TNZ's XT network unable to cope: report

Nicole McCormick
10 May 2010
00:00

Telecom New Zealand’s XT Mobile network was not ready to cope with customer’s traffic requirements during its initial launch stage, according to UK-based research firm Analysys Mason.

The nine-page report into the 3G network’s recent series of outages found that customer acquisition was too fast for the Alcatel Lucent-built network to handle in the early stages of its deployment.

“The fundamental problem was that the network and its operational processes were not able to adapt quickly enough during our ambitious launch program,” said TNZ.

Analysys Mason also blamed “immature operational management systems” for the several outages that occurred on the network between December and February.

It also found some aspects of the network architecture to be “overly complex,” thus making it difficult to find and rectify faults.

“Clearly some serious errors were made but the report shows that XT is fundamentally sound,” said Paul Reynolds, TNZ’s chief executive officer.

Reynolds told the NZ Herald that many of the issues had been addressed, including the addition of two radio network controllers.

On Friday, TNZ announced that its net profit fell 17.7% year-on-year to NZ$340 million ($244 million) in the nine months to end-March due to the country’s economic slowdown.

Revenues were down 7.7% to NZ$3.94 billion.

The company claimed 128,000 XT Mobile net additions in the March quarter, but total net adds (including CDMA subs) were down by 19,000 compared with the December quarter.

TNZ also announced that it has split its international wholesale business into voice and data units, with a view to possibly merging or divesting its wholesale voice arm.

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