Sorry, you’re breaking up …
Ok, so is it just me or has the quality of voice calls on our mobile networks deteriorated in recent weeks and months?
I canvassed various associates and found that others had experienced similar problems from time to time; the inability to connect a call, frequently dropped calls, no network coverage despite being in a major metropolitan area.
The mobile operators deny their quality has suffered. But MTN’s financial director Rob Nisbet said, reporting full-year results on Wednesday last week, that it planned to significantly step up capital expenditure in South Africa (From R2,8bn to R7,1bn) this year to increase network capacity.
Independent telecoms specialist, Dobek Pater of Africa Analysis, backs this up, saying he’s observed a deterioration in mobile voice calls with the two biggest operators (he can’t speak on Cell C) in the last year or so.
Pater puts this down to a number of possibilities.
Probably the most important is that the links between 3G base stations require three to four times more capacity than their 2G predecessors. But Telkom is struggling to provide this and the delays put a strain on mobile traffic, particularly in the large metropolitan areas.
This is probably one of the main reasons why Vodacom and MTN have decided to self provide and have been rolling out their own fibre optic cables in metropolitan areas, Pater says.
Cell C is also considering self-providing backhaul capacity: “A decision will be made once the appropriate planning is complete. We are also investigating the feasibility of using fibre optic cables to avoid future capacity constraints within the core of our network,” said executive head of corporate communications Shenanda Janse van Rensburg.
Another reason, Pater says, which he has been able to glean from speaking to industry participants, is that although the networks have sufficient capacity to service their customers, the quality of calls on a base station is only optimal up to 50% of the capacity being in use at any one time. As soon as there’s a higher degree of saturation, as in the 80% to 90% currently being experienced, then the network does start to experience problems.
The solution, he says, is for operators to roll out additional base stations to increase network capacity.
He says this might be a transition period during which the 3G networks are being expanded and this capacity will later come of stream.
A further reason cited by Pater, is that there’s a trade-off between optimizing a network for voice and optimizing it for data. A base station might be optimized for data and hence the quality of the voice traffic suffers, and vice versa.
Vodacom’s chief communications officer Dot Field said that its network performance indicators remained “in line with international norms, and we have therefore in general not experienced increased complaints from customers.”
Field said, however, that there were external factors impacting on its network – and all other telecoms networks – such as load shedding and the theft of transmission cables.
Vodacom detailed, in its most recent annual report, for the year to March-2007, how its network continued to experience high levels of performance, with rates of between 99,3% and 99,7% on all metrics, including successfully making calls, retaining them and completing them.
MTN, said that it constantly monitored its network and regularly carried out enhancements: “Looking back at the last 12 months, the 2G network has remained stable, with no measurable deterioration, while the overall quality of the 3G network has improved,” it said in a written response.
Pater surmises that one factor that could have affected the perceived performance of MTN’s network specifically is that it probably redirected some of its local skills to other countries to help integrate the Investcom purchase.
Janse van Rensburg said Cell C had not experienced any deterioration in network quality in terms of setting up or dropping calls, as measured from its statistics (set-up success rates were 98,7%). She said since Cell C had expanded its network to a new generation platform, it had seen a 32% increase in carried traffic.
This is not to say the mobile operators don’t continue to invest heavily in their networks. To the contrary, Vodacom spent R5bn in capex in South Africa last year, while MTN spent R2,8bn in 2007 and plans a lot more this year. We just think they must always remember where their bread is buttered. More than 90% of revenue still comes from voice.
Please tell us your experiences.
Finweek
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