Vodacom call quality?

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charl.voster

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Hi Vodacom3G,

It seems that MTN normally has crystal clear calls, but not as often on Vodacom's calls.

I once head somebody say you only use half of something (sorry - can't remember the name) so you can make more lines available on a tower so that you in fact reduce the quality of the call - but there are always "lines" available so eg. in case of emergency you can get a line. Any truth to it? If not, why the difference is call quality?
 
I've noticed this also because I have used cellphones abroad and call clarity is often poorer here. This is also very apparent when checking voicemail, where they are obviously using a space saving high compression setting to squeeze in more messages (limited in the UK for example).
 
I assume you are refering to half rate calls. Half-rate is used by Vodacomwhen the cell is busy although I have been assigned a half-rate channel after 10pm at night.

If you think the quality problem is half-rate what is your call quality like after hours? The reason I ask is there is half-rate on the radio interface as well as DTX - basically discontinous transmission possible on both uplink and downlink. This is noticable when you call a call centre with hold music - you don't hear the music but other garbled sounds occasionally

Another possbility is compression on the inter-MSC. As Telkom rips off everybody - mobile networks are not excluded and they also try and save a buck or 2 and compress the inters-MSC becuase GSM doesn't use a full 64k channel it needs less than 20k for a voice call.

Finally it can also be your mobile especially with repect to half rate - some mobile are better than others.
 
Not only have I noticed poorer quality on my vodacom calls but also frequent dropped calls!
 
charl, as soon as you posted on Thursday, I asked for the policy around half-rate and will post it as soon as I've got it.

In general:

The 2G towers can all fall back to half-rate when there is a voice capacity issue. Once a certain capacity is reached on the full-rate channels any new calls will be done on half-rate. As soon as the calls fall below the threshold, new calls will be full-rate again. Active calls will stay on full-rate.

The biggest limit on the number of available channels, and thus calls, on a specific tower is more to do with frequency re-use and handovers between the tower and its neighbours. So it's not just a case of banging in more radios.

This is actually one of the big advantages of building a 3G network. It provides a complete new spectrum with new voice capacity. As explained above there is a limited number of channels on 2G (1800 and 900) available and the data usage on GPRS and EDGE will only make matters worse. 3G is the correct way out of this.

Half-rate should give a small impact on voice quality, more so on audio with higher frequencies such as the new ring tones. It is monitored carefully though. Currently we see most half-rate usage around 8pm which is the voice peak for the network but in total its still a small % of all calls.

You'll also find that some handsets give better quality than others. The Motorola E1000 was so bad with the first few firmware revisions, you could hardly be heard by the other party. Same with the first i-mates.
 
ta for the reply.

So you are saying it is worth getting a 3G phone as (I'm assuming here) some of the large shopping centres such as menlyn are probably "full" on 2G (1800 and 900) and such "large"/busy areas/centres will probably have 3G converge?

How will 3G handle your growth in the future? Are there limitations to the number of calls per tower?


edit: Could you possible recommend a 3G phone that is a clam shell and not a nokia?
 
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ic, you're right. I also agree with charl.vorster in that it's logical to make your next phone a 3G one as they also support both 2G bands and of course, important for forumites, give you high speed data access.

In highly dense areas there are more 2G towers but with that comes the complexities of making them work together. 3G (having a much higher bandwidth) can carry many more calls.

charl.vorster, I'll leave it up to the forum to help you pick a phone. I've got a Motorola E1000 (stay away), Nokia 6680 and a JasJar (more a PDA) as 3G phones and my current choice would be the 6680, a non-clamshell Nokia :)
 
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