P1‘s WiMAX network has had somewhat of an unfortunate reputation of late. Plagued by persistent outages overly, congested networks and poor coverage inside of buildings, Malaysia’s leading WiMAX operator is strugling to deliver a consistently stable network.
Somewhat admitting that it’s subsidiary is having network stability issues, P1’s parent company, Green Packet announced that it aims to enhance network stability considerably by the third quarter of this year. A report in TheEdge states that Green Packet aims to reduce continuity incidences to below 5% by the third quarter of this year and below 2% in 2011.
The numbers may seem low, but the report didn’t state what is the benchmark for “continuity incidences” of a comparable wireless network. More importantly, the report didn’t indicate what is the state of P1’s WiMAX network currently. Specifically, we would like to know what is the percentage of “continuity incidences” right now.
In any case, Green Packet is currently undertaking a review of P1’s WiMAX network to look at how they can address both the building coverage and network capacity issues that’s tarnishing P1’s and WiMAX’s image as worthy successor to current 3G technologies.
Even Green Packet’s CEO, CC Puan, admits that congestion is the main problem with P1’s network right now. And depending on how you look at it, that may be a good problem to have but a problem is still a problem; and if its not fixed as soon as possible, a good problem can quickly turn into a very nasty one.
In the report, CC Puan goes on to say that the time was ripe for Green Packet to undergo a comprehensive technical review of P1’s networks as its subscriber base was large enough to “stress test” the improvements implemented and yet be small enough that whatever work that’s being done on the network would have a minimal to no negative impact on customer service and quality.
We don’t know about what CC Puan means by “minimal to no negative impact on customer service and quality“, all we can say is that everytime there is a network upgrade or even a network maintenance exercise going on in the P1 W1MAX network, subscribers’ connectivity are almost certainly affected.
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