Network quality and challenges

Ncell on day to day operation applies two quality measurement and control concepts: (1) Customer experience - quality of Customer service, response time, customer feedback about the product and network quality and (2) Technical – quality measured based on system and network Key Performance Indicators. Since subject is complex I will explore more technical, also practical, issues that are attributes to the network quality.

Customer feels Ncell network quality based on (1) Network availability and (2) Quality of network equipment. Whenever customer makes the call or data connection it is important that there is Network available – there is coverage, it is stable and available 24 hours. By building network in Nepal Ncell meets all possible challenges that might not be present in other countries where TeliaSonera builds mobile networks. There are two main objective factors that have great impact on network availability:

Difficult geographical terrain with limited access roads

 Most of Nepali population is located in suburban and rural areas. Building Base Station (BTS) sites and supporting transmission into such areas require huge effort to bring materials and build site and power lines. The network rollout goes from biggest populated area to smallest, with few sites in very beginning and increasing coverage and capacity step by step. Customers will face limited connectivity and call congestions in the beginning. Besides that, in order to ensure enough capacity, Ncell requires to build number of transmission sites in between to reach particular BTS or build satellite site that itself is capacity limited for the future expansions. Ncell on daily base gathers the customer feedback about capacity and coverage requirements and put these into future rollout plans. You can send your feedback on email: info@ncell.com.np

Limited access to Power and load shedding

Mobile network cannot function without stable power supply. In order to keep BTS sites working, especially during October-May period of time Ncell implements complex solutions: BTS sites are equipped with diesel generators (DG), Battery backup and solar solution. Depending on available site area such solutions are different site by site. Diesel generators are in close to 90% of sites, exceptions are city sites.  However, such fully equipped sites are only possible to build in rural areas. City sites have space limitations, therefore more vulnerable to large power cuts. Another challenge: power supplied during June-October is low quality, fluctuating down up to 110V instead of required 220V. In such circumstance Ncell faces high ratio of broken power supply units and supporting generators. In order to fix the situation there is a general plan in 2011 to implement power stabilizators, new type of batteries (short recharge cycle), replace DG by solar where place allows on more critical sites.

As second subject let’s review quality of network equipment. Based on latest technology development trends, future roadmaps and Ncell plans to implement new services Ncell has selected only best work class mobile network vendors. As any electronic equipment it tends to get broken based on (1) non quality of chips and elements, (2) fault in its operation or human fault, (3) non appropriate operational condition (like power fluctuation).  There are number of processes that Ncell implemented: several critical items have redundancy in the system that is already provided by the Vendor; Ncell keep enough spare part stock in order to provide the timely replacement of faulty unit; Ncell implemented first line maintenance process in order to ensure there is preventive and corrective teams in place in order to provide BTS site corrections on time. The challenge comes from the following facts:

Ncell cannot deploy operation teams close to each BTS since faults cannot be predicted. Therefore corrections can be only done when team reaches the site (depending on criticality from 1-72 hours in far end sites). We need to take into account: road availability and conditions, many site owners do not allow accessing the site during night time and moreover running the generator. During the strikes transportation is not allowed at all. In case of site is broken such time interval is required to fix the fault.

Competence of operation resources

 Since network implementation Ncell has recruited several hundreds of new engineers. It takes about half to one year in order to ensure the new engineer can operate the system independently. New equipment is coming every year and it complexity increases. Thus, it was required that field operational teams are strengthened with experts from different organizations.

Summary

 That’s only review of small but most important part of quality management. Building the quality Mobile network in Nepal requires resources, expertise and huge investment. Rollout of the network is slower than in other countries, however with the last year Ncell initiatives quality has considerably improved. There is still a lot to do and Ncell is looking new ways, solutions to improve it. Network requires huge upfront investment for minimizing issues listed above. For comparison purpose currently cost of similar BTS sites build in Nepal is two to three times more expensive than similar BTS sites in Europe/Eurasia. Payback time of such investment is much longer and might even never come. Despite of that Ncell is commitment and will continue invest in the quality.

Yours sincerely,

Aigars Benders

CTO, Ncell

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