Remote protection and monitoring of cabinets and high-value assets at telecommunications base stations

A telecommunications operator with nationwide base station infrastructure needed to remotely protect and supervise its base stations, the cabinets that house its communications equipment and its lithium/lead-acid batteries for backup power. Its main problem was physical security, lack of access control, and vandalism: damage to its assets and theft of batteries and other infrastructure components. An opening, tampering, or damage to a cabinet could require a physical on-site intervention. With Phantom Shield and the Reveal platform, the operation moved to a model of remote monitoring and centralized data: when an intrusion occurs at any base station, the team receives the alert, identifies the affected station, and sends critical alerts to the client's Operations and Monitoring Center. The system was installed at 460 sites, achieving an 85% reduction in vandalism events and real savings of USD 2.3 million.

A telecommunications operator providing connectivity and communications services nationwide has an extensive base station infrastructure, located in different urban and rural geographic areas, housing communications equipment and various backup power systems.

The main problem was physical security, lack of access control to the base stations, and vandalism: damage to its assets and theft of batteries and other infrastructure components.

The challenge was to remotely protect and supervise the base stations and the cabinets housing the communications equipment and, especially, the lithium/lead-acid batteries used as electrical backup. Before having an integrated solution, an intrusion, tampering, or damage to one of the cabinets could only be detected several days or hours later, which meant:

Longer response times to events.

Risk of loss of or damage to equipment and batteries, and the cost of replacing damaged infrastructure.

Difficulty having a centralized view of station status.

Risk of telecommunications service interruption.

As critical infrastructure, it was important to detect any event quickly and be able to act before it became a larger impact.

Phantom Shield is designed to provide remote monitoring and protection of base stations and their cabinets. All information captured by the system through sensors at the station is sent to the Reveal platform through the cloud, where the status of the base stations is displayed and the generated alerts are received.

The solution consists of:

Station access control and protection: surveillance cameras, motion sensors, wall vibration sensors, access gate locks, tampers, and electromagnetic locks.

Phantom Shield Gateway: detects and authorizes access to the station through prior scheduling or remote authorization. In the absence of scheduling, it detects the presence of unauthorized personnel and sends alerts to the Operations Center. If an unauthorized opening of the battery cabinet occurs, the system triggers the autonomous response (ink system) and starts the deterrence process, immediately alerting the monitoring center through the Reveal platform. It also enables arming and disarming by local keypad and/or remote disarming from the control center, centralizes information from the cabinet and the station, and manages event communication.

Reveal platform: receives all information, displays the status of the base stations, and delivers the generated alerts.