Huawei's Mobile Softswitch helps Saudi Telecom Company beat Peak Traffic during the Haj season

Huawei's GSM Mobile Softswitch system deployed for Saudi Telecom Corporation (STC) kept stable operation and got through the peak traffic on Haj from 8 to 13 January 2006.

Performing Haj to Makkah is an event of significance for Muslims. Haj of each year fetches millions of pilgrims to the holy sites. In 2006 Haj season, 3 million pilgrims, up 20% than last year, gathered in the holy sites which is 5 square kilometers around. Since the mobile users made calls at the same time period, it caused obvious peak traffic; millions of mobile users moved to the same direction at the same time according to the pilgrimage rite, so a large amount of location update and handover were generated. Moreover, since the pilgrims come from different countries, the quantity of short messages jumped 10 times over the average. The explosion in traffic and the extreme traffic type posted extremely high criteria on capability and reliability of the mobile networks. Thereby, the quantity and the type of the traffic during Haj are regarded as the severest challenge for mobile communications.

Considering the higher service processing capability of the softswitch architecture, STC selected Huawei's GSM Mobile Softswitch System to construct the network covering all Haj holy sites including Makkah after deliberate evaluation and rigorous tests, expecting to avoid the traffic congestions during the peak time. In the network, the capacity of one of Huawei's GSM Softswich VMSC exceeds one million subscribers, being the largest mobile softswitch local exchange in the world. Meanwhile, STC and Huawei jointly organized a special team to expand the capacity and optimize the existing network, in order to sustain the confidence of its users in its operations during the 2006 Haj season.

At wee hours on 9 January 2006, the total number of mobile users in Makkah increased to 3 million, and the number of equivalent users in the biggest local exchange reached over 1.1 million with the biggest BHCA exceeding 3000K. The traffic volume increased by nearly 20 times, and the quantity of short messages and handover 18 times and 24 times respectively as the average. However, the put-through rate kept stable and the mobile users could make calls successfully then.

Moreover, although the movement of large number of mobile users brought local exchanges different peak traffics, Huawei's Mobile Softswitch dynamically allocated the processing capability among modules, thus made full use of the system's entire processing capability and secured the system operation. Huawei's flow control and soft capacity technologies enabled mobile softswitch to go through the impact of peak traffic and the extreme traffic type from 8 to 13 January 2006 smoothly and successfully.

Huawei's mobile softswitch equipment has excellent processing capability, and thanks to its centralized management, network loads can be well balanced. Its outstanding performance during Haj season this year impressed people a lot. Although the number of mobile users increased by 20%, STC's GSM network kept a high put-through rate and its operation income jumped 30% than that of last year..

Mr. Zhang Shunmao, CEO of Huawei Wireless Product Line, commented, “Huawei's Mobile Softswitch has been commercially deployed in more than 30 countries, serving over 50 million subscribers. Going through the peak traffic of Haj successfully proves the stability and reliability of Huawei's mobile softswitch technology.”

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