From voice services to data services, carriers have transitioned from profiting off traditional voice services to traffic monetization. Thailand AIS quickly seizes the opportunity to capture the market by predicting network bottlenecks and using the innovative Huawei 6-Sector Solution to resolve capacity expansion problems.

Embarrassment in Thailand: Insufficient Capacity, Inferior User Experience

Bangkok, a city of angels, and Thailand, a nation of smiles, attract a huge number of visitors each year. The growing number of tourists leads to great challenges for mobile networks. It is really embarrassing when users in Thailand are unable to share their photos. Consumer behavior research reports show that about 45% of users are willing to remain loyal to a certain carrier regardless of price, simply because the carrier provides a superior network. For carriers, user experience determines the user stickiness and word of mouth, so user experience is the first priority.

The competition is fierce in the mobile communication market in Thailand. Three mainstream carriers are competing to win 66 million users. As the largest carrier in Thailand, AIS firmly holds 45% of users by continually providing excellent network quality and services. In 2013, AIS completed the world's fastest migration from 2G to 3G (UMTS). This was a revolutionary. In the first five months, AIS deployed more than 3000 base stations in Bangkok, serving more than 9 million users in the migration. As a result, the fast growing data traffic boosted AIS share prices by 60%.

On AIS live networks, 80% are UMTS users. The number of UMTS users has increased sevenfold and UMTS data traffic has increased fivefold. Under such circumstances, efficient expansion of UMTS network capacity has become the biggest challenge for AIS.

A Hard Choice of Capacity Expansion Solutions

On the topic of capacity expansion, the priority for AIS was adding sites. Cells are a great invention. Limited frequency resources can be reused in a specified range, which addresses the problem of frequency multiplexing. When the network capacity is insufficient, it can be further expanded by reducing the cell range and adding more sites and cells. However, site addition is costly, time-consuming, and ineffective, therefore AIS had to find an efficient and fast capacity expansion solution without the need of additional sites.

Undoubtedly, adding spectrums can also increase network capacity, just as a wider road can obviously carry more cars. However, radio spectrums are scarce resources and must be wisely deployed in correct areas. Spectrum resources are state-owned and under strict control in Thailand, so it is particularly difficult to add any spectrums. In addition, AIS could not deploy LTE networks in 2014, because LTE licenses had not yet been obtained.

Besides adding sites and spectrums, 6-sector networking is another feasible capacity expansion solution for AIS. 6-sector networking increases the number of sectors to six and therefore doubles the number of cells, thus improving network capacity. AIS previously used six common antennas with horizontal 33° wave width for testing the 6-sector networking, but the test result was unsatisfactory. Due to severe interference from neighboring cells, capacity only improved by 30%. Moreover, the process of adding six antennas was time-consuming and energy-consuming. Six additional antennas added even more pressure to the overloaded antenna space.

Split Antennas: A Powerful Solution of Capacity Expansion

The innovative Huawei split 6-sector solution resolved the capacity expansion problem, and became the trustworthy choice for AIS. "Thanks to the Huawei R&D team for the timely feedback and support." Mr. Kriengsak, CTO, AIS mentioned that AIS and Huawei set up special project teams to carry out research on an applicable 6-sector solution from software features and antenna direction diagrams.

The split antenna, a single-sided antenna, can transmit two beams of horizontal 33° beam width, covering two sectors. Three-sided antennas can implement 6-sector networking. As the only vendor that provides both essential equipment and antennas in the industry, Huawei capitalizes on this advantage, designs superior coordinated antenna direction diagrams, and boasts better antenna performance from its initial R&D phases. Huawei's unique serpentine dipole patent[l1]  has undergone repeated simulation and optimization, and therefore can best control sidelobe suppression and neighboring cell interference.

In the early stages of the 6-sector solution planning, Huawei used its Accurate Site Planning (ASP) network planning tool to identify hotspots and poorly-covered areas, and analyze each sector to determine whether to split it into multiple sectors. After the multi-sector splitting, Huawei used its Accurate Cell Planning (ACP) network optimization tool to adjust electrical tilts and azimuths of each antenna and to eliminate overshooting coverage and weak coverage based on the data and simulation results.

In addition, the Huawei wideband antennas support frequency bands from 1710 MHz to 2600 MHz. UMTS 6-Sector sites can be smoothly upgraded to LTE sites using the software upgrade. In the future, Huawei will release 3-beam antennas that support nine sectors and 4-beam antennas that support 12 sectors. The multi-sector solutions will become a new approach for carriers to resolve capacity issues.

Compared with other antennas, the Huawei split antennas have the following advantages:

Increasing network capacity by about 70% and improving coverage by 3 dB. Capacity can only be increased by 50% by using other similar antennas.

• Supporting 4-hour fast site deployment with small antennas of low wind loads.
• Supporting easy deployment as 3-sector deployment without adding antenna space and sites.
• KPIs remained stable after six months of network operation.

A Wonderful Win-Win Experience

From voice services to data services, carriers have transitioned from profiting off traditional voice services to traffic monetization. With fierce competition in the MBB era, the constantly changing market presence of networks leads to unprecedented challenges for user experience. AIS quickly seized the opportunity to capture the market by predicting network bottlenecks and resolving capacity expansion problems.

With extensive experience accumulated from years of network deployment, Huawei is able to predict the risks and advents of traffic storms. This provides professional service solutions to enable AIS to flexibly use hardware and software resources with the help of network planning and optimization tools.

With the large-scale deployment of 6-sector split antennas, MBB services provided by AIS are widely used. Reasonable terminal subsidy policies and flexible tariff packages boost data traffic, bringing sustainable revenues for AIS. "Increased traffic brings a revenue increase." This is a victory for AIS market presence and strategies, and a wonderful example of win-win cooperation between Huawei and its clients. Mr. Kriengsak said, "We are grateful that Huawei has helped AIS expand its network capacity with better user experience, and increase user loyalty. I believe these experiences will also apply to other carriers."