During the month of April, the new Arimao cable began its trial period, with the operation of a new station. This investment was undertaken by ETECSA and certified according to international standards, which, as a novelty in operation, has a joint operation with the system provider, Lidia Esther Hidalgo Rodríguez, Vice President of Network Operations, confirmed to the press.
As she explained, “these tests are currently handling an initial traffic growth level for the corresponding adjustments, which must be done in harmony with the optimization and growth actions that have been undertaken in the other layers of the aforementioned network. This has allowed the total traffic to increase by 17% during this month, with the mobile service representing 83% of this value”.
In this sense, she clarified that outside of peak hours, an increase in transfer speed can be seen in areas where work has been done on increasing access capacity.
“Undoubtedly, the concurrence determines the perceived quality, for which, as we have mentioned, actions continue to be carried out. We have not yet reached the transfer speed values expected by our clients, and this is the reason for the actions that are still in process, both in the addition of new international capacities, as well as the growth of new elements in other fundamental points of the network, to handle more users and improve the experience of using the service”.
What were the results of the maintenance work on the network?
At another point in their dialogue with the press, the board explained the results of the maintenance work carried out in recent weeks by ETECSA.
In this regard, the Vice President of Network Operations said that during these months maintenance work has been carried out aimed at reducing problems with Internet browsing. “For example, users had many problems navigating and had to put airplane mode repeatedly. Low speeds, even in 4G, continue to affect the quality of the service”.
Among the main actions that were undertaken, he added, is the replacement of new equipment with greater processing capacities in order to increase the number of clients connected at the same time to the mobile network.
“Certainly, the capacities were exhausted in the last period with the exponential increase in mobile data services, without the possibility of expansion in the existing equipment, for which it was necessary to integrate and put into operation new equipment with better features, which would eliminate definitively the restriction due to lack of capacity”.
She reported that as a result of this action, more than 1 million new user sessions were generated, so it was necessary to optimize processes such as traffic management, and add processing cards to manage these new sessions.
“It is important to note that each user that connects generates more than one session, since there are applications that run in the background and request simultaneous connections. On our network, the average is 1.6 sessions per user.”
The specialist commented that in parallel, the signal transport layers have received capacity expansions and replacements of several of their equipment as well, in order to handle both the increase in traffic and new connected users at the same time.
“On the other hand, the access layer has undergone important changes with optimizations in the handling of signaling and cell change, as well as the enabling of new capabilities. This includes the use of new frequencies”.
The young woman warned that despite the financial limitations already explained at other times that affect investments, "we have not stopped growing in sites and new cells."
“In order to mitigate the limitations, new frequencies have been added and also new carriers in the 1800 MHZ frequency in those places with the greatest congestion. During 2023, 47 new 2G cells, 227 3G cells and a total of 1,521 4G cells have been added; It is convenient for our clients to use the 4G network for their data connections, since it is the network with the capacity to evacuate the greatest amount of traffic. With these actions, a 25% growth of the installed base has been achieved in the 4G network.
All these actions imply not only high costs for the acquisition of more equipment, but each carrier that is added to a radio base is a license that is paid for”.
New frequencies in the mobile network with 4G technology are enabled
Lidia Esther Hidalgo Rodríguez also reported that the 2100 MHZ band was integrated into sites in the provinces of Havana, Matanzas (provincial capital and Varadero) and Cienfuegos (its provincial capital), with more than 800 new cells.
"This brought as an additional benefit, the incorporation of new users to this network given the fact that there are terminals that did not support the 1800 MHZ frequency."
She also said that the airing of the 700 HMZ frequency related to the digital television program has begun in the provinces of Pinar del Río, Artemisa and Isla de la Juventud, which constitutes a solution to expand access to the cell phone service, especially in rural areas where the signal has a greater range.
"It is necessary to highlight that for these provinces a strong work was carried out in the change of the components of the radio bases: antennas to be able to radiate in the new frequencies maintaining the current ones and not overload the towers, changes of cabinets, addition of processing cards and power elements, among others. The new frequency carriers require new transmission powers, as well as increasing energy supports”.
No less relevant have been the modifications applied to all the base stations in the capital, announced and carried out during the early hours of March, where changes were implemented in the spectrum of the 900 MHZ band used for 2G and 3G, with the aim of rearrange and optimize its capacities, allowing to gain a space of 10 MHZ to be able to introduce the 4G technology in this same frequency.
“Currently, we are working on the configuration of several sites for the use of 4G in the 900 MHZ band, especially in those with greater limitations in handling traffic. Today there are some radio bases that are radiating in the Lisa area, being used as a test scenario to adjust their functionalities such as load balance and carrier aggregation. It is the first time that we would be driving in our network, 4 carriers in 4G technology, 2 in 1800MHZ, 1 in 2100MHZ and 1 in 900 MHZ.
This new carrier will bring the benefit of greater range indoors and the incorporation of more users. The adjustment and configuration works, which involve all the layers, are in the completion phase, so soon we will begin the works to expand the use of this new frequency, and thus continue adding capacity to the network for handling traffic.”
She announced that the scope of the installed network and the work carried out in recent weeks allow a total of 2.2 million users to connect to the network concurrently. This value, which is constantly growing, implies that the tasks of optimization, expansion of the network and maintenance of the systems must continue in the coming months.
The specialist concluded that all the actions that are carried out, both for the acquisition of equipment and licenses and for the contracting and payment of international capacities that are used to expand Internet access, require the disbursement of high levels of foreign currency that must be guaranteed with the income that ETECSA can generate in this currency.
“The fundamental destination of the use of these capacities is reverted to services that the population and entities access mostly with payment in CUP. This makes the recovery of investments more complex and limits the pace of their execution, which constitutes the fundamental challenge that ETECSA must face in the current economic environment, where the world crisis and the North American blockade increasingly prevent access to new financing and technology sources.