This comes as an impartial broadband evaluation and review company has urged MTN, the country’s leading telecom carrier by customer base, to enhance vital sections of its network services.
Enextgen Wireless’ flagship National Independent Wireless Broadband Quality Reporting (NIWBQR), which gauges the degree of effort in Radio Frequency engineering engaged in commercial LTE networks, has been delivering user experience on mobile networks.
Enextgen Wireless noted in a recent research focusing on MTN Nigeria’s LTE network that all of the regions covered are large population centers, rather than some deserted places where low service quality may be expected.
During Microsoft Teams phone call sessions, there was stuttering and a lot of reconnections. IM messages are being sent slowly. The video conference connection is unbearable.
“This is typical of the MTN service quality in Yaba. It’s practically impossible to travel 30 minutes on the MTN LTE network without seeing any notable degradation in network quality.
“We’ve linked these outages to increase in packet latencies and loss owing to low RF quality on rare occasions, but primarily core network difficulties.” All of these issues are ones that MTN could rectify or at the very least alleviate if it decided it was necessary.
The RF was of sufficient quality to maintain the UE in LTE. Alternatively, the UE might be kept in 3G mode. Instead, the UE shifted back and forth between LTE and 3G, rendering the connection useless.
MTN may avoid this problem with reasonable care by keeping the UE on one of the two networks. This is commonly referred to as RF Optimization. Basic pre-deployment RF tuning appears to be lacking for Ilorin.
Even rudimentary pre-deployment optimization appears to have been overlooked in the MTN 4G LTE network in Ilorin.
How could something like this happen? Is it possible that MTN is taking a cue from our government? The regulatory agency, we assume, is extremely busy. We are doing everything we can to motivate internet providers not to take advantage of all the benefits our system provides them at the expense of regular Nigerians and small businesses all at once.
Engineer Aderemi Adeyeye, President of Enext Inc., commented on the report saying: “The quickness with which MTN responded to our issue was amazing.” However, as far as we could tell, MTN did nothing other than inform us that the situation had been resolved the next day.
We have yet to receive a response to our question about what problem they solved and/or what they did to solve it. All we know is that the problems we mentioned are still present.
“To be honest, MTN’s patronizing approach to our complaint perplexed us.
“MTN looks to have no one but MTN to answer to. The people who are served (at least ordinary Nigerians and small businesses) have no say. Given the vast amount of time required for self-adulation, the regulatory agency appears to have little time for quality monitoring. It doesn’t even mention the presence of LTE as a 3GPP standard for 4G on its website.
In the Nigerian context, broadband internet access is interchangeable with LTE internet access.
“The vast majority of Nigerians lack access to actual internet (we exclude 2G/3G as a source of broadband internet connection).”
“If MTN makes a specific request for our raw data, we will gladly provide it if it is for the purpose of resolving the quality flaws noted in this study.”
“The goal is to persuade MTN to improve the network’s quality. We, like millions of other Nigerians and small businesses, rely on the network for high-speed internet access.
Enextgen Wireless, an engineering firm focused on developing user experience in Mobile Broadband Wireless Communications, has urged Nigeria’s telecommunications regulator to step up its game when it comes to monitoring the condition of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) primarily geared by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs).
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