Recent major global events have required some of the highest capacity demands in the history of the mobile phone. Operators were already aware that anywhere, anytime coverage is the highest priority for mobile users. But, the message was really brought home during the Expo 2010 Shanghai China (World Expo) and the global celebration of football in South Africa that saw Spain being crowned world champions.

At events like these, millions of visitors want to use their mobile phones for calling, sending text messages and multimedia traffic. This is when operators are really put to the test. Thanks to our Special Event Support service, operators can have their networks run smoothly.

The Expo 2010 in Shanghai, which ended on October 31, attracted 73 million visitors since its launch on May 1. That is an extreme figure by any means.

Heavy demands are placed on network service providers during an event like the one in Shanghai, with around 400,000 daily visitors using their mobile phones for calling, sending text messages and multimedia traffic.

Eva Elmstedt, Head of Ericsson Customer Support, says: "With Ericsson's Special Event Support service, operators can have their networks run as smoothly and flawlessly as possible during events of this magnitude. Services included support before, and during, the event."

Expo visitors were aware of the importance of a dependable network. University student Chen Fawen says: "Of course I use my mobile for regular stuff like calling and sending texts, but these days a phone is much more. I also use it to surf, listen to music and even to read novels. Without a good network I wouldn’t be able to contact my friends in other countries and download stuff."

In Shanghai, Ericsson set up a special Expo network support task force to coordinate and handle all situations around the clock. Preparations for Special Event Support started at the beginning of 2010, with all the resources and necessary materials being carefully dimensioned and prepared then. Special emergency network support processes were set up to engage necessary local and global resources to secure the shortest response and resolution times.

On site in Shanghai, our team performed network "health checks" nine times a day, and provided much deeper analysis for any unusual network event than an operator would do normally. During the six-month-long Expo, our site teams were integrated with operators' network maintenance processes.

In South Africa, the operator MTN experienced a massive 40 percent increase in network traffic. During the tournament a quarter of a million visitors used MTN's services daily – at all hours of the day. Visitors sent 1Tb of data, including 10 million picture messages, during the tournament. A particular highlight was the closing ceremony. MTN handled 35Gb of data in just one afternoon, owing to the high capacity of its packet network.

These impressive figures were not the result of "one-off" measures. Ericsson provided the same overall network performance before and after the event. Key performance remained the same, and dropped calls remained below 0.3 percent.

As in Shanghai, we worked proactively together with the operator, and prepared thoroughly. Preparations started two years before the finals and a team was assigned to work around the clock at the event.

To allow for more traffic, we also enabled HSPA 21Mbps in all stadiums and VIP sites. During a match, manual actions were performed to ensure the nodes did not collapse, mostly radio network controllers, due to high signaling caused by smartphones.

The tournament was a tremendous success, for both South Africa and MTN. Despite the increase in traffic, there were no outages in the network and users benefited from high-speed voice and data availability. With our support, MTN was able to maintain a stable, full capacity operating network throughout the tournament.

Preparations have already started for the next major global sporting event – the London 2012 Summer Olympics. Again Ericsson's Special Event Support service will support operators' efforts to make the Games a success from a communications point of view.

For more information about Ericsson’s Special Event Support please contact:

Eva Elmstedt, Head of Ericsson Customer Support

Email: eva.elmstedt@ericsson.com