From Success to Excellence

——ZTE helped TATA Teleservices to attract 10 million subscribers

Customer Requirements:

♦　　　　 Achieving smooth swapping to improve network performance

♦　 　　　 Searching for strategic partners to win long-term development

ZTE Solution:

♦　 　　　  Dual-network swapping solution

♦　 　　　  Customized all-round service

Customer Value:

♦　 　　　  Call drop rate greatly reduced, thus improving user experience

♦　 　　　  Standing the traffic peak during holidays, indicating better network quality than competitors

 In the 2007 annual network quality appraisal, TATA’s CDMA network in Hyderabad got a higher score than its rivals such as Vodafone and Airtel, ranked first in quality. TATA showed appreciation to ZTE and highly praised ZTE’s technical level and professional skills.

Starting from 2006, India has become a country with the quickest development of mobile communications in the globe, which has brought about both opportunities and challenges to operators, and has also triggered fierce competition in Indian communications market. TATA Teleservices is badly in need of a solution that may lower its construction investment, reduce its operation cost and enhance its market competition edge. ZTE's advanced CDMA2000 1X All-IP solution greatly satisfied the requirements of TATA Teleservices. Since July 2006, within a bit more than one year, the subscribers of TATA Teleservices increased to 20 million from 10 million, which was something shining in the development of Indian mobile communications market.

Searching for strategic partners to win long-term development

Subordinated to TATA Group of India, TATA Teleservices (TTSL) is a company specially engaged in CDMA telecommunications services, the first operator of India that has made CDMA services available in India. Based on the good brand image and market development strategy of TATA Group in India, TATA’s subscribers have been increasing very quickly over the last two years. With more than 20 million subscribers, TATA Teleservices has become the second biggest CDMA operator in India and one of the global Top 10 CDMA operators.

Due to the fierce competition in the telecommunication market, the original CDMA network equipment supplier of TATA left the market. Therefore, it is very urgent for TATA to search for an equipment vendor which is experienced in network swap to conduct network expansion and optimization as well as improve network performance and reduce operation cost.

As early as in 2006, ZTE became the unique equipment supplier of TATA to build a rural network covering the whole country. Due to stable performance, innovative network evolution and rapid response to customer demand, ZTE has won TATA’s trust. Starting from March 2007, TATA Teleservices uses ZTE’s CDMA equipment to carry out entire network replacement (including core networks and access networks) of important cities such as Hyderabad and Chennai.

Elaborately designing solution to offer smooth swap

As the BTSs were distributed densely in Hyderabad, it was likely to generate hard handover regions during swapping which would result in a long swapping period if the BTSs connected to the BSC were swapped in batches. To eliminate the impact, it is a good way to swap BTSs connected to the BSCs (one BSC after another). As each BSC had very high traffic, swapping all the BTSs connected to one BSC means swapping a traffic of over 10000 Erl (that is, about 300,000 users) on one night.

Obviously, the network swap project was very difficult. It was the key issue that how to effectively control and reduce the risk brought by the swapping method. In response to that, ZTE elaborately designed a swapping method of dual-network co-existence. Before the swapping, the existing network and ZTE’s network were operating together. The commercial handsets could only connect to the existing network, while the test handsets could only connect to ZTE’s network. The two networks did not interfere with each other. As a result, smooth swapping was achieved and no user in the existing network was affected.

After the swapping, to improve user satisfaction, ZTE established a solution specific to the problem in the existing network. Within two weeks after the swapping, ZTE’s optimization team conducted detailed network optimization and greatly improved network performance. In particular, the call drop rate decreases by 40%. Hence, the subscribers’ complaints about frequent call drops are better handled than previously.

In an effort to solve the problem of call failure in busy hours, engineers from ZTE and relevant staff in TATA carefully studied the causes, divided the planned sites into different levels according to the information provided by TATA and the complaints from subscribers, and gave priority to planning and swapping of the BTS sites in key areas. Therefore, the number of congested BTSs and cells are reduced by 80% while increasing the total traffic by 20%.

High-level leaders were on the site of swapping

Standing the traffic peak and creating a global record

During the replacement of the entire metropolitan network in Hyderabad, India, ZTE used only three BSCs to replace the original 10 BSCs. The much fewer BSCs reduced the handover frequency between BSCs, enhanced subscribers’ call completion rate and obviously improved the voice quality.

During the traffic peak of the communications system on the new year’s day of 2008, the BSC in Hyderabad stood the shock and test of a great number of subscribers. The voice traffic of two of the BSCs during the peak was 17000 Erl and 19000 Erl respectively, 8.8 times and 6.8 times that of ordinary days respectively, creating a record of the greatest traffic load by a single BSC all over the globe. During that period, the networks of other operators in Hyderabad were down, while ZTE’s equipment alone remained intact. Stable voice quality allowed subscribers to experience higher system service quality, enhancing the loyalty of TATA Teleservices’ end subscribers.