair is very high ▪️The maintenance costs are high because of manpower deployment and long gestation periods of low efficiency of the towers
Benefits of Using Drones
- The drone can be deployed from anywhere by technicians
- Height is not a problem for the drone and can do it easily without any risk
- Acquires high definition pictures/videos
- Live feed of visuals and thermal images and records digital data
- The feed of the visuals are relayed to the inspection office for defect or damaged metal and frame for analysis
- Replacing strenuous human workforce
- Especially in highly dense populated areas in cities drones operate most safely
- The ability to hover at a spot to inspect a spot for breakage or damage
