StarHub s mobile network undergs extensive upgrades to enhance customer experience

Singapore, 14 June 2013 StarHub reaffirms its continued commitment to accelerating the ongoing enhancement of its mobile voice and data network on all fronts, so as to serve customers better. The bulk of StarHub's multi-million dollar capital expenditure will go towards mobile network enhancements, such as installing modern, higher-capacity 4G and 3G base stations, upgrading the traffic handling capacity of our transmission backbone, and exploring large-scale small cell deployment to enhance coverage and capacity.

Customer satisfaction is our top priority, and we are making every effort to ensure that our mobile customers remain truly happy with StarHub. We want to take this opportunity to share our strengths and more importantly, the multiple steps we have been taking to enhance network quality for our customers, said Mr Mock Pak Lum, Chief Technology Officer, StarHub. While we steadily expand our high-speed 4G network island-wide, we are also combining the use of intelligent solutions, such as video streaming optimisation, edge caching and small cell, with the increased deployment of modern 3G base stations to satisfy customer demand for mobile data services and crystal clear voice call quality.

4G rollout update

StarHub's 4G network which currently covers 75% of the island, is on track to hit 95% street-level deployment by October 2013. Concurrently, StarHub has been upgrading its dedicated fibre transmission backbone to support up to 1Gbps connection to each base station since April 2012.

3G enhancements

StarHub operates an enhanced 3G network, allowing customers on new smartphone and data-only plans with a compatible device to enjoy a faster, more consistent mobile surfing experience across Singapore. StarHub is the first local mobile operator to extend its 3G network on the 900MHz spectrum band to increase capacity, boost in-building coverage and further reduce its low dropped call rate. These enhancements which began early last year, will up StarHub's 3G base station count by more than 40% come December 2013.

StarHub is also the first to offer unparalleled voice call quality to Singapore consumers with HD Voice. All StarHub Mobile post-paid customers with a HD Voice capable device can now enjoy natural sounding and clearer voice calls with noticeably lesser background noise. StarHub will enable this free feature for its mobile pre-paid users progressively from tomorrow.

Network optimisation

In a bid to enhance user experience amid rapid increase in mobile video traffic, StarHub has invested in a video streaming optimisation solution, which intelligently scales videos to fit the resolution and screen size of mobile users' device. This network-based solution helps users conserve data as less bandwidth is required for each video session, resulting in faster start times and less buffering without significantly altering viewing quality. This network feature will be turned on for customers by year-end. Moreover, StarHub is exploring the use of edge caching to further improve web page load times by autonomously pushing popular web content to specific base stations based on user demand.

Low power base stations (small cell) trials

StarHub is first in Singapore to have started testing small cell technologies, which will be vital to enhancing network performance especially in high traffic density areas and coverage blind spots in the near future.

StarHub values customer feedback

Besides existing customer feedback channels, StarHub will launch a mobile app in 3Q2013 for its customers to easily submit location-specific feedback about the mobile network.

Our network engineers pay close attention to the performance of our mobile network around-the-clock and promptly carry out enhancements based on prevailing network traffic conditions and customer feedback, Mr Mock concluded. Increasingly, we will harness big data to better understand our customers' preferences and behaviours so that we can anticipate their future needs and further optimise our network accordingly.

LINK:	http://www.starhub.com/content/corporate/newsroom/2013/06/starhub_s-mo...
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