Cell C has announced it has completed its intensive Radio Access Network (RAN) upgrade project in Gauteng aimed at the harmonisation of all technologies across the network by replacing out-dated network equipment on 1215 base stations in Gauteng.
“Our network operations team have been working around the clock over the last year and we are proud to say that this project has been completed in record time and showing exceptional results,” says Cell C CEO, Jose Dos Santos.
In conjunction with the RAN upgrade project, significant improvements have been made to the management of the network from a site dependency and network redundancy point of view. These have enhanced the overall stability of the network, effectively eliminating cluster outages as a result of single point failures.
“We are pleased with the improved quality figures and the feedback from customers has been encouraging. They have noted great improvement in the quality of the Gauteng network as a result of the RAN swap and stability projects. We remain focused on improvements and where there are areas that still need attention, we will put all our efforts into fixing those areas,” says Dos Santos.
Cell C will be introducing similar projects in other metro regions to continue to drive stability, quality and modernisation into the network across the country.
The company has also channelled part of its 2014 capital investment of R2,3bn into the rollout of new towers to increase both capacity and coverage across the country.
This year alone, Cell C rolled out 442 towers across the country, with 256 of those in Gauteng alone. The company has an additional 158 sites currently in the site build process for Gauteng, which are expected to be online in early 2015.
The modernisation of the network, combined with the increased stability and additional sites, creates the required framework for Cell C’s LTE strategy.
“We have also invested significantly in fibre deployment across the country and connecting fibre to each of our base stations is one of the company’s top priorities in 2015 in line with our LTE strategy,” says Dos Santos.
He adds that the company will also continue to upgrade and increase capacity on its 3G sites to improve customers’ data experience.
“We will continue to drive improvements to all customer touch points while offering innovative products and great value to our customers,” concludes Dos Santos.