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Sep 23 2004 Doha: An international telecom audit firm yesterday announced that Qatar Telecom's mobile network can be rated among the best in the world, following a recent, month-long study. The company, which has some 475,000 mobile phone subscribers, plans to pour in heavy investment to further develop the Qatarnet Global System for Mobile (GSM) network, Dr Nasser M Marafih, chief executive officer at Qtel, said. The study, from June 13 to July 21 was conducted by LLC International, a company that specialises in external audit of telecommunication services. Qtel is the first GSM provider in the Middle East region who subjected its network to such an audit. According to findings that were released yesterday, Qtel's mobile network has a call set-up success rate of 100 per cent as compared to the global average of 97.63 per cent. The number of 'dropped' calls (call that were unsuccessful due to network problems) stood at only 0.76 per cent as compared to the global average of between 0.37 and 2.36 per cent. Of all the mobile phone calls made in Qatar, 93.24 per cent were successfully completed, without any breakage of the connection and the voice quality for both, the caller and the called party, were extremely high. Marcel Daoud, managing director, Middle East at LLC said Qtel's Global Packet Radio System (GPRS), which allows users to connect to the Internet through their mobile phones, had also passed the audit with flying colours. Dr Nasser said that Qtel periodically conducts its own audit of the Qatarnet and this was the first time that an external agency was involved. He pointed out that the audit was conducted from the point of view of a GSM customer rather than from that of the company. This, he said, helped Qtel to realise what problems or difficulties that mobile phone users in Qatar might experience. The audit also found that the GSM coverage within Doha city stood at a whopping 97 per cent, at 82 per cent in the north of the country and 85 per cent in the southern part. He said that Qtel had the required equipment to boost GSM coverage throughout the capital and was now working with other government departments concerned to install the cell-sites and repeater stations that are vital to providing a strong signal and seamless coverage.
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