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MTN denies network troubles

Candice Jones
By Candice Jones, ITWeb online telecoms editor
Johannesburg, 29 Sept 2008

Despite complaints to the contrary, MTN says it was unaware of any failure over the weekend.

Sunday found many MTN subscribers in parts of the Gauteng region without access to the company's network.

However, Sidney Arnold, GM of network operations at MTN, says: "MTN had no planned upgrades this past weekend, and has no knowledge of large areas experiencing downtime or network difficulties."

Several complaints from consumers on Twitter and other complaint sites showed the network failure affected several areas in the Gauteng region for several hours.

Consumers in Linden and surrounds were affected from between 10am and 10pm. The company says it will investigate the specific areas where consumers complained and report on whether those areas were affected by downtime.

The company is in the process of upgrading its network and implementing its own backhaul with a dedicated R7.1 billion.

MTN is hoping to be able to self-provide and move away from its reliance on Telkom. It is also an attempt to improve the quality of the provided for the company's customers.

According to the company's figures, most operators who use Telkom for its backhaul can attribute between 50% and 60% of all failures to the utility's network. MTN expects to save over R9 billion over 10 years by implementing its self-provisioning .

The company recently experienced crossed lines and dropped calls on the network, which it says was repaired with the beginning of the roll-out of the new network. The company has noted before that it did expect that certain areas would be affected by some outages as the network was being upgraded.

Related stories:
TN pumps R7.1bn into networks
MTN's R1bn MNP pay-off

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