Responding to the SKMM’s compound on telecommunication companies for dropped calls, DiGi’s Ole Martin Gunhildsbu, Chief Technology Officer made the following statement yesterday.
Over the last two years, we have invested a large portion of our annual capital expenditure towards significantly improving our network, and have customer satisfaction of our network and services as a top priority across the organisation.
We are modernising our entire network covering almost 6,000 sites nationwide, and expanding our 3G coverage in populated areas, which will reach 75% by end 2013.
We have in place processes to continuously measure and monitor the quality of our network. Our performance metrics are monitored closely by our network teams, with frequent and direct reporting to the senior management team.
We have seen significant quality improvements over the last 6 months in all areas where we have completed network upgrades; these include a steady decline in incidences of dropped calls, consistency in data setup success rates, and the lowest volume of complaints from our customers.
We are committed to deliver optimal network quality across all areas under our coverage, and our customers can be assured of better quality experience in other locations as we complete the upgrade of all remaining sites by the end of this year.
There are however, a number of factors that often impact operators’ ability to ensure continuous coverage across the country. These challenges include not being able to acquire the right location for sites, geographical limitations that affect coverage in highways stretches and populated areas, and protests from residents when towers are near residential and commercial areas, to name a few. In addition we are also seeing increasingly high incidences of theft and vandalism at sites, which cause severe service disruptions and give operators very little time to recover services.
We are committed to addressing these and other issues with industry partners and the authorities, and continue to assure customers that we remain highly committed to improving our overall network quality.
