The country’s most innovative telecom company, Etisalat Nigeria has been rated the best GSM service provider by the Nigerian Communications Commission for the month of March in its Quality of Service Audit. The audit was conducted to determine the performance of the various mobile operators in the country.

According to the report from the Nigerian Communications Commission, Etisalat Nigeria came 1st in 4 out of the 5 key Quality of Service performance indicators and narrowly missed being number one in only one indicator. In QoS indicators like TCH Congestion (Without Handover Rate), TCH Congestion (With Handover Rate), Call Setup Success Rate and SDCCH Congestion Rate, Etisalat Nigeria was adjudged the best service provider for the month of March by an appreciably wide margin. It came a close second by a slim margin in terms of the indicator known as the Drop Call Rate. This, according to experts, is to be expected as the innovative network is still actively rolling out its world class network across Nigeria.

In the Quality of Service report released recently in Abuja, Etisalat recorded the highest call set up rate of 98.09 percent. The call set up rate measures the ease with which calls are established or set up. A higher value implies that over 98% of attempted calls on the Etisalat network are successful.

The NCC QoS performance report also showed that Etisalat achieved a minimal one percent call drop rate, the second lowest call drop rate recorded amongst the four telecommunications companies audited. The call drop rate measures a network’s ability to ensure that a conversation between the parties involved in an established call remain ongoing until it is voluntarily terminated by the parties in conversation.

Customers on the Etisalat network are also noted as being able to make calls with ease compared to subscribers on other networks. In the two indicators known as Traffic Channel Congestion (without handover) and Traffic Channel congestion (With Handover), the NCC measures Etisalat’s network capacity offered to its stationary and on the move subscribers respectively. In these “Traffic Channel” indicators, a high percentage value means that it is difficult to make a call on the network for capacity limitations, which is usually encountered in under dimensioned networks.

The report goes further to explain that in a properly optimized network, the industry standard metric for measuring this should not be more than 2%. Etisalat recorded a commendable 0.23% TCH congestion (With Handover) Rate.

Speaking on the ever increasing Quality of Service of the company in NCC’s QoS Report, Acting Chief of Engineering and Network Roll-Out, Mohamed Nadder, said “This rating is further proof of Etisalat’s commitment and dedication to building Nigeria’s biggest and best network known for world-class service delivery in line with our pedigree in all our countries of operation. We will continue to bring our global knowledge and technical expertise to bear in delivering qualitative service to our many subscribers in Nigeria. Our goal is to get to a point where our subscribers will have seemless connectivity on our network and thus have world class service experience on the Etisalat network similar to the other world wide Etisalat networks”.

About Etisalat
Currently standing at the 140th position among Financial Times’ top 500 corporations in the world, Etisalat is the largest telecommunication services provider in Africa and the Middle East and serves a growing aggregate of 74 million subscribers across Africa, Middle East and Asia.

 The innovative GSM provider, the fastest growing mobile telecommunications company in the world, has two innovative products in the Nigerian market: Easy Starter and Easy Cliq. Easy starter offers unique features such as Receiver Pays, homezone, Missed Call Notification, Etisalat service menue and Recharge Others. Easy Cliq is loaded with exciting features such as Unlimited SMS, Free Midnight Calls, Bonus on Incoming calls, Facebook update service by SMS, Free MMS, Free data downloads, One Cliq-One Tune, Cliq Ring Back Tune and Talk’n’Share.