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Telecoms fear network overload
Despite upgrading their networks, telecom companies are still calling on subscribers to use 3G to avoid network congestion during Tet next week.
They expect demand for mobile phone services to increase sharply during the Lunar New Year, and to meet this and protect customers from crashing networks, they have expanded capacity to handle greater traffic.
For the last few years telecom operators have always struggled to handle the massive traffic during the period.
VinaPhone had set up more base transceiver stations (BSRs) and optimised switchboards to meet the demand surge, sales head Pham Ngoc Tu said.
The company now had 22,000 BSRs plus an additional 10,000 3G stations, enough capacity to handle three to four times the normal traffic, Tu added.
In another attempt to help avoid network congestion, the company had already installed 30 mobile stations in areas expected to become crowed during the festival — such as Hoan Kiem Lake in Ha Noi and District 1 in HCM City.
A MobiFone spokesperson also said the company had invested a large amount to avoid congestion, building a new switchboard system with 36 Gbps of switching capacity and increasing its internet bandwidth to 1.6 Gbps.
Viettel has installed 186 new BSRs which will be supported by 35 mobile stations during Tet, and estimates it can handle around 200 million calls in the period.
Other small telecom companies such as Vietnamobile, SFone, and EVN Telecom have also completed upgrades.
However, both service providers and mobile phone users remain worried about a network collapse during the festival, and the companies and telecom experts have told customers about some do's and dont's to prevent this.
Tao Huu Thang, Viettel's deputy director of Technology, said subscribers should use 3G technology wherever possible to avoid overloading the 2G network.
They should make calls or send text messages before peak hours such as New Year's Eve or the morning of New Year, engineers said.
Users should not try again immediately to call or send a message that fails to go through, but wait a few minutes before trying again and move out of a crowd if they were standing in one.
Turning off "delivery reports" is another way to slightly bring down the demand during the peak time, they added.
vietnamnews
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