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Ajsir 2 5 707 712 PDF
Ajsir 2 5 707 712 PDF
experienced a very rapid growth in Europe, up. Apart from this, it is obvious that the cost of
particularly in Scandinavia and in United Kingdom. procurement and fueling is so enormous. If our
But in the beginning of Cellular system, each country power supply system is stable, this huge amount
developed its own system which was an undesirable could have been used in upgrading and optimizing
situation for the following reasons; existing base stations in order to improve service
The equipment was limited to operate only within efficiency. Also, additional base stations and
the boundaries of each country switching centres could be built with it for network
The market for each mobile equipment was expansion which will eventually alleviate congestion
limited and the network will have capacity to handle more
In order to overcome these problems, the Conference calls.
of European Posts and Telecommunications (CEPT)
in 1982, formed the Groupe Special Mobile (GSM) in So, the bad network experienced in the country can
order to develop a pan-European mobile cellular not be completely divorced from instability in power
radio system (with this, GSM acronym became global supply.
system for mobile communication). This group came
up with a digital system that has to meet the following Security of infrastructure: Due to the volatile nature
criteria. of some parts of the country, telecommunication
Spectrum efficiency equipments are not safe from vandalisation. There
Good subjective voice quality have been many reported cases of theft and
International roaming vandalisation at base station sites. This development
Compatibility with other systems such as ISDN has prompted telecoms operators to invest heavily on
Low Mobile and base stations cost recruitment of security personnel at their base station
A digital system was adopted by the group (CEPT) as sites. One direct implication of this is that the cost
opposed to the then analog cellular systems like incurred on these security guards goes into the total
AMPS in the United States and TACS in the United cost of operation and subsequently leading to
Kingdom. The reason for this is on the aspect of increase in call tariff.
quality of service. For example, analog system do
pass physical disturbance in radio transmission to the However, the presence of the security guards at the
receiver. These disturbances do decrease signal base stations has not totally prevented armed
quality because they produce effects such as robbers, thugs and hoodlums from vandalizing and
fadeouts, crosstalk, hisses etc. On the other hand, carting away generators and valuable equipments at
digital systems avoid these effects. The phase 1 of base station sites. In addition, some base stations
the GSM specifications was published in 1990. have been shut down due to these nefarious
Commercial services started mid- 1991, and by 1993 activities. The technical implication of this is that once
there were 36 GSM networks in 22 countries. By the a base station is shut down, call transmission for
beginning of 1994, there were 1.3 million subscribers subscribers in that location would automatically be
world wide, which grew to 55 million by October transferred to another nearby base station which will
1997. lead to network congestion. Subsequently
subscribers within this area will experience poor
Factors affecting service efficiency: quality of service.
Instability in Power Supply
Security of Infrastructure Call set up failure: This is an important parameter
Call setup failure used in determining network accessibility. It is the
Call retention / call drop ability of a subscriber to initiate a call and granted
Congestion access. Technically, during a GSM call setup, a
speech call is assigned from a SDCCH (stand alone
INSTABILITY IN POWER SUPPLY
dedicated channel) to a TCH (traffic channel). If the
Recent study revealed that 78% of the total cost of TCH selected suffers from interference, then the
operations by GSM operators goes into provision of assignment will fail. And the assignment failure
generators and its fueling. The epileptic nature of our message will be sent to the MSC. The call will then
power supply system in the country had necessitated be re-established back.
the over-dependence on generators. The direct According to the earlier survey carried out by NCC,
implication of this is that call tariff will drastically shoot all the three major operators were found to perform
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Am. J. Sci. Ind. Res., 2011, 2(5): 707-712
Fig. 3.0
Call retention / call drop: Call retention is the ability
to retain a GSM call after it has been established
while dropped call is a situation whereby an
established call is abruptly terminated while
conversation is ongoing. It is a common occurrence
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Am. J. Sci. Ind. Res., 2011, 2(5): 707-712
in Nigerias GSM system that communication is As shown in table 3.0 above, dropped calls are more
terminated unexpectedly while conversation is on- prominent in port-Harcourt than in any other place
going. This is technically called Call Drop. Reasons with a complaint level of over 78%. On the other
for dropped calls are as listed below:- hand, Maiduguri experienced less dropped calls with
Calls may be dropped when the mobile a complaint level of over 42% on aggregate
phone moves out of coverage area. Once the compared to most other parts of Nigeria.
signal strength between the mobile
equipment (ME) and the network cannot be
sustained, the call will be terminated.
Calls may be lost due to path loss or
shadowing. For instance, in typical GSM
system, Transmit power is +43dB and
receiving power ranges between -60dB to -
85dB. If due to pathloss, the receiver signal
strength drops to -95dB, that call will drop.
Battery power loss:- Calls may be lost if a
mobile phone at the other end of the call
losses battery power and stops transmitting
abruptly.
Calls may be dropped upon handoff between
cells within the same providers network. This
may be due to an imbalance of traffic
between the two cell sites areas of
coverage. If the new cell site is at capacity, it Fig. 4.0
will not be able to accept additional traffic of
the call trying to hand-in. it may also be due Congestion: Congestion is a phenomenon in
to the network configuration not being set up telecommunication system that occurs when more
properly, such that one cell is not aware of subscribers attempt simultaneously to access the
the cell the phone is trying to hand off to. network than it is able to handle. This is a situation
where subscriber numbers has completely overgrown
A survey conducted by NCC recently clearly showed network capacity. Reasons for network congestion
that one of the most important customer perceived are
problems that affects quality of service is in the area Lack Of Adequate Infrastructures:- To
of dropped calls. This is as depicted ion Table 3.0 guarantee efficient network Quality, there
below must be adequate infrastructural equipments
to be able to drive the network. Also, the size
Table 3.0 Summary of Dropped calls and their locations of these equipments must be in tandem with
the subscribers base. When subscribers
CITY AIRTEL% MTN% GLO% base overgrows infrastructural equipment,
Abuja 67 69 60 then congestion is inevitable. In Nigerian
Kaduna and 29 67 59 situation, operators have been playing down
Zaria on expansion of all cell sites, which of course
Kano 74 77 73 is the strength of call quality. The rate of
Maiduguri 47 34 34 service rollout in the country has never been
Jos 57 64 74
the same with the rate of infrastructural
Bauchi 32 36 58
rollout, and this often leads to Network
Calabar 65 59 75
Owerri 52 62 51
Congestion and inability to recharge phones.
Enugu 69 57 60 Insufficient Channels:- Since there are not
Benin 62 71 70 enough infrastructural equipments (e.g. base
Port- 84 78 79 stations), automatically there will be lack of
Harcourt adequate channels to support network
AGGREGATE; AIRTEL 64%, MTN 67%, GLO 64% functionality. Recall that channels are
normally used to determine total number of
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Am. J. Sci. Ind. Res., 2011, 2(5): 707-712
subscribers that can be allowed to use a stem call set up failures due to rise in traffic
base station. volumes.
2. Install additional base stations across the
The Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) country. This would create room for the
had long ago, noticed the gap between infrastructure network to handle more traffic.
rollout and Subscribers growth, a situation that 3. Build additional switching centers across the
compelled the commission to place ban on promos in country and increase capacity to handle
year 2007 & 2008. it later rescinded its decision in more traffic.
year 2009 on promo ban and went into monthly 4. If a particular base station is to be taken off-
testing of call quality across network. In one of the line (either for schedule maintenance,
results released recently, subscribers population repairs, upgrades etc.), all neighbouring base
across all networks as at 2008 was 64 million. But stations should have their communication
this has grown up to 70 million this year (2009) for power level increased. This will increase
both GSM and CDMA. The graphical picture of their coverage area, thereby reducing
subscriber growth between 1999 to 2008 is as congestion and dropped calls.
shown in Fig. 5.0 below. 5. Operators should invest heavily in
transmission network development and have
a proper radio planning. This would ensure
Total Teledensity increased network resilience, improved
50
70,00 bandwidth utilization and alleviation of
45
60,00 40
capacity bottleneck.
N
O 35
T 6. Operators should continue to give back to the
E
50,00
L
society aimed at enhancing social security.
O 30
F
E Because no amount of security personnel
40,00 25 D
L
E can deter hoodlums from attacking base
30,00 N
I 20 S
station sites. Also, if government can create
N
E 20,00 15 I more jobs for its citizens, poverty level would
T
S
10 Y be reduced and a lot of boys and girls will be
10,00 taken off streets. Hence we would have a
5
secured environment.
1999
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Am. J. Sci. Ind. Res., 2011, 2(5): 707-712
712