BT Group has been working with TXO for 15 years to help it resell and recycle legacy telecom hardware as the British operator continues to transform its network with new equipment for its mobile and fiber networks.
Currently, BT is consolidating and downsizing the buildings that house its telecom gear as well as moving to more energy-efficient hardware.
Kieran Crawford, group director for TXO, said, “We’re looking at their old copper infrastructure — big, power-hungry equipment that takes up a lot of footprint.”
By switching to more modern gear, BT will not only improve network performance and save energy, but it will also free up expensive real estate.
TXO has a variety of methods for disposing of old telecom equipment and creating what it likes to call the “circular economy.”
The first thing it does with old gear is to try and match it with another operator somewhere in the world that needs that equipment. One might say that TXO runs a sophisticated junkyard. The company has seven warehouses in various locations where it stores and inventories equipment and tries to match it with a buyer. It has two warehouses in the U.K. and others in Brazil, Sweden, France, the U.S. and Australia.
Crawford said, “First and foremost, it’s equipment for resell. It’s about matchmaking. BT might be getting rid of POTS, but another operator might need to use those parts to sweat their assets and use that as long as possible. We’ve got an inventory of over 1 million parts and can facilitate a supply of parts quickly.”
TXO also has a facility in the U.K. to repair equipment.
If there’s no market for the old gear, then TXO works to recycle the materials. Crawford said from a commodities stand-point, “when you’re talking recycling, the older the equipment the more precious metal it will contain."
David Evans, TXO group head of asset recovery, said the company will send the old equipment to a smelter to extract precious metals such as copper, silver and palladium.
Hazardous materials
This week the Wall Street Journal published an investigative journalism piece, exposing the fact that AT&T and Verizon own old lead-covered cables that criss-cross the U.S.
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Crawford said it’s been rare that TXO has dealt with toxic materials. It has done some work for U.K. operators that wanted to remove cables, which had been soaked in rat poison. The poison was applied to stop rats from chewing through the cables. TXO worked with a subcontractor that specialized in hazardous materials remediation.
In the case of the U.S. lead-coated cables, the copper inside the cables is quite valuable. But hazmat specialists would need to remove the lead.
In addition to its work with BT, TXO works with more than 100 operators including big names such as Virgin Media, Vodafone, Telstra, Orange, AT&T and Verizon.
It’s not the only company doing this reselling and recycling work. Some of its main competitors are the original equipment manufacturers that made the equipment in the first place, including Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE. “Those guys will take their old hardware and try to repurpose it internationally,” said Crawford.
Cisco and Juniper have certified pre-owned programs as well.
And there are other vendors such as CTDI, Shields Environmental and DeltaCom Group that compete with TXO.