{"id":31292,"date":"2011-08-10T23:08:14","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T21:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=31292"},"modified":"2011-08-10T23:09:54","modified_gmt":"2011-08-10T21:09:54","slug":"cellular-network-quality-what-is-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/31292-cellular-network-quality-what-is-the-truth.html","title":{"rendered":"Cellular network quality: What is the truth?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) recently published their ECS and ECNS compliance reports<\/a> for South Africa\u2019s largest telecoms operators.<\/p>\n

The compliance assessments, which were conducted for the 2009\/2010 financial year, were based on the following regulations: General License Fees; Code of Conduct; People with Disabilities; E-rate; End-User and Subscriber Service Charter; and USAF.<\/p>\n

As part of the End user and subscriber service charter regulations the networks provided ICASA with network availability statistics.<\/p>\n

Vodacom submitted that their network availability was 99.6% over the measured period while MTN said that they have always achieved a network service availability of over 99% in all areas of coverage.<\/p>\n

Cell C provided a more extensive breakdown of network performance, showing an average network availability of 99.33%.<\/p>\n

These figures mean that the three cellular operators comfortably comply with the regulations which require operators to \u201c\u2026achieve an average 95% network service availability over a period of six (6) months\u201d.<\/p>\n

Are these figures reliable? It is obviously unlikely that an operator will submit statistics which show that they have not met regulatory requirements.<\/p>\n

ICASA\u2019s own tests<\/strong><\/p>\n

ICASA recently conducted a quality of service survey of the cellular operators in Gauteng, and published a document in July 2011 which showed that Cell C, Vodacom and MTN failed to meet the minimum requirements for Call Set Up Success Rate (CSSR) and Dropped Call Rate (DCR).<\/p>\n

\"Overall<\/a>

Overall Performance<\/p><\/div>\n

The results of the survey found that MTN did not meet the target in terms of Call Set Up Success Rate, whereas Vodacom and Cell C have complied with this requirement.<\/p>\n

\"Call<\/a>

Call Setup Success Rate<\/p><\/div>\n

However, all three operators failed to meet the target in terms of dropped call rate.<\/p>\n

\"Drop<\/a>

Drop Call Rate<\/p><\/div>\n

If ICASA only uses statistics provided by the cellular operators themselves to assess regulatory requirements (which was the case in its latest compliance reports), it means that Vodacom, MTN and Cell C will essentially tell the regulator that they complied with network regulations, rather than the other way around.<\/p>\n

To effectively enforce regulations about network availability it is clear that ICASA will have to conduct their own network performance and quality testing.<\/p>\n

The regulator\u2019s capacity to accurately perform such testing, especially with limited funding and other resources, is questionable.<\/p>\n

Related info: ICASA Compliance Reports<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ICASA and the cellular operators\u2019 information on network availability and quality does not correspond<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[355,35,533,42,41],"class_list":["post-31292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-cell-c","tag-headline","tag-icasa","tag-mtn","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31296,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31292\/revisions\/31296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}