Have you had the experience of trying to quickly check your mail or send message; probably surf the social media, why on the long journey from Lagos to any of the South East States.
What was the experience like? Well, let’s see how Enextgen’s Wireless’ 4G LTE RF quality analysis of Lagos to Enugu in May 31, 2022 will help us understand better why the quality of connectivity fluctuates.
In the report available to TechEconomy.ng, a team of engineers from Enextgen Wireless collected UE log between Lagos and Enugu and found that most cities and towns along the route have LTE coverage.
“Using our PREMETRICS, we identified the coverage quality ranking of bins with very high RF coverage (no less than -80 dBm). Those bins have a rating of Excellent (Green) in our RF coverage (RSRP) ranking.
“Ideally, they would also have a rating of Excellent (Green) in our RF Quality ranking. Any of the bins with lower than Green rating can use additional RF optimization.
“The amount of effort expended is for the MNO to decide
“PREMETRICS makes the available choices clear. Bins with Yellow and Saddle Brown (Fair and Usable) ratings show worse RF quality than the signal strength allows
“This demonstrates how the platform can be used to prioritize areas to focus on for immediate action.
“The coverage quality in Calabar, though not awful, could be improved as it contains a lot of Yellow and Saddle Brown bins.
“The higher the quality, the higher the amount of data that can be pushed through every second and the higher the revenue opportunity for the service provider”, the company said.
UE experienced higher packet latencies when the it was in WCDMA instead of LTE
The UE spent more time in 4G LTE than 3G WCDMA along the route.
What is PREMETRICS?
Enextgen Wireless described PREMETRICS as proprietary platform for collecting, analyzing and creating reports for measurements from qualified Android-based mobile devices.
TechEconomy.ng understands this can be used for:
- Relating Radio Frequency events to causes
- Trending selected KPIs
- Pre-launch RF coverage optimization
- Ongoing RF coverage quality monitoring and enhancement
- Profiling quality of 4G LTE coverage
- Profiling throughput and latency
“These bins have very strong RF coverage. Our EMETRICS shows the quality of that coverage.
“As seen below, the quality of the RF coverage varies. It is primarily determined by the quality of the RF Optimization effort.
“The purpose of RF Optimization should be to bring RF signal quality more in line with the RF signal strength, in order to improve customer satisfaction, and revenue generation, through higher offered throughput that is made possible by increased RF quality. Ideally, the signal strength in each of these bins should lead to Excellent (green) Quality. Instead, the quality of some of the bins is as low as Useable (marginal or Saddle Brown)”.
“Average RSRP was not less than –80 dBm in any of these bins. In other words, RF coverage was excellent in all of the bins.
“As such, EMETRICS ranking for the bins should also be Excellent (green). That none of them is green is an indication of a need for additional RF quality improvement. High RF quality results in additional revenue and increased customer satisfaction.
“The decision to make additional RF Optimization efforts may be guided by the MNO’s classification of the importance of the area to its bottom line.
“However, reduction in the number of Fair or Usable bins should come with the most basic level of RF Optimization.
Platform for LTE and 5G RF quality measurement, reporting and enhancement
Enextlog is a unique, low-cost tool for reporting measurements needed by our platform (PREMETRICS) for analyzing the quality of LTE and 5G networks
N100,00 (100 thousand naira) for installation on up to 10 devices.
Reports from logged measurements are available here (for public view) and there (for MNO subscriber view).
Uses for Enextlog:
- As probes at key customer locations
- Logging RF measurements for RF optimization
- Benchmarking against competitors
- Resolving customer complaints
- Monitoring impacts of network configuration changes.
- Verifying the quality of cell site installations and antenna cabling.
- Accepting individual cell sites, clusters of cell sites and entire market based on agreed-upon quality criteria.
- Making network quality visible as a way to encourage continued quality improvement. It is difficult to improve what is not measured.
