Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Our Telekom Company Loyley Ngira has identified some factors related to the break down in phone conversation, as a result of congestion in the network.
Speaking to the media Mr Ngira said they have the largest mobile network around the country with many mobile sites operational, thus it may not cater for mobile switching centres (MSC) to accommodate mass conversation within busy times.
“All the mobile sites (radio base transmission systems) use signaling services to connect back to the mobile switching centre MSC in Honiara via small aperture satellite terminals called VSATs and directed to the MSC via a hub. The MSC is the central equipment that manages calls,” CEO commented.
“Before the call is switched to connect the caller and receiver it goes through many network elements such as base switching controller (BSC) signalling interfaces, home location register HLR for authentication, just to name a few,” he added.
He added for prepaid customers, the online charging system (OCS) is a separate network element and this controls the reduction of credit used by a prepay caller as soon as a call is established.
He pointed out that service complaints communicated to Our Telekom are primarily the following:
a. Call drops out/disconnected in the middle of conversation;
b. Number does not exist and yet when next call attempt is made to the same number the call is established;
c. Unable to connect and congestion during peak hours;
d. Voice conversation goes silent and prepay credit is deducted;
“To help us better investigate all these problems, the locations of these calls will be useful to be able to pin down the root cause as every site is unique,” he revealed.
He further stated that in order to fix the problem we require information about:
• where the mobile site is located around the country
• the caller’s number
• if possible the number the caller is wanting to call
• time of the day and the date the call was made
Furthermore, he said it is helpful for fault tracing if they know the location around the country the caller is trying to call.
“Our Telekom has call data records of all calls originating and terminating on our network.
“Congestion is always an issue in many single-sites across the network during busy (peak) hours. To mitigate congestion we require more capacity to be added to the resources. Capacity is in terms of satellite bandwidth allocations for voice and data, and radio base transmission transmitters/receivers. With domestic interconnect available to both operators, congestion can be worsened,” Mr Ngira clarified.
By AATAI JOHN
