GSM Operator Lowers Costs and Speeds Deployment with RAD’s Compressed Voice System

AirTel, India’s largest mobile operator and a member of the Bharti Tele-Ventures group, provides cellular services across 16 telecom circles, or regions, to 1.5 million users. Since customers in each telecom circle can choose from among four mobile service providers, AirTel must remain competitive to win subscribers. Therefore, it is essential for AirTel to lower the cost of its service and to deploy services quickly.

Due to the large geographic area they comprise, telecom circles often require deployment of more than one mobile switching center (MSC). AirTel connects between MSCs using leased lines. With the help of the local RAD distributor MRO-TEK, AirTel deployed RAD’s CVS compressed voice system based on the Kilomux-2100 multiplexer platform to maximize bandwidth utilization of each leased line. At each MSC, the Kilomux-2100 multiplexer compresses traffic from six E1 lines onto one E1 line, significantly reducing the number of lines AirTel leases from the incumbent carrier, thereby achieving the lowest possible connectivity costs between MSCs.

In anticipation of traffic surges in particular regions due to political demonstrations or festivals and other cultural events, AirTel has configured CVS between base station controllers (BSCs) and MSCs that are connected by a single E1 line. This enables AirTel to accommodate spurts of increased cellular traffic in those regions.

As one of the first cellular operators in India, in some locations the AirTel backbone is based on a microwave PDH network with 16 E1 line capacity, insufficient for today’s demand for cellular bandwidth. Since CVS increases the transport capacity of the PDH network, AirTel can deliver all services over this network, without the need to upgrade to an SDH network (63 E1 capacity), which it was considering before installing the CVS system. “CVS enables AirTel to provide value-added services over limited bandwidth,” says Mr. Naveen Rao, General Manager of Marketing at MRO-TEK.