1.

1 Cell Update
6B

In 3G a new mechanism is available to rescue some dropped calls (both CS and PS) due to RL Failure:
Call Reestablishment by Cell Update procedure. Refer to ANNEX I for further details.

If timer T314 is set higher than 0, Voice calls that suffer from a RL Failure are not considered “dropped”
till timer T314 expires and the call could not be reestablished by the Cell Update Procedure.

Similarly, if timer T315 is set higher than 0, PS calls that suffer from a RL Failure are not considered
“dropped” till timer T315 expires and the call could not be reestablished by the Cell Update Procedure.

We could say that in both cases, CS and PS, those RL Failures that can be rescued are just system-
perceived drops, but not user-perceived drops, as the user does not have to perform any additional
manual operations like for example manual re-activation of the PDP context. In reality, during the Cell
Update procedure (T314 or T315 seconds), Voice calls will be perceived as “silent” by the user, and PS
data sessions may suffer from delays and lower throughputs, but the fact is that the call does not drop,
and it is not counted by the RAB releases counters (and therefore, neither as a drop).

In Huawei infrastructure, both T314 and T315 are changeable. This Cell Update mechanism may be
available for Voice and PS data calls (necessarily both at the same time; this is a Huawei limitation; it is
not possible to get it enabled only for PS data calls or only for Voice calls).

 In case it is not enabled, this means that all RL Failures in DL will finally lead to a drop:
o for Voice calls, it would be user and system perceived
o for PS data calls it would only be system perceived, thanks to additional implicit re-
establishment mechanisms (Paging/Service Request)
o RAB release counters –and drops- increased
 In case it is enabled, those RL Failures that are rescued will be system but not user-perceived,
and the abnormal RAB release counter (=drops) will not be increased.

As some other vendors may have the Cell Update mechanism de-activated for PS, the optimization team should keep
in mind these considerations when comparing PS DCR (%) in different vendors: usually worst in those ones with this
functionality disabled. Nevertheless, this worst behavior in the KPI usually does not match the user perception (that
is typically good) thanks to those additional implicit re-establishment mechanisms (Paging/Service Request).