MTN is ready for festive season traffic
The headquarters of MTN in Johannesburg, South Africa. File picture: Mike Hutchings/Reuters The headquarters of MTN in Johannesburg, South Africa. File picture: Mike Hutchings/Reuters
Johannesburg – South Africa’s second largest mobile
operator, MTN, says it has prepared its network for increased traffic over the
festive season.
The operator, which has 29.7 million subscribers in
South Africa, says in a statement issued on Thursday that it has optimised its
network capacity and coverage to cater for increased voice and data traffic
over the festive season.
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“MTN expects traffic on its network to peak during
the next few days as people take a break from work and get to spend more time
on social media platforms, stream and watch content on their devices and
reconnect with friends and family.”
The festive period and South Africa’s traditional
slow business period – which starts on December 16 and continues into early
January – is typically a busy period for network operators, with volumes
hitting highs on December 25 and New Year ’s Day.
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color:#222222;mso-fareast-language:EN-ZA">MTN explains the festive
season network improvements are part of the ongoing network upgrade that MTN
has embarked on in the past eighteen months, which includes improving network
quality and coverage along the freeways, national roads and high density areas
across the country in order to reduce dropped calls and boost indoor coverage
and speeds.
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“We are confident of the work we have done to
enhance our network quality and coverage in preparation for the holiday season.
We have upgraded our system nodes and data centers to cater to increased voice
and data traffic. The multi-pronged network optimisation strategy also
encompassed a site by site analysis, the enhancements of software features
equipped with an early warning system functionality that allows MTN to detect
glitches before they manifest themselves, and improved network capacity and
skills,” says recently-appointed chief technology and information officer Giovanni
Chiarelli.
The operator is also seeking to capatalise on the
surging demand for data, which is increasingly becoming a major contributor to
revenue.
MTN notes it has doubled LTE throughput speeds in
the last eighteen months. In addition, 3G coverage in rural areas was also
improved through spectrum layering.
The network upgrades focused mainly on improving
upload and download speeds, and comprised of continuous monthly drive tests to
assess network quality and coverage, the company notes.
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