Staying connected during power cuts - A focus of Africa Tech 2023
|Published
The importance of all South Africans obtaining access to great connectivity was a priority at the Africa Tech Festival 2023.
The festival is taking place at the CTICC from November 13 to 16.
Zoltan Miklos, general manager, Access Planning and Architecture, MTN South Africa, spoke exclusively to IOL News on the importance of improving South Africa’s telecommunication networks.
On the issue of building a better network, Miklos said that MTN is committed to providing customers with the best network experience.
Miklos was proud to acknowledge that the telecommunications company has an average call setup success rate of 98.20%. He also said that the average call setup time is 2.54 seconds, and the call drop rate is only 2.37%.
He notes that South Africa's communications network faces two basic problems, that being power failures and fibre cuts.
“How to maintain a healthy and stable network has always been the focus of MTN's research. In addition to deploying batteries and backup generators at the base station sites to ensure power supply, we also use the latest network innovation technologies provided by Huawei.
This has helped major areas where load shedding has impacted connectivity.
In the past, a number of areas would have had issues with being connected during a power cut and even after the power has been reconnected. MTN is now using batteries to mitigate these issues in order to ensure that consumers are connected in some way to the carrier.
MTN is using SRv6, this is the next-generation in IP routing technology.
It can forward services over optimal paths and automatically optimise network traffic. When a power failure or fibre cut occurs and network services need to be switched to the backup link, SRv6 quickly identifies the optimal switching path and optimises traffic among multiple links, preventing network congestion caused by traffic being concentrated on the same link.
MTN is also using a is digital map. The network digital map can be regarded as the "Google Map" of the network. It can view the real-time status of all devices, sites, links, and applications on the network.
“One map can clearly see the entire network. Once a network fault occurs, iFit can be used to quickly and accurately locate the root cause of the fault on the digital map and implement one-click optimisation, greatly improving the network OM efficiency of MTN,” Miklos added.
With SRv6+ and digital map technology, MTN is hoping to build a "Congestion Free" network.
What is next for MTN?
According to Miklos, MTN will accelerate and expand the deployment scope of SRv6/SDN to build a future-oriented and intelligent network covering South Africa and continuously provide customers with ultimate communication experience.
IOL News