MTN network ready for the festive season

The investment MTN South Africa has made in its network over the past several years has left the operator fully prepared for the expected increase in festive season voice, SMS, and data traffic.

Over the course of the year, MTN has optimised its signalling network nodes by migrating this traffic onto dedicated hardware that is physically segregated from the rest of the Internet Protocol (IP) network. Furthermore, MTN has increased its SMS capacity by 33% and has implemented a separate MMS platform for application-originated messages.

“While we have introduced additional next-generation network (NGN) capacity between Durban and Johannesburg, we have not put in place any special measures to cope with the festive season traffic on our network. Our NGN core has more than sufficient capacity available and traffic protection in place to ensure our valued customers can chat to their loved ones with no impact whatsoever,” says Sidney Arnold, general manager of network operations at MTN South Africa.

“As the successful 2010 World Cup has shown, the MTN network is ready to process the huge volume increase in both voice and data traffic that we are anticipating during this time. Our investment in the upgrading of our network is paying off,” he says.