First Ever Tubestar Base Station in East Africa Launched Today

Safaricom is solving a land problem with this new tech

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Safaricom today has announced the trial program of a new network coverage technology which is aimed at enhancing coverage in urban areas.

This new tech is known as TubeStar Base Station which replaces the standard tower base station that we are used to with a tubular structure that apparently occupies upto 75% less land than a typical base station.

This is due to the fact that TubeStar base stations do not need diesel generators and instead use high performance lithium batteries. This cuts the need to have bigger space to erect them and also good for the environment by cutting down on pollution and emissions.

This technology is being targeted at urban areas where we see space constraints. Safaricom says placing standard towers in such locations has been difficult since most landowners have future plans for underutilized land or have put up structures on the land, thereby leaving little space for a typical base station.

TubeStar base station

The first station of its kind has been deployed at Clay Works along the Nairobi-Thika highway and will serve the Roysambu drift that has been plagued by call drops. The company says that the new base station will exclusively provide coverage in the affected locality, eliminating the need to rely on other cells.

Safaricom has invested a lot of resources in maintaining of its network. They have invested more than Kshs 100 billion and are planning to spend upto Kshs 38 billion in the current year until March 2019. It is great that they are using technology to solve their current base station problem in urban areas and we expect to see such strides in the future.

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