Seamless Handover Discussion

[will_i_a_m]

Hi Guys

I want to know what this "Seamless Handover" problem is? I have heard highlights about Alan Knott-Craig discussing this matter on the radio.

If I understand this correctly, a "Seamless Handover" occurs when you move between cellphone towers and you have to roam onto a Vodacom tower because there's no Cell C coverage in a specific area. That handover is currently a seamed handover rather than a seamless meaning it does not happen without problems / limitations on the roaming network.

Is my understanding of this correct? If it is, then all my problems that I have with Cell C have a cause known as: Vodacom!

Regards.

 

[sajunky]

Seamless is a technical term. I am not network engineer to answer this question definitely. However what I heard from this dscussion, seamless handover requires that a tower knows all its neghbours and can initialize handover to one of its neighbours, which is less busy by example. This is a case of the towers within the same LAC (using the same network computer), possibly extended to neghbouring LAC as well. Seamless handover between networks would be similiar to the handover between different LAC's. It requires exchange of information between two network computers. For the user it is totally transparrent.
Non-seamless handover is when a user equipment loses radio link and starts searching for neighbouring tower and attempts re-register to the network. If someone make a call to a user during this procedure, it receives "user not available message" or straight to the mail box.

 

[whatwhat]

In the handover issue thread in news there is a good description on what the issue is.