Mobile network quality: why hide the truth?
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) recently published its latest Quality of Service (QoS) Monitoring Test Reports, showing that all mobile operators fell short in some areas.
ICASA tested the mobile operators’ networks and services in the Gauteng, Eastern Cape, Western Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal Provinces.
ICASA’s reports showed that Vodacom did not meet the Call Setup Success Rate (CSSR) target of 95% in the Eastern Cape Region. Cell-C and MTN failed to meet their SCCR targets in the Western Cape.
The results further showed that Cell C and Vodacom did not attain ICASA’s Drop Call Rate (DCR) target of ‘lower than 3%’ in the KwaZulu-Natal Region.
Questions raised over ICASA’s methodology
ICASA said that it conducted the QoS monitoring through drive-testing, using the TEMS investigation tool.
The TEMS Investigation is described as a tool for wireless network troubleshooting, verification, optimization, and maintenance of wireless networks. It offers data collection, real-time analysis and post-processing.
TEMS Investigation
Using the TEMS Investigation is an improvement over ICASA’s previous method of using a Cell C phone to call MTN and Vodacom, and then blaming all dropped calls to the operator which was called.
However, ICASA did not provide the sample size, which may again raise questions about the accuracy of its results.
MyBroadband has learned confidentially that the kit acquired by ICASA may not have been able to perform proper benchmarking as it only supported 2G. It should be noted that this information was received in February 2013, and the situation may have changed since then.
An industry expert further said that ICASA would need to call to a terminating point within each network to do proper testing, and that they did not have this equipment.
ICASA was asked for more technical details about how the tests were performed, but they did not provide details by the time of publication.
Vodacom provides own network quality statistics
Richard Boorman
Vodacom explained that it does extensive drive testing and network monitoring across the country.
“Our own results over the past 12 months show a call setup success rate in the Eastern Cape of over 99% and a dropped call rate in KZN of well below 1%,” said Vodacom spokesperson Richard Boorman.
Both of Vodacom’s internal measurements are considerably ahead of the targets set by ICASA.
“Since we’re monitoring on an ongoing basis, any issues that do come up are tackled straight away,” said Vodacom.
“We’re approaching ICASA to better understand their methodology and to ask for details of the routes used so that we can investigate further.”
Cell C sidestepping questions about its network quality
Karin Fourie from Cell C
Cell C sidestepped questions about the accuracy of the ICASA’s quality of service reports, supplying only the following feedback.
“Cell C will investigate the reports and take any steps that may be necessary to improve our QoS in the areas indicated,” said Karin Fourie, Cell C Executive Head of Communications.
Cell would also not provide its latest internal call setup success rate and dropped call rate statistics.
MTN mum on their network quality
MTN BlackBerry
MTN was asked whether they agree with ICASA’s network quality, but the mobile operator did not provide feedback regarding this issue.
MTN also did not provide its own statistics about call setup success rates or the percentage of dropped calls on its network.
More ICASA network quality testing articles
Vodacom, MTN, and Cell C fail quality tests
Mobile quality of service report: ICASA fails again
Mobile network quality: ICASA versus Operators
Mobile operators fail quality test: ICASA
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