ISLAMABAD: One of the largest mobile phone operators in the country on Tuesday announced that its all 7,500 cell sites are ready for 3G as this upgradation would help resolve service quality related complaints.
The operator claimed that it is serving its customers with one of the most modern networks available in the world, Chief Technology Officer, Telenor Pakistan Gyorgy Koller said.
In an interview with ProPakistani, a web-based news portal, he explained the scope of swap and mentioned that company's entire network (including more than 7,500 cell sites, MSCs, transmission transport network including microwave, fiber equipment, all the core-network elements like HLR, VLR, mobile switches, media gateways, packet-switch core elements, value added platforms like ring-back tones and others, all the operating support systems that manages, monitors and controls the network) were replaced with end-to-end IP network.
"After this network upgradation, Telenor hopes that all - or at least majority of - service quality related complaints will get resolved," he said.
He emphasised that upgradation of network was primarily aimed at improving customers experience to achieve 3G/4G readiness and to get more greener network with lesser energy consumption and revealed that network quality related KPIs have already shown positive trends.
Gyorgy Koller said Telenor's entire network is 3G ready, however, minor upgradation at core level is required to get 4G deployments done.
When asked that how many sites will go 3G after the license will be auctioned in April, the CTO said this is something that would depend on various factors including cost of license, market dynamics, customers uptake, license obligations and management decisions.
Gyorgy Koller - who is company's CTO for last three years, said Telenor's upgraded network consumes 25 per cent lesser energy than the previous one.
He said that this is especially beneficial for a market like Pakistan where energy crisis reaches its peak with 14-20 hours of power cut in a day during summers.
Hinting about the magnitude of the project, Gyorgy said that this was one of the biggest, most complex and most difficult swap within Telenor Group's history.
However, the entire swap project - which was challenging in various ways - was completed in record duration of 13 months.
The entire cellular network with more than 21,000 elements were upgraded and replaced with 33 million live customers and without a single day of down-time.
When asked that how does Telenor respond to criticism for selecting ZTE over European network vendors, the CTO said that he has facts to prove the nicety of the decision and explained that two of the Chinese infrastructure vendors are amongst the best in the world and this can be seen by visiting their products in person.
He said that quality, future readiness, modernity and KPIs of ZTE infrastructure cannot be questioned.
About his opinion of having more than one infrastructure vendor on-board at a time, Gyorgy said that idea of working with two vendors in parallel was popular during early days of cellular deployments for continuous competition. However, in current days or in markets like Pakistan it is extremely expensive to operate with two network vendors due to economy of scale and the scope of work required to get done in current-day networks.
Gyorgy confirmed that Telenor has further plans to expand its network and believed that Pakistani market is still growing and there are untapped regions - with 25 per cent population and 50 per cent geographical locations uncovered - where Telenor is consistently rolling out cell-sites to get more customers.
He said that this need for new sites will also increase with introduction of next-generation licenses, adding that 3G network gives 10-20 Mbps speeds per base station while 4G network gives 100-200 Mbps speeds per base station.
Now as the number of customers on 3G and 4G networks would increase - within a base station - there would emerge the need of adding more base stations in that particular area.
Gyorgy said that major network optimization relating to swap has been completed, however, continuous optimization is an on-going process that may carry-on till the life-cycle of the network.
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