ICP-ANACOM - Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações has promoted an agreement between the three mobile operators - TMN, Vodafone and Sonaecom - and CP - Caminhos de Ferro de Portugal (Portuguese Railways), with a view to enhancing the quality of the mobile voice and Internet service on Alfa Pendular trains.
As a result of this agreement, which determines an investment of one million euros by the companies involved, the quality of the mobile service registered a significant improvement. According to a study into the quality of the mobile service, carried out by ANACOM in February and March, on the situation on Lisbon-Porto-Braga railway line has changed from one marked by a lack of service on some segments to one where lack of coverage is practically non-existent. On the Lisbon-Faro line, the improvements are more notable, despite the fact that there are still some gaps in coverages in parts of the Alentejo.
With respect to the voice service, comparing the results of this study to those from November 2005, it can be seen that the indicators of Service Accessibility and Call Termination rates present an overall improvement of 15 percentage points.
It is recalled that ANACOM led the process of negotiations that culminated in the protocol signed today, and which involved the mobile operators and CP, following the carrying out of studies into the quality of service of the Land Mobile Service which found there to be significant shortcomings in the service provided by the mobile operators on the ALFA Pendular trains of CP. The quality of the provided mobile service was analysed along the Braga-Porto-Lisbon-Faro line for the first time in February 2005, with the study repeated in November of the same year - both showing shortcomings in the quality of the provided service.
Accordingly, back in 2005, ANACOM began a process of reflection with the three mobile operators with a view to identifying solutions which would allow the gaps in service to be rectified, and the respective technical and financial impact of resolving this situation.
The option for improving the quality of service provided by the mobile operators on the ALFA trains, both in terms of voice and mobile Internet involved the installation of active repeaters in the carriages, under the terms of the protocol signed today, and led to an improvement of the service on the Porto-Lisbon-Faro line, as demonstrated in the study of the quality of the mobile services, carried out by ANACOM between 18 February and 11 March.
The study shows that the mobile communication systems on the Braga-Porto-Lisbon-Faro line present better GSM coverage than WCDMA coverage. There were also differences found in performance between operators. In GSM, TMN is the operator with the best coverage, with 89.3%, followed by Optimus with 89% and Vodafone with 87.3%. In WCDMA the figures are lower for all the operators, with the exception of Optimus which presented an 89.4% rate of coverage, a value which falls to 87.2% in the case of TMN and 84.4% in the case of Vodafone.
On the Braga-Porto-Lisbon line, TMN was the operator presenting the best performance, with levels of 95% for accessibility of service and 94% for call termination. At the other extreme is Optimus, with levels of 80% and 78% respectively.
On the Lisbon - Faro line the best performance was recorded for Optimus with around 96% of calls established successfully and 95% of these terminating normally. TMN and Vodafone presented lower levels of 89% and 88% for the same indicators.
Voice calls terminated normally (120 seconds of duration) present good audio quality, without significant differences found between operators or locations.
The performance of the video-telephony service (UMTS) is penalised by the low accessibility of the services which the networks present, above all, along the Lisbon-Faro line. Vodafone presents the best performance for this indicator with levels of 85% on the Braga-Porto-Lisbon line and 64.6% on the Lisbon-Faro line. TMN presents the lowest performances.
With respect to the call termination indicator, this presents better results, revealing that the networks have the capacity to maintain calls after successful establishment. In this indicator, the differences between operators are insignificant.
Video-telephony calls terminated normally (120 seconds) present good audio and acceptable video quality, without significant differences being registered between analysed operators and locations.
