“Network busy!”
Over the last few years, these two have been the most read words on mobile phone screens during Eid days.
Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Azha are the two biggest religious festivals in the country. On these two days, people tend to make more phone calls than on the busiest of weekdays, exchanging greetings with friends, family and sometimes even the most distant of acquaintances.
As a result of the overcrowded networks, every year on Eid days, it becomes really hard to reach people on mobile phones.
However, industry insiders have warned that the situation this year may get a lot worse than before with the mobile operators upgrading to the 3G platform.
“Every year operators take special measures before Eid [to check overcrowding on networks]. But every year new problems arise that cannot be predicted. Moreover, networks and technologies have also been becoming more complex day by day,” a chief technology officer of a reputed mobile operator told the Dhaka Tribune.
“During this Eid-ul-Fitr also, our network got congested in some areas. The services of a leading operator remained down from morning till afternoon,” he said.
Statistics suggest that networks experience around 40-50% hike in mobile phone calls and 200-300% hike in short messaging services, popularly known as SMS, on Eid days.
Moreover, subscribers make over a hundred million minutes of additional overseas calls on these two festive days.
Sources said the existing mobile phone networks in the country did not have the capacity to endure such workload.
“Network optimization is a big challenge for an operator, especially when they switch from one technology to another.
Optimisation takes time too,” Md Mujibor Rahaman, managing director of state-owned Teletalk, told the Dhaka Tribune.
“We had to deal with huge problems last year after launching 3G services. If the new 3G operators do not take proper precaution, they will also have to face similar challenges,” he said.
When Teletalk launched 3G services in October last year, the subscribers of some areas faced severe network problems during Eid.
The chief technology officer (CTO) of another leading operator said they were having to change antennas with dual bands for the 3G rollout. He said: “The previous antennas were used for only 1800 bands. Now that we are having to change the antennas, there will be mobility problems.”
“As we have just started network up-gradation, it may pose added problems. The problems may remain even after Eid when we go for bigger network up-gradation,” another CTO told the Dhaka Tribune.
He said optimising networks after up-gradation took around three-four months and during the period call drop rates might rise.