QUARTER TWO QUALITY OF SERVICE REPORT FOR MOBILE NETWORK OPERATORS (TNM/AIRTEL)

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The quarter two (2011) report will analyse the key Performance Indicators which have been achieved by the GSM Service providers namely TNM and Airtel. The Key Performance Indicators under consideration are Radio Network Availability, Call Set up Success Rate, SDCCH Congestion, Traffic Channel Congestion, Call drop rate, Handover Success rate, GPRS Context Activation Success Rate, SMS Success rate, Trunk Congestion, MSC Availability and IN platform availability. The graphs herein were produced using raw data which was submitted by the two Mobile Network Operators. According to the data which is always submitted by the Operators, it shows that there is an improved performance for both GSM network operators compared to the previous quarter.

Quality of Service Report for TNM and Airtel

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2.0 KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

2.1 CALL SET UP SUCCESS RATE The Call Set Success Rate assesses the percentage of originating calls that were successfully established by customers. In any GSM network, not all call attempts made by customers are successfully established. MACRAs target for this Key Performance Indicator is 98%. Both Airtel and TNM performed slightly below the required target of 98%. Airtels Call set up success Rate performance averaged 97.6% throughout this quarter of the year. While as TNM performed badly during the month of May towards June as shown in the graph below.

Graph 1 showing Call Set Up Success Rate

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2.2 PERCENTAGE OF CONNECTIONS WITH GOOD VOICE QUALITY (SIGNALLING AND TRAFFIC CHANNEL CONGESTION) This Key Performance Indicator measures the Percentage of call connections with good voice quality. As a preamble, Percentage of connections with good voice quality is made up of two components namely Traffic Channel (TCH) congestion and signalling (SDCCH) congestion. The implication of this congestion is that any customer establishing a call will not be able to successfully make that call. He or She is likely to encounter messages such as network busy or circuit congestion if using smart phones like blackberry.

2.2.1 SIGNALLING (SDCCH) CONGESTION The target for this Key Performance Indicator (Signalling Congestion) is 0.5%. The signalling channel (SDCCH) facilitates easy establishment of a call and from graph 2 below, it can be seen that both GSM Network operators managed to achieve the target throughout the quarter. On this KPI only Airtel managed to achieve the target during quarter two. Typical analysis and comparison reveals that Airtel performed much better as compared to TNM. Further analysis of TNM performance shows that throughout quarter two from April to June its SDCCH congestion was too high.

Graph 2 Showing SDCCH Congestion

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2.2.2 TRAFFIC CHANNEL (TCH) CONGESTION The Key Performance Indicator directly related to SDCCH Congestion in as far as Voice quality is concerned is Traffic Channel Congestion. The Traffic congestion comes into play when the number of customers are increasing in a particular area or network and this is usually resolved by adding software or hardware capacity in the affected node of the network inorder to increase capacity. The target for this Key Performance Indicator is 2% and from the graph below, both GSM Network operators managed to achieve the target. The performance for TNM and Airtel was excellent meaning that a greater percentage of customers were able to successfully establish calls without experiencing messages such as network busy or circuit congestion. Further anlysis shows that Airtel performed better as compared to TNM.The average SDCCH congestion for Airtel was 0.02% whereas that of TNM was 1.6%. In conclusion, the overall performance of this Key performance Indicator during quarter two was satisfactory for both GSM Network operators.

Graph 3 Showing Traffic Channel Conhgestion

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2.3 CALL DROP RATE

This Key Performance Indicator (Call drop rate) is a measure of calls that are prematurely disconnected before end of conversation against the number of all successfully established calls. Call drops may be experienced due to network problems such as handover failure or equipment faults. The target for this Key Performance Indicator is 2%.

Both GSM network operators registered some call drops on their respective networks, nevertheless they managed to achieve the target . Further analysis of this KPI during quarter two indicates that TNM had more dropped calls as compared to Airtel. TNM had an average call drop rate of 1.3% whereas Airtel had an average Call drop rate of 0.8%. Overall performance of both TNM and Airtel on this Key Performance Indicator was satisfactory.

Graph 4 Showing Call Drop Rate

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2.4 HANDOVER SUCCESS RATE This Key Performance Indicator (Handover Success Rate) measures the ability of a customer to talk on the cell phone for a long distance without getting disconnected. It is the ability of a call connection to be handed over from one cell to another cell. This Key Performance Indicator is directly linked to Call drop rate because a handover failure normally results into a dropped call. The target for this Key Performance Indicator is 90% . Typical analysis of the two Mobile Network Operators reveals that only Airtel had a high percentage of Handover Success Rate as compared to TNM and this corresponds to the small percentage of dropped calls registered in quarter two by Airtel. The trend further shows that TNMs performance is below the rquired target of 90%. This therefore shows that only Airtel met the MACRA set target of 90%.

Graph 5 Showing Handover Success Rate

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2.5 GPRS CONTEXT ACTIVATION SUCCESS RATE GPRS context activation Success rate is a measure of data related services that were successfully accessed by customers. One typical example of data related service is the Internet. The target for this Key Performance Indicator is 90%. From graph 6 below, both Mobile Network Operators achieved the required performance level. The average GPRS Context activation Success Rate for Airtel was 99.63% whereas TNM had 92.33%.

The performance of both Mobile Network operators was satisfactory. This means that data related services like internet were successfully accessed by a good number of Airtel and TNM customers without major difficulties.

Graph 6 Showing GPRS Context Activation Success Rate

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2.6 SMS SUCCESS RATE SMS success rate is a measure of originating SMSs sent by customers against SMSs received by the intended recipients. The target for this Key Performance Indicator is 90%. SMS Success rate is affected by a number of factors. For example when customers SMS inbox is full this may prohibit incoming of new SMSs. Also when customers attempt to send an SMS when they dont have credit in their cell phones , a signal of SMS delivery failure is sent back to the SMS server affecting delivery of further SMSs. SMS failure can also be caused by faulty equipment like transmission,Base Transceiver Station,Base Station Controller, Mobile Switching Center, SMS server etc. From the graph below, it can be seen that both GSM Network Operators managed to achieve the target of SMS Success Rate. The graph also indicates that though both operators met the rquired target, Airtels performance was better than that of TNM.

Graph 7 Showing SMS Success Rate

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2.7 TRUNK CONGESTION The target for this Key Performance Indicator is 2%. Trunk congestion is a measure of traffic congestion between Mobile Switching Center (MSC) and the various routes like interconnection to other network operators (MTL/ACL) including International traffic. When there is congestion in a particular route customers will not be able to access the network. One typical example of such congestion is the call centre route whereby customers cannot easily access the customer Care Centre. Customers may simply be told by the recorded message that all the customer agents are busy and please hold the line. During the second quarter of the year 2011, TNM only met the target in the month of April whereas Airtel managed to achieve the target throughout the quarter. TNM failed to achieve this during the month of May up to the end of June.

Graph 8 Showing Trunk Congestion

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2.8 MOBILE SWITCHING CENTRE (MSC) AVAILABILITY Mobile Switching Centre availability is the time in minutes per month when the MSCs were up and running. If MSC fails, there can be no network coverage in the whole country or particular regions served by the affected MSC. Mobile Switching Centre is the core equipment that controls the entire GSM network and the target for this Key Performance Indicator is 99.999%. From the graph below, it can be seen that all Network Operators again managed to achieve the target. MSC availability was 100%.

Graph 9 Showing MSC Availability

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2.9 IN PLATFORM AVAILABILITY Intelligent Network (IN) platform is a network architecture that separates service logic from switching equipment, allowing new services to be added without having to redesign switches to support new services. It encourages competition among service providers since it makes it easier for a provider to add services and it offers customers more service choices. Like MSC availability, the target for this Key Performance Indicator is 99.999%. IN platform availability is the time in minutes per month when the Intelligent Network Platform was up and running. When IN platform is out of order, customers cannot be correctly billed. From graph 10 below, both GSM operators managed to achieve the target. IN platform Availability was 100% from the month of April through June, 2011. The performance of IN platform was satisfactory for both Network Operators.

Graph 10 Showing IN Platform availability

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2.10 RADIO NETWORK AVAILABILITY This Key Performance Indicator measures Radio Network Availability. Radio Availability is the time in minutes per month when Base Transceiver Stations were up and running. The target for Radio Network Availability is 99.8%. When a Base Transceiver Station is down, customers surrounding that Base Transceiver Station will not be able to make or receive calls since there will be no network signal on their cell phones during the outage time. On this KPI both Airtel and TNM failed to achieve the overall target throughout the quarter two. This trend has also been noticed in quarter one. Both Airtel and TNM did not meet the target for this KPI.

Graph 11 Showing Radio Network Availability

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3.0

CONCLUSION

There has been a great improvement during quarter two of the year 2011 for both Airtel and TNM in most Key Performance Indicators as compared to the previous quarters. Key Performance Indicators where TNM did not perform well and need to improve includeRadio Network availability, (SDCCH) congestion, Handover Success Rate and Trunk Congestion . As for Airtel, the performance was poor on Radio Network availability .

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