Experiencing a Tour of Extreme-Speed Broadband in Malaysia

ZTE Collaborates with P1 to Build a First Class Commercial WiMAX Network

The Malaysian market is very suitable for wireless broadband development for the following reasons:

■    There is currently low broadband penetration, but high PC penetration and a fast broadband growth rate;

■    Lack of fixed-line resources has already started to bottleneck broadband growth;

■    Much of the population can afford broadband service due to a comparatively high GDP per capita;

■    Wireless broadband requirements of the population are already at a mature stage.

The past five years have seen rapid growth of broadband in Malaysia. In order to promote the development of broadband communication, the Malaysian government and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) issued four 2.3GHz WiMAX licenses simultaneously in 2007. This has presented operators with both opportunities and challenges. What’s more, fierce competition has been triggered in the broadband communication market within the country.

Packet One Networks (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. (P1), a subsidiary of the Malaysian Greenpacket Group, specializes in the WiMAX/WiFi business. In 2008, P1 was the first operator in Malaysia to offer WiMAX services and also the first operator in South Asia to commercially implement WiMAX 802.16e. Faced with fierce market competition in the broadband industry, and the threat from traditional 3G operators, it was urgent for P1 to optimize its network structure, reduce its operational costs, expand its network coverage, and provide users with convergent, high-speed, personalized services.

Facing Three Challenges

After many technical discussions and much field research into the comprehensive solutions of different telecom vendors, in March 2009, P1 selected ZTE to deploy the second phase of its WiMAX network. 

Prior to network construction, P1 and ZTE faced three challenges:

■    Environmental constraints: Malaysia is a famous tourist destination in Southeast Asia. The country has a complicated geographic environment featuring mountains, lakes, and a long coastline. With a population of 28.31 million and an area of approximately 330,000 square kilometers, the country also has a relatively high population density (85.81/km2).

■    Various types of sites and complicated networking: This was a new project with no existing network infrastructure. Therefore, it was necessary for P1 to build new sites, which required plenty of land. In addition, this project also required the swapping out of Alcatel-Lucent equipment.

■    Significant time constraints: P1 required 459 sites to be completed within three months. The standing record in the network construction industry, however, had been nearly 500 sites built over a six-month period.

Delivering a Quality WiMAX Network as Required

Confronted with such a challenging task, ZTE collaborated with P1 to establish a three-step project plan that would guarantee the network’s progress, from site construction to base station replacement and overall upgrade.

With rapid, high-quality, end-to-end delivery capabilities, ZTE achieved remarkable results on the P1 project in 2009. On March 21, ZTE signed the contract; on March 23, ZTE delivered the first batch of equipment; on April 25, ZTE finished commissioning the first site; and on April 29, ZTE put the first site into commercial use. After P1 prepared the sites, ZTE finished site delivery and passed the final acceptance testing in two weeks as planned.

As the project moved ahead, P1 gained confidence in ZTE’s problem solving and delivery capabilities. After witnessing the outstanding performance and high reliability of ZTE’s WiMAX system, P1 selected ZTE to replace Alcatel-Lucent. As a result, ZTE increased its number of sites from nearly 500 (planned in early 2009) to more than 1000.

To migrate users to the new network, P1 adopted ZTE’s network cutover and user swap scheme for smooth network implementation, uninterrupted service provision, and quality service experience. To these ends, P1 and ZTE spent three months experimenting with and testing solutions; these tests involved hundreds of items.

After careful and comprehensive preparations, P1 successfully migrated its users to the new network and achieved the expected results. P1’s CTO H.S.Lim praised ZTE highly for its accomplishments: “ZTE’s cutover scheme was very suitable for P1 because it allowed every P1 user to be migrated to the new network without their knowledge.”

Breaking Records with Various Innovations

ZTE successfully overcame the difficulties of a complicated wireless environment, difficult site acquisition, and long construction approval process. After three months, ZTE had finished swapping, constructing, commissioning, and optimizing all base stations, and had set a new record for the fastest construction of a wireless broadband network in the Asia-Pacific region.

ZTE’s distributed base station architecture makes networking flexible and efficient. It can be flexibly deployed, adheres to green principles, and is easy to install and use. Moreover, it is fully compatible with the advanced functions of Wave 2: 2×4 MIMO and HARQ. This has helped P1 reduce its total network costs, accelerate its network deployment, and maximize its investment.

High-performance products guarantee an excellent user experience. In order to provide users in the commercial network with high-bandwidth data services, P1 required a service test in a trial network of 254 users per sector. Among three participating vendors, the test results showed that ZTE performed the best in terms of system performance, total sector traffic, single user download traffic, and download stability.

ZTE’s three-dimensional coverage solution makes for an exceptional network. Besides its large-scale macro base station coverage solution, ZTE’s mature indoor coverage solutions provide even more convenient and efficient WiMAX broadband access in many different scenarios. These solutions help realize fast and cost-effective network deployment in densely populated key areas.

Professional network planning and optimization guarantees a high-quality network. Networking with 3×10M makes full use of bandwidth, but it easily causes inter-sector interference. A reasonable solution involves using professional network planning and optimization to minimize the interference while guaranteeing high-speed broadband. ZTE performed well in the KPI tests and its network planning and optimization capabilities were highly praised by P1.

Creating a Better Future Together

P1 has always adhered to the principle of “Customer First”, providing premium quality broadband services, and establishing their brand image as the future industry leader. They attach great importance to high-quality network construction, insist on early market penetration, and choose mature products, solutions, and first-class engineering to give their users an enhanced experience.

Inheriting P1’s principles of “Simplicity, Premium-Quality, and Efficiency,” ZTE was the sole builder of P1’s Phase II network. The IOT test center in Malaysia—constructed by P1, Intel, and ZTE—has also been completed, giving a new impetus for development to the WiMAX industry worldwide. Together with P1, ZTE will deploy networks in 31 Malaysian cities, constructing the largest, fastest, and best user-experience commercial mobile WiMAX network in Southeast Asia.

As an emerging operator with no network infrastructure, P1 required not only technologies and solutions, but also customized services and rapid response. To guarantee the project’s successful delivery, ZTE set up a technical team by transferring experienced engineers from around the world. Two hundred experts from cooperating companies in 10 countries were gathered together, and dozens of senior project management experts were hired to help P1 build world’s leading broadband mobile network. So far, P1 has seen a great improvement in its network performance and a rapid growth in its user base (now over 200,000).

"Our goal is simple—to make broadband a right for all Malaysians. To deliver this commitment, the rapid and quality assured deployment of the P1 W1MAX network is crucial. P1’s appointment of ZTE is another step in crystallising our commitment by accelerating the deployment of P1 W1MAX networks in more areas to meet the overwhelming consumer demand for high-quality, high-performance wireless broadband."

—Michael Lai, CEO of P1