If the air conditioning in a data center fails or a cell tower suddenly loses power, every minute counts. Power and Air Solutions Management GmbH (PASM), a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG, works to ensure that situations like this do not occur in the first place. The company operates and monitors the power and infrastructure supply for thousands of technical sites across the entire Group. With the support of PSsystec GmbH, an Augsburg-based expert in IoT retrofit systems, PASM has implemented an IoT based solution in recent years that has fundamentally modernized incident management and energy monitoring. The result is a system that not only detects faults before they become critical, but also creates a foundation for greater efficiency, transparency and future readiness.
The challenge: Making decentralized power supply manageable at Group scale
Telekom’s infrastructure consists of a far reaching network of equipment rooms, antenna sites, server rooms and energy hubs, distributed across all of Germany. Until now, many tasks were handled using conventional building management technology, with PLC controllers, LAN based gateways and maintenance intensive setups. However, this approach was expensive, difficult to maintain and hardly scalable. Because the sites are so different, ranging from urban technology hubs to remote cell towers, standard solutions quickly hit their limits.
PASM therefore had to develop a concept that could be adapted flexibly to any environment, without relying on existing networks such as WiFi or LAN. Alongside the technical challenge, organizational aspects also played a decisive role. The goal was not just to connect devices, but to harmonize processes, data flows and responsibilities. The solution needed to record energy consumption and system data in real time, detect outages at an early stage and integrate seamlessly with Telekom’s existing internal energy data management system. In short, the new incident and energy management system had to work independently of location, support decentralized scenarios and still enable central control.
The solution: An IoT-based platform with cellular connectivity
PASM found the answer with IoT specialist PSsystec, in the form of an intelligent, mobile communications-based IoT solution. At its core is the SMARTbox, a compact, modular IoT device with an integrated SIM card that connects via the mobile network to Cloud of Things, Telekom’s IoT cloud. This makes the system completely independent of local network infrastructures and allows it to be deployed at virtually any site.
The SMARTbox uses connected sensors to capture key metrics such as energy consumption, temperature, voltage and system operating status. This information is continuously transmitted to the cloud, where it is analyzed and visualized on a central platform. Faults are detected automatically and forwarded to the responsible teams. As a result, outages can be resolved more quickly and maintenance activities can be planned more efficiently. Because individual consumption values are recorded, costs can also be allocated based on actual usage.
The system has a fully modular design, which enables step by step scaling from a pilot project to large scale rollout across several thousand sites. Thanks to open interfaces and a standardized data structure, the solution can also be integrated smoothly into existing Telekom systems. A particular highlight is the partnership based collaboration between PASM and PSsystec, which is built on an agile development approach. Instead of a traditional customer supplier relationship, a joint project team was formed that closely aligned technical, operational and administrative aspects. PASM contributed the operational requirements, while PSsystec provided the technical expertise and platform capabilities.
The result: Efficiency, transparency and future readiness
With the IoT solution from PSsystec, PASM now monitors the power supply and technical status of more than 3,000 Telekom sites centrally and in real-time. What used to be a patchwork of isolated solutions has become a centrally monitored system. The new setup has fundamentally transformed incident management. Faults are detected and reported automatically, maintenance activities can be planned in a targeted way and many parameters can be configured remotely. This significantly reduces the effort required for on-site deployments while at the same time increasing operational reliability.
Compared with conventional control systems, PASM has been able to reduce costs considerably. The IoT platform also delivers greater transparency. It provides valuable insights into energy consumption and system conditions, opening up new opportunities to increase efficiency. The standardized and central data foundation ensures transparency across all sites, which is a crucial factor in a corporate environment where many stakeholders need to access the same information at the same time.
At the same time, the modular architecture of the system makes it possible to tap into additional use cases. The solution is already being used in areas such as facility management, water and cooling systems and smart grid environments. New sensors or analytics functions can be integrated into the IoT solution at any time, allowing it to grow with future requirements. Together, PASM and PSsystec are a strong example of how IoT technology can be put into practice, as an efficient, secure and future proof solution for critical infrastructure.
