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Reserve Your Seat TodayCan improving your network monitoring actually increase revenue? Telikom Papua New Guinea (Telikom PNG) believes it can, and built its business case around a simple operating truth: downtime stops service delivery, and stopped service delivery stops revenue.
Telikom PNG, the national telecom company of Papua New Guinea, began building a new nationwide monitoring network designed to bring existing legacy systems under DPS Telecom's T/Mon platform. Telikom PNG executives expected the real-time monitoring capability of T/Mon to increase network uptime and support a rise in company revenues.
The new T/Mon system will result in "a direct increase in our revenue," said Maisen Windu, Telikom PNG's executive manager of network management and standards.
"The biggest impact will be our maintenance costs. I estimate a savings of 30-40%," said Windu. "And also it will directly increase our revenue. As long as the network is down, we're losing revenue. The net impact will be that maintenance costs will go down and revenue will increase. I estimate that the gear will pay for itself within two years."
| Industry | Telecommunications |
|---|---|
| Company Type | National telecom operator (Papua New Guinea) |
| Geography/Coverage | Nationwide network with isolated mountaintop microwave repeater sites |
| Primary Challenge | No after-hours, real-time visibility into site and power alarms; multiple legacy systems with limited alarm delivery |
| Solution Deployed | Centralized real-time monitoring by consolidating legacy systems under DPS Telecom T/Mon |
| Key Result (As Projected by Telikom PNG) | Higher uptime to protect revenue, lower maintenance cost (estimated 30-40%), projected payback within two years |
| Products Used | DPS Telecom T/Mon (Alarm Master platform) |
Telikom PNG provides critical communications services across Papua New Guinea. Keeping the network available is central to customer satisfaction and business performance. As Telikom PNG looked ahead to increased market pressure, the team elevated reliability as a top priority.
Telikom PNG tied monitoring directly to financial outcomes. If a service outage prevents customers from using the network, the operator loses the opportunity to deliver and bill for network services. For Telikom PNG, network monitoring was not treated as a back-office expense, but as part of how the company protects revenue.
Windu illustrated this with a service outage at a main switching site:
That downtime had an immediate business impact. "From that site, we're talking about an average revenue of 2 million U.S. dollars a month," said Windu. Twelve hours of downtime for that site equals $33,000 to $35,000 of lost revenue. Telikom PNG's planning assumption was that preventing outages like this can quickly justify investment in centralized, real-time alarming.
Achieving service level targets across Papua New Guinea is difficult. In addition to typical telecom operational constraints, Telikom PNG must support major sites located on isolated mountaintops.
"These are major sites, connecting major cities," said Pius Ante, Telikom PNG's manager of transmission systems. "But there are no human beings anywhere around these places. The only way you can get there is by helicopter."
It is impractical for Telikom PNG to maintain its own helicopter fleet, so a helicopter must be rented for each site visit. Because access is difficult and expensive, regular maintenance is scheduled only once a quarter.
Power design adds another layer of risk. "Most of our mountaintop sites are run by solar power," said Windu. "If solar power isn't available, they run off battery power. The batteries are charged by the solar panels and a backup diesel generator."
These sites operate effectively most of the time, but failures in charging and power infrastructure can create large service-impacting events. "Power failures are a leading cause of failure," said Ante. "When the charging system works, the system just runs. But if the charger fails, then the site will eventually go down."
Telikom PNG needed to know what was happening now at remote sites, not hours later. Until T/Mon was deployed, Telikom PNG did not have real-time monitoring capability:
The NEC master was nonfunctional, so there was no visibility of discrete alarms. ASCII alarms had to be monitored and forwarded by staff. Because there were not enough personnel to monitor the ASCII console at all times, a worker had to periodically check for alarms and forward them by e-mail to maintenance supervisors.
"The problem with the current system is that there's no way to send alarms to the responsible people," said Ante.
"It's laborious and it's limited," said Windu. "We don't have any way of monitoring after hours." In many cases, Windu said the customer ended up serving as the first notification: when they had a problem, they called Telikom PNG, and the team couldn't immediately identify the root cause.
Telikom PNG set out to build a nationwide monitoring network and consolidate legacy alarming under DPS Telecom's T/Mon. In a telecom environment, T/Mon serves as a centralized alarm master for consolidating multiple alarm sources into a single operator view, supporting real-time awareness and faster response.
As Telikom PNG described it, the project focus was to create real-time monitoring capability so the organization could:
For organizations building a similar solution, DPS Telecom typically recommends a T/Mon-based architecture that consolidates alarms from mixed technologies (legacy remotes, serial/ASCII feeds, and modern IP/SNMP gear) into a single workflow, then distributes alerts to the right team. This aligns with Telikom PNG's stated gap: alarms must reach the responsible people, including outside office hours.
Telikom PNG planned a unified monitoring approach that joins existing legacy systems under T/Mon while the new nationwide monitoring network is built. Consolidation is especially valuable when a network has multiple alarm types (discrete contacts and ASCII messages) and when remote sites are expensive to reach.
In practical engineering terms, centralizing alarms under DPS Telecom's T/Mon helps NOC teams and supervisors correlate alarms, prioritize what to fix first, and reduce time lost to manual forwarding and periodic checks.
Telikom PNG's leadership tied the business case to measurable operational and financial outcomes:
Telikom PNG also emphasized the strategic value of improved customer satisfaction and reliability. The company was government-owned at the time of this project, but expected future privatization and increased competition in the Papua New Guinea telecom market. In that environment, improving uptime becomes a key part of long-term competitiveness.
T/Mon LNX Alarm Master (centralized alarm monitoring and notification)
If you are modernizing remote telemetry for mountaintop or hard-to-reach sites, DPS Telecom RTUs (such as the NetGuardian RTU product family) are commonly used to collect discrete and analog points and forward alarms via IP protocols. When paired with T/Mon, that architecture can provide a unified, real-time view from the NOC down to site power and environmental conditions. (This note is provided as general guidance; Telikom PNG's story specifically references T/Mon as the monitoring platform.)
Many failures occur outside normal working hours. Without real-time alarm delivery, the outage clock starts when the failure occurs, but the response clock does not start until someone notices. Telikom PNG described this gap as a key contributor to long outages.
Discrete alarms are typically contact-closure points (on/off) used for conditions like rectifier fail, generator run, door open, or low battery. ASCII alarms are text-based messages sent over serial links. A centralized platform like T/Mon can help consolidate and normalize both types for consistent operations.
An alarm master aggregates incoming alarms, displays current conditions, and supports escalation and notification workflows so alarms reach the responsible teams quickly. Telikom PNG identified this as a major limitation of its prior approach, where alarms were checked periodically and forwarded manually.
Telikom PNG described remote sites that rely on solar, batteries, and diesel backup. When a charger or rectifier fails, the site can run for a time and then drop hard. Real-time alarming supports earlier intervention before the site reaches a no-service condition.
When access is expensive and scheduled maintenance is quarterly, operations teams need real-time visibility to decide whether to wait for the next routine visit or justify an urgent trip. Telikom PNG described this as a core reason remote telemetry is essential.
See the solution Telikom PNG found using DPS Telecom equipment to monitor the network and vital gear.
