Poor signal questions answered
"We often face the situation that we have to balance opposition from a small number of residents against the needs of hundreds, if not thousands, of customers who would benefit from a new site."
Following numerous complaints from residents of poor cellular phone reception in the Kensington area, the EXPRESS approached three of South Africa’s leading telecommunications brands for clarity on what most affects reception.
According to Mr Bongo Futuse, the senior media relations specialist for Vodacom, data traffic on Vodacom’s network in South Africa is growing at around 50 percent per year.
“This is a result of the smart phone and tablet revolution. To give you an idea of the pace of growth, the number of smart devices on our network is growing more than 30 percent year-on-year, and the number of data used by each device is growing around 25 percent year-on-year,” he said.
“The capacity of each base station is limited, so unless we add new sites the existing sites will become congested, resulting in patchy coverage, slow data speeds, poor call quality and more dropped calls,” said Mr Futuse.
He added that one of the biggest challenges facing the industry is getting approval for new sites.
“We often face the situation that we have to balance opposition from a small number of residents against the needs of hundreds, if not thousands, of customers who would benefit from a new site,” he said.
“We choose new sites carefully to ensure the best possible coverage for customers,” said Mr Futuse.
Mr Sidney Arnold, the acting chief technology officer at MTN SA, said there are other reasons that result in poor signal and those vary from an overloaded existing tower to lack of service provider infrastructure.
“Dense residential developments reduce the effectiveness of the existing base stations,” he said.
Options available to customers include contacting the service provider or consider leasing a portion of their properties to a service provider for infrastructure installation in order to improve coverage; this requires the necessary authority approvals.
“Residents can also take a proactive stance by supporting the construction of towers in their area. Residents are encouraged to attend public meetings when these issues are discussed and make their voices heard. Often, only objectors attend public meetings which results in the failure of proposed infrastructure installation,” said Mr Arnold.
He added that at peak times, when the traffic is high, call quality can be compromised and incidents of call set up failure can increase.
“In order to overcome congestion, service providers like MTN are required to increase capacity in the tower. Once maximum capacity is reached, additional towers are required. With newer technologies such as 3G and LTE, the more people using the technology at a time the less the quality,” said Mr Arnold.
“MTN plans to spend approximately R10-billion in 2015 to improve network coverage and capacity. The success of this rollout is partially dependent on site acquisition, which may be restricted by public objections to tower builds.
“MTN has tried on numerous occasions to deploy its infrastructure to meet the uptake of broadband and growing traffic. Our efforts to improve network coverage and quality in this area have been repeatedly scuppered by residents’ objections, which are mainly related to health concerns,” said Mr Arnold.
Telkom SA was also asked for comment on September 21.
At the time of going to print, Telkom did not respond to the enquiry sent.
Residents who experience poor coverage in their area are encouraged to contact their specific service provider for assistance as details relating to each individual case is needed.
