Why is it so hard to fix a congestion issue?

[charlieharper]

I've told Rain + Afrihost many times, the network in our area is extremely congested. Like during the day it's barely useable (1mbps if I'm lucky), in the evenings, it flies at 20-30mbps. I'm turning into a night owl because of this.

Clearly we know what the problem is - why can't they do something about it?

 

[Wasabee!]

Spectrum is expensive is one problem, and ICASA being guavamint are still helping Post Offer deliver 1KG parcels instead of release spectrum.

PostNet, Post Office in legal showdown over packages weighing a kilogram or less

Judge suspends proposed ban on franchise couriering small packages

www.iol.co.za

 

[Moto Guzzi]

I've told Rain + Afrihost many times, the network in our area is extremely congested. Like during the day it's barely useable (1mbps if I'm lucky), in the evenings, it flies at 20-30mbps. I'm turning into a night owl because of this. Clearly we know what the problem is - why can't they do something about it?

Its difficult to fix if you think you need more equipment, but instead theres a fault lurking in your system, the one needs money and planning, the other just needs good old fixing.

 

[Impala]

And to add to what is said above. Property law and local laws need to be followed which can take time and add to cost

 

[charlieharper]

Interesting... I thought you just increase capacity.

 

[Impala]

I wish it was like that.
No expert yet regarding the towers, but legislation like the Electronic Communications Act allows network operators to set up towers. The problem is that the local municipality or the people living in the area complain about the possible tower. So this can escalate to the point where lawyers become involve and then further court cases. All of this increases the cost which is not worth for the network operator.

 

[charlieharper]

But still, surely they can scale / upgrade their existing infrastructure, without having to go through the process of putting up a new tower...?

 

[Leno]

But still, surely they can scale / upgrade their existing infrastructure, without having to go through the process of putting up a new tower...?

Mobile data is limited by the amount of radio frequency / spectrum that is allocated to the network provider
So upgrading / scaling it would be adding more spectrum
The gov wont give out more spectrum at the moment

Only other way is to put up more towers and make the coverage of each tower smaller so it doesnt interfear with the other towers, but you end up with dead spots that the smaller towers dont cover vs the larger/higher tower

 

[cavedog]

But still, surely they can scale / upgrade their existing infrastructure, without having to go through the process of putting up a new tower...?

Congestion isn't about just upgrading.

The current equipment can actually handle quite a bit but spectrum is a license limitation.

Think of this very simple explanation. You have a pipe that can fill a bottle of water in 20 seconds. You have a license that only allows you to fill it at 10 seconds. You can do it at 20 seconds but not allowed because that other portion of the pipe belongs to another network. SO what do you do? You add more pipes and that increases the the water flow.

Same with spectrum. There is physical speed limitations directly linked to the spectrum they own.

I also remember you were told that 2600MHz is not available on the tower. Rain has 2 types of setups. One of them is where they have their own antennas and run both LTE Bands 3 and 38. These towers offer the most bandwidth as it has 4x4 mimo and carrier aggregation setups. Second setup is where Vodacom rolls out the Rain tower. In some cases where I have noticed is that Vodacom shares sector antennas with Rain. This means that those sector antennas do not have enough plugs to run the full Rain and Vodacom LTE frequencies. In this case if Vodacom can spare a couple of plugs on their sector antennas they only run LTE Band 3 in a 2x2 mimo configuration and house the equipment in their cabinet.

2x2 mimo on LTE band 3 with only 10MHz spectrum is sadly a very slow setup with a max speed of around 100Mbps if you are lucky shared. That means Vodacom customers roaming, Rain fixed and Mobile users. It's a sad affair of congestion but it is what it is.

The upgrade would be Rain going out to the tower. Installing their own sector antennas and run the 4x4 mimo with Band 3 and 38. It offers the most bandwidth. After that it would mean more towers.