Collahuasi Mine in Chile – one of the largest copper extraction deposits in the world – requires 24x7x365 support, and seamless communications are critical. That is why it has decided to entrust Motorola Solutions with full control of the operation of its mission-critical communications system. Assuring and managing the communications system is a major challenge, especially for an operation involving 5,500 company employees and collaborators dispersed across 3,500 Km2 in the Andean Mountains in the region of Tarapacá, Chile, entailing a variety of additional complexities for the mining business related to climate and geographic altitude.

Collahuasi is overcoming radio communications service availability issues by taking a proactive approach to mitigating risks to workers and mining operations that can reduce accidents and partial or total shutdowns.

The company has chosen the Motorola Solutions Premier communications system control and management service package, which includes local technical support, network monitoring from the Motorola Solutions Network Operations Center (NOC) in Illinois (USA), ongoing radio hardware maintenance, cyber security monitoring, and prevention and diagnosis.

“Every minute without communication puts our workers in the field at risk and affects the efficiency of the entire business. By entrusting the management of our communications network to Motorola Solutions, we can rest assured that we have a synchronized network with the latest technology that can operate seamlessly and reliably, and we are confident that we will see tangible benefits in the efficiency, profitability and safety of our operations,” said Gerardo Herrero, Collahuasi IT Manager.

System management will include 24x7 monitoring by expert professionals that can conduct predictive analyses of potential issues using statistical studies on traffic, failure occurrence and patch installation control, among others.

In addition to keeping the communications and safety protection system updated with the latest versions, this service will allow for installed radio and hardware repairs to ensure stable communications as well as safer and enhanced mining operations.