Handle Peak Voice Traffic with Ease
——Telkomsel secures communication services for the WOC

Indonesia is a country across the equator in Southeast Asia. It comprises of 17,508 islands, among which about 6,000 islands are populated. From May 11 to May 15, 2009, the first World Ocean Conference (WOC) was held in Manado, Indonesia, and the representatives from 73 governments and 11 non-governmental organizations participated in the conference. The WOC was the most important meeting ever held by the Indonesia government, and to Indonesia, the importance of this conference was as great as the Beijing Olympic to China.

To secure communication services for such a high-profile conference, the Indonesia government designated Telkomsel, the largest mobile operator in the country, to provide mobile communication services for the conference. This assignment posed a great challenge to Telkomsel, particularly the project must be carried out in such a country of numerous islands with complex coverage scenarios and underdeveloped transmission infrastructure. Telkomsel is jointly controlled by SingTel and Telkom. SingTel has the second largest number of mobile service subscribers in Asia, following China Mobile, while Telkomsel has a share larger than 50% in the mobile communication market of Indonesia.

World class communication services for the WOC

In addition to the damp, hot and rainy climate of Indonesia, the lack of electricity on many islands and cross-island transportation imposed great difficulty on the delivery. In 2008, Telkomsel selected ZTE as a new supplier for network construction. The two parties planned to build 800 macro base stations in 7 regions for the first phase, plus 1,630 IP-based micro base stations in remote rural lands and on ships in the sea.

The WOC brought about both challenges and opportunities to Telkomsel. How to keep its "golden" mobile services? How to consolidate its leadership with a share of over 50% in Indonesia's mobile communication market? To accommodate Telkomsel's nearly 3,000 GSM/UMTS base stations covering over 100 islands in 7 regions, ZTE designated a dedicated network optimization team for 2G/3G R&D, technical support and optimization. The ZTE's engineers elaborated a support plan, assessed the network capacity, and studied the emergency plan for parameter adjustment.

Optimization was conducted on an ongoing basis from the network design to the completion. Since May 6, ZTE's network optimization team started network KPI monitoring, CQT (call quality test) and DT (drive test) night and day. To secure communication services during the WOC, Telkomsel and ZTE specifically defined 7 new working procedures, including WOC VIP Zone Definition, WOC Major Working procedure, WOC RNC and BSS Emergency Response Process, WOC Site Board Replacement Process, WOC Third Party Process, WOC Customer Complaint Handling Process and WOC Temporary VIP Service Assurance.

Moreover, Good communication and pleasant cooperation between ZTE, Telkomsel and the subcontractors guaranteed the concurrent construction in different regions. Additionally, response to traffic surges was quickened.

Benefited from the clearly defined responsibility matrix and procedures, all the equipments were successfully on air before the conference.

Successful delivery and strategic partnership

ZTE's fast deployment, quick response and flexibility improved the entire network's KPIs. Despite a sharp increase in voice traffic during the WOC, the blocking rate for the entire network remained below 0.4%. Other KPIs including HOSR, SDCCH blocking and CSR were also notably improved. No customer complaint was received during the WOC.

Convinced by ZTE's outstanding performance, Telkomsel decided to sign a second GSM/UMTS contract with ZTE in July, 2009. Under this contract, ZTE was to complete the 3G deployment in 147 cities for Telkomsel by 2010. 

"We're pleased to form a strategic collaboration with ZTE to build our GSM/UMTS network in Indonesia and reach our goal of offering customers a 3G high-speed data services network in 147 cities by 2013," said Sarwoto Atmosutarno, chairman of Telkomsel. "We're committed to providing the best communication network to our end-users to enhance their network experiences. ZTE's cutting-edge network equipment and excellent after-sales service and support will help us achieve this goal."