The year of the great breakthrough: a brief summary of 2013

2011 was the year of new base stations and new services. Last 2012 was a year of high traffic (when consumption increased sharply). 2013 was the year of LTE, highways and a large network upgrade in general .

The situation looked like this: 3 years ago we knew that we would have LTE (one way or another), and also used some 3G at 21 Mbps (HSPA +). By the beginning of 2013, the share of voice traffic in the backbone network was about 5%. The remaining 95% were data.
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And that's what we did:

• Since 2011, they began to install all the new LTE-ready equipment.
• We replaced the core network equipment with a more productive one. This made it possible to avoid the "bottlenecks" that would have appeared closer to the end of 2014.
• The spectral compression equipment was installed on most of the optical nodes (which made it possible to dramatically increase the network bandwidth on the same fiber optic lines as before).
• We carried out quite a lot of work on network upgrading both in cities and at the trunk level. The main paradigms are the construction of chords-slashes in the rings, the organization of additional traffic routes and an overall increase in reliability.
• And, finally, the first to pass certification for Apple's LTE (for 5S and 5C).

The main events of the year

1. The introduction of LTE in Russia , the launch of a network in Moscow and the passage of Apple certification, which allows using devices with voice functions (iPhone 5S and 5C) on the LTE Beeline network.
2. Starting MNP (switching to another operator with saving the number). We were the first to announce that we had ported a number into our network - in Chelyabinsk a client moved from Tele2. Not everything is going smoothly: at the beginning, when we ported the first subscriber, it was impossible to reach Moscow from its Chelyabinsk number. Two days decided this question. Other operators are also looking for and fix such bugs. A good question - why did not have time to properly test. The answer is simple: because the legal framework was ready, in fact, a couple of days before the start of the service.
3. The main thing we will focus on is to increase the convenience of services for subscribers. Among the most important events is the release of a new personal account (where everything is now simple, convenient and humane), plus the launch of a pilot project to assess the quality of communication from subscribers.

Within the market, the most important factor is the increase in the share of heavy content, primarily streaming video. At the same time, the share of smartphones and tablets is growing: for example, in the third quarter of this year, traffic in this segment increased by 150%.

The main change within the company is a reorientation to ensure that everything is convenient for customers. For example, we plan to notify about changes in the conditions of tariffs and options via SMS, plus in general it becomes more transparent and more convenient.

Overview of interesting technical aspects

• We began to implement IPv6 addresses for the mobile network. The first test region is Voronezh. Here are the details .
• City networks are improving. In particular, new optics are being laid, network structures with multiple redundancy are being made of rings, spectral multiplexing equipment is being installed, new nodes are being mounted. One example is the network in Chuvashia .
• The work in the Far East before flooding, during the rise of water and after was quite difficult. Read about what happens in the case of such large-scale emergencies, here .
• A very important moment in security is the launch of the MDM service (BYOD paradigm), which allows you to manage employees' mobile devices from the cloud (SaaS). Simply put, it was with this that we solved a huge number of issues with data security on the smartphones of company employees and laid the foundation for the normal use of personal tablets as working tools.
• Thanks to a change in legislation, it has become possible to sell private base stations for subscribers operating on a regular Internet channel. That is, it will soon be possible to make coverage where there is Internet, but there is no cellular network. Here are the details about the beta .
• We have mastered the new approaches to the organization of excellent coverage in large buildings with a complex configuration. Here is an example .
• One of the most unpleasant problems of traffic jams is very slow Internet access and the exhaustion of channel capacity due to the large number of subscribers in a cell. Therefore, we first tested the solutions on the pillars , and now we will put them on the network. The problem is solved with a bang.
• There was an opportunity to rehearse peak loads at the Universiade in Kazan. Received a very interesting experience in preparing the network.
• Much has been done on the highways .

Year of the big push

Total, 2013 was a year of great technological breakthrough in terms of the development and modernization of the network. 2014 we plan to make a year of customer focus. That and how we plan to change and have already changed, I will tell in one of the following topics.