Dropped calls not unique to SA

While SA's cellphone users are frustrated by the incidence of disconnected or dropped calls they experience on a daily basis, the problem is not unique to SA.

A recent survey by World of Avatar research wing Pondering Panda found that 78% of cellphone users from across SA and its mobile networks, experienced dropped calls during the month of May.

Pondering Panda head Shirley Wakefield says the overriding element, emerging from the over 2 200 interviews conducted, is the fact that South Africans are fed up with the prevalence of breaks in cellphone communication.

Wakefield says results show the three main local networks - Vodacom, MTN and Cell C - “all performed equally bad”, with MTN coming out only slightly worse than its counterparts.

World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck says the incidence of dropped calls is undoubtedly a bane for our country's cellphone users, but it is not a uniquely South African problem.

“Even first world countries experience dropped calls, especially the US. There is a lot of fragmentation between their networks, and the quality and continuity of calls is no less shaky than ours.”

A recent call quality survey, conducted by Swedish voice over Internet protocol company Rebtel, polled 992 US cellphone users and revealed that about two out of five (39%) of them experience more than five dropped calls per month. According to Rebtel, this is representative of approximately 128 million subscribers.

data use.”

He says the customer experience is getting worse - and is likely to get worse still, before it gets better.

“The networks might show, however, that proportionate to the rate of data consumption, the problem is in fact not worse.” But, in reality, says Goldstuck, it is the nature of the game as long as voice is competing with data on the same channels. He suggests operators look at ways of separating voice and data channels, “if that is possible”.

Kanagaratnam Lambotharan, CTO of MTN SA, says the operator's internal evaluation shows the network is in fact “performing well” taken in the context of international norms.

“The international benchmark of dropped call rate is 2%, while MTN's is much less than that. MTN monitors and optimises its network consistently to ensure network quality is not compromised.”

Vodacom says that, while the company wants to provide customers with the best service, it is not always possible, “because of issues outside of [Vodacom's] control”.

Maya Makanjee, Vodacom's chief officer of corporate affairs, says one of the biggest challenges with regards to coverage is the need for more base stations. “As traffic on the network grows, the area covered by each base station shrinks and new base stations are needed to cover the gaps.”

However, says Makanjee, there is a growing opposition to base stations - usually related to perceived health risks. “This means we often get to a point where a vocal complaint from a small minority can affect our ability to provide coverage for a much larger group. The planning process for one site alone can often take years, and then still be rejected.”

Vodacom, he says, is not short of capital or expertise when it comes to the building of base stations, but it is a “tricky and often frustrating” situation that the operator is working to resolve with local communities.

Cell C says increased traffic creates challenges for network engineers when it comes to planning and optimising networks, but new technologies and techniques that cater for demand mean it is still possible to have high-quality mobile networks for voice and data services.

“Cell C is continuously busy with network quality improvement activities to reduce dropped calls and address other quality issues. It is also essential to expand the network in metro areas in order to ensure the coverage and capacity levels are improved.”