Mobile operators take on ICASA's network quality tests

ICASA's method makes sense to me - if you want to know what is really happening on the ground to people who make phone calls, then you must go out and make calls and see what happens. I'm sure the operators don't like it because it reveals all the things they can hide when they use their own methods.

Fritz
 
Hmmm, as much as they ICASA's method was over a small amount of calls and time. I personally think that the vodacom network quality is shocking, I get about 3 / 4 dropped calls a day and that's out of 10 - 12 calls. Never mind trying to get respectable 3G connectivity.... and this in sandton!
 
Delport points out that Vodacom measures the call setup success rate and call drop rate based on every single call in the network. “Based on these statistics, the call drop rate in the network is far better than stated in ICASA’s report,” said Delport.
Click to expand...
So how does Vodacom or any other operator for that matter, know that the call has been dropped?
I would really be interested how this measurement is made.
Based on my experience the call drop rate is much worse that what ICASA have measured, so how do the operators get their statistics? :confused:
 
Electron1 said:
So how does Vodacom or any other operator for that matter, know that the call has been dropped?
I would really be interested how this measurement is made.
Based on my experience the call drop rate is much worse that what ICASA have measured, so how do the operators get their statistics? :confused:
Click to expand...

An example (from Google):

CSSR = 100 * ([TCASSALL + TFCASSALLSUB + THCASSALL + THCASSALLSUB]/ TASSALL) * (1 - ([RAOREQ + RAAPAG + RACALRE]/CNROCNT) * (CCALLS-CMSESTAB)/CCALLS) * (1 - ([RAOREQ + RAAPAG + RACALRE]/CNROCNT)* (CNDROP - CNRELCONG)/CMSESTAB)

:)

As a summary it is basically a lot of counters being incremented (on different servers from the tower through to the core network) counting different stages/mode/states your phone and connection reached or has passed.

The moment your phone requested a communication channel with the cell tower the first counter is incremented (given that the cell tower could get the message at all). Then you get counters counting the number of successful requests, counters counting different type of failures (example congestion) and you have counters which is counted when timers have run out indicating a mobile went out of coverage and therefore the call has dropped for example (to name a few). Many of these counters are defined in the specs, but Vendors also add a lot of their own counters (as the old one above for Ericson). These counters are then further processed on the vendors equipment to create indicators and more counters, and then made available for "download" or viewing by the Vendors teams or the operator.

Quick low down of the statistics :)
 
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