Good news for Mobistar customers: in the coming months they will be able to rely on a mobile network that is simultaneously more powerful and more ecological. As of this month, Mobistar is initiating works to upgrade its network, which will progressively improve its “Deep Indoor” coverage (i.e. far within the interior of buildings) and reduce the energy consumption of its antennas by fifty percent. Mobistar can thus guarantee an even better service quality to its customers while further reducing its carbon footprint. Recall that Mobistar has set itself the ambitious objective of reducing its CO2 emissions by 50% between now and 2020.
Concretely, between now and 2013, Mobistar will be replacing its Nortel 2G equipment (which has reached the end of its service life) with more modern and higher-performance Huawei equipment. This new equipment offers three major advantages: it consumes less energy, it enables better coverage (the “Deep Indoor” coverage of Mobistar’s 3G network will be doubled in the next two years) and it is highly future-proof. Thanks to this upgrade, the Mobistar network will already be prepared for the coming of LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology, i.e. the 4th generation of mobile telephony. This will make it possible to increase transmission capacity and rates in the coming years, thus responding to the growing appetite of users for all mobile internet-related services.
Mobistar will be investing a total of 36 million euros in its mobile network upgrade project. This investment will be spread over several years, and fits within the 2011 forecasts of the Mobistar group, which provide for an investment level equal to 11 to 12% of the service revenues.
497 antennas will already be replaced by Mobistar this year, with the rest of the network to follow in 2012 and the first half of 2013. It is possible that these various interventions will create a few local disturbances of the network, for a maximum period of 2 hours. To minimise potential inconveniences, only a single site will undergo temporary decommissioning at a time. Most of the mobile traffic will automatically pass via neighbouring sites, and naturally the technical teams will be doing everything in their power to limit the impact as much as possible. In addition, Mobistar´s business customers will in every case be notified when an intervention is scheduled in their region. A webpage has also been set up in order to follow the progressive optimisation of the network.