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  1. 2007 /
  2. October-December 07 /

T-Mobile Germany’s network modernized

In record time and with quality measures, Ericsson has successfully completed T- Mobile Germany’s network modernization, replacing the old Lucent network with Ericsson’s GSM solution, including an EDGE rollout.

December 14, 2007

Over the past two years, Ericsson has upgraded more than half of T-Mobile's radio network, replacing more than 10,000 base stations in seven federal states of Germany while the network operates commercially and without subscribers suffering any deterioration in service. Instead the opposite happened; customers saw an improvement in network quality and new network features.

Impressive network quality improvements were achieved overnight after the BSS replacement.

Stefan Gustavsson, Ericsson's Key Account Manager for T-Mobile Germany, says: "Measuring the network performance before and after the modernization, the quality on some key performance indicators is averaging 40 percent better with Ericsson."

When negotiating the contract, Ericsson agreed to some tough performance measures. The difficult demands were not only met, but exceeded.

For example, hot swaps were agreed to be done in 15 minutes, which is almost unheard of. Ericsson was able to complete them in eight minutes on average.

Gustavsson says: "The performance increases were huge. The fact that we performed the swaps much faster than contracted saved T-Mobile 213 downtime days alone."

Three of the notable performance benchmarks that were significantly improved were call drop rate (22 percent less calls are dropped), call set-up failure rate (40.2 percent less failures during call set-up), and handover success rate (2.8 percent better).

"By doubling our already ambitious performance thresholds, we surprised T-Mobile and we even ourselves," Gustavsson says.

The swap out was finalized three months ahead of schedule, allowing T-Mobile to launch new offerings, such as the Apple iPhone, ahead of time. Both Ericsson and T-Mobile enjoyed cost savings due to the shortened delivery time.

Günther Ottendorfer, Chief Technology Officer at T-Mobile Deutschland GmbH, says: "A system swap during commercial operations is like open heart surgery. We appreciate the fact that, together with our partner Ericsson, we were able to finish the project three months ahead of the original schedule."

The modernized network allowed new services such as EDGE and led to about 30 percent less power consumption. The new EDGE-compliant GSM radio network allows for the seamless use of mobile broadband applications with faster data traffic. It reduces costs and CO2 emissions while paving the way for a nationwide mobile broadband network.

Customers in sparsely populated areas, where neither DSL nor WCDMA/HSPA are available, are benefiting from mobile internet access with broadband four times faster than that of ISDN. Since September 2007, the Ericsson EDGE solution has served more than 65 percent of Germany's population.

T-Mobile decided to launch EDGE prior to the German football league championship - a major step towards reaching the operator's goal of being the first operator in Germany to offer mobile broadband nationwide.

Ericsson is actively reusing the lessons from the T-Mobile modernization.

"This was uncharted territory," Gustavsson says. "There has not been a similar project of this size before. The whole industry was watching and saw that we were able to upgrade without disturbing the subscriber base."

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