Telecommunications Companies Can Now Fly their Cell Towers for Inspections from the Safety of their Desktops

DroneHive and Red Mountain Scientific Partner to Make Formerly Dangerous Cell Tower Inspections Safer, Faster and More Accurate

San Francisco, CA and Fort Collins, CO—August 23, 2018—Manual cell tower inspection is laden with danger for the tens of thousands of men and women who inspect the more than 100,000 cell towers in the U.S. daily. Until now, there was no safe way to gather data on the overall condition of the tower or to conduct construction-related assessments without having people climb often hundreds of feet into the air. Now DroneHive, a leading drone services company, and Red Mountain Scientific, a leader in autonomous flight software, have partnered to provide carriers, tower groups, engineering firms and field services firms a way to keep their teams much safer. DroneHive has a ready-to-deploy team of more than 500 drone services professionals across the country to manage the aerial data collection. Red Mountain Scientific provides flight automation software to automate tower image data, as well as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline analysis and generate tower reports.

Companies can now inspect their cell towers from the safety of their desks and save their valuable tower technicians for critical elevated repairs and modifications. In addition, by using the aerial data collection services, companies reduce liabilities, secure more accurate data, improve efficiencies and reduce costs. The telecommunications industry is expected to continue its tremendous growth in the next five years as carriers upgrade their equipment in the race for 5G coverage, so the return-on-investment on aerial data collection is significant.

“It is crazy to send thousands of cell tower technicians in harm’s way, literally risking life and limb, to do something that now can be safely done using drones,” said Paul Huish, CEO of DroneHive. “This partnership provides a quick, turnkey solution for the telecommunications industry that not only can save human lives, but can greatly enhance their business operations.”

Sam McGuire, a former cell tower inspector and now director of business development for Red Mountain Scientific, knows firsthand the safety issues and limitations of manual data collection. He says, “Tower work is inherently dangerous as soon as boots leave the ground. Moreover, the data a cell tower inspector can collect is usually limited to the path of their climb. Our goal is to reduce elevated work and enhance the quality of tower inspection data. This partnership solves both of those issues.”

 

Why Using Drones for Tower Inspection Is Better

Beyond the safety risks, current ways of collecting data about cell towers is extremely labor-intensive. It can take 2-4 hours per tower to do the visual inspection and the technician may only get a 180-degree view of the tower. It then takes about an hour to review the images and draft the report, and there are also the “truck rolls,” the time it takes to get the inspectors to the tower in the first place. The process is often full of human errors, not nearly as accurate and often highly inconsistent from technician to technician.

With this new aerial inspection partnership between DroneHive and Red Mountain Scientific, companies can get a 360-degree view of the tower and near real-time data on their desktops. Red Mountain uses machine learning and AI to quickly recognize the attributes of the vertical assets and detect anomalies. Report-generation is quicker and companies can now more easily and efficiently monitor the health of their entire portfolio of cell tower assets.

The partnership also offers immense scalability in that DroneHive professional drone operators are ready to deploy in hundreds of locations across the country, saving companies the time and travel expenses of their own employees. DroneHive has already completed more than 10,000 successful flights for clients in 2018.

 

Aerial Inspection Services Available Now

The aerial inspection services for cell towers, or any other vertical asset, are available now. Interested companies can contact Sam McGuire at Red Mountain Scientific at [email protected] or 720-212-4133.

 

About Red Mountain Scientific

Red Mountain Scientific is an industry leader in autonomous flight software, data storage and image analytics. Founded in 2017, the firm works closely with companies and service providers in telecom, broadcast and wind energy. Its services allow users to streamline asset management by combining enhanced data collection capabilities with sophisticated analytics tools. Find out more at: www.redmountainscientific.com

 

About DroneHive

DroneHive was founded in January of 2016 to address the corporate need for a drone services partner. The company has more than 500 professional drone operators nationwide, a perfect safety record after thousands of flights and competitive rates. Services include inspection, surveillance and other aerial data collection. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, DroneHive helps corporations collect high quality aerial data across the country. For more information, please visit: www.dronehiveinc.com

 

For more information, media and bloggers only:

Gaby Adam
By the Sea Communications
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +1 206-931-5942

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