"A Miracle in Telecommunications History" Huawei's Network Services for Key Events (NSKE) for Hajj
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On December 21, 2007 when 3.5 million Muslims were leaving Mecca with joy and glory at the end of the Hajj, STC and we hugged each other and cheered, celebrating our miraculous achievement in providing STC with NSKE for the third consecutive time and guaranteeing that their network ran smoothly without any service disruption.
The Hajj is an annual event that sees Muslims flooding into Mecca from all over the world. Mecca is also called the Holy City of Mecca, known as the birthplace of the Prophet Mohammed. Situated in a 7-kilometer-long valley in west Saudi Arabia, it is surrounded with hills with only four passes connecting with the outside world, as if it were a strong castle. One of a Muslim's duties, as described in the Five Pillars of Islam, is to go on Hajj at least once during his or her lifetime unless prevented by ill health or a lack of money.
During the Hajj, of the 3.5 million people from all over the world, over 2.5 million are mobile subscribers, who gather within an area of 10km2 around Mecca. This puts an enormous strain on the mobile network of Saudi Telecom Company (STC).
The Hajj formerly begins on the eighth day of Dhul-Hijjah, the twelfth month of the Muslim Lunar calendar. During this event, millions of mobile subscribers from all over the world wish to share their joys and experience of the occasion with their friends and families back at home. Network failure or disruption during this most auspicious occasion would result in a great deal of disappointment and anguish for the many devotees on the pilgrimage, not to mention the lost revenue opportunity for STC. Prior to 2005 STC's mobile network covering Mecca was plagued with load-related problems, during the Hajj, which resulted in parts of the network virtually freezing up and blocking all traffic during critical periods of peak load events.
In 2005, STC and Huawei began their long-term partnership. Huawei provided integrated network service and mature soft-switch solutions for the first time in January 2006. The solutions have since been used in each high traffic event and enabled STC's network to repeat excellent performance with zero incidences of overload, interruption or faults during the last three Hajj gatherings. Dr. Zeyad Thamir Al-Otaibi, Vice President of STC commented, "It's a great honor to be part of something that enables over 3 million visitors to call their families all over the world to share with them the glory of the Hajj. Our solid network supported smooth communications under such rare high density traffic tides. We have created a miracle in telecommunications history and Huawei played a very important role."
In January 2007, with its NSKE solutions Huawei again helped STC to overcome its peak traffic challenges and sustain its revenue growth.
In December 2007, for a third time Huawei helped STC handle the peak traffic challenges with its total NSKE and advanced, reliable tools. During this year's Hajj, STC's network handled 0.33 billion calls and 0.168 billion short messages - a peak traffic level for the network. Nevertheless, Huawei's NSKE guaranteed STC subscribers access to reliable telecom services such as voice, data and SMS anytime anywhere. Huawei's high-quality NSKE solutions, including network consultancy, network evaluation & optimization and preventive maintenance, were first used to guarantee STC subscribers access to a multitude of services during the Hajj, including voice, data and SMS. Using advanced technologies, such as data mining & modeling and traffic load assessment, Huawei was able to help STC to accurately forecast network tendencies and fully optimize their network in time.
There were plenty of touching stories taking place in our successful endeavors. Wang Nanbin, our on-site chief, talked of the on-duty-in-shifts system for our Hajj operation. In our first NSKE, our team was on duty in three shifts, each lasting eight hours. As the handover between shifts took a considerably long time, the team changed to two shifts per day, twelve hours per shift, in the following year. "We worked for 12 hours. A handover between shifts took two hours. And we got to spend time on eating, taking bus home and resting. So we didn't have much time left for ourselves." In the beginning, the colleagues on the shift could only have one meal a day. They had so many snacks and instant noodles that they eventually got sick of them. What a treat it would be if they could have buns or dumplings for night meals. Later STC allowed us to eat in their dining room, so our colleagues on duty could have access to Arabian desserts and delicacies. In the second year's NSKE, Wang Nanbin almost never took a weekend break for three months on end, and did not take a bath for ten consecutive days. Before the NSKE started, piles of work needed to be done for network assessment and optimization, so many colleagues had to work at night and rested during the daytime, so many of them became night people.
Every day, our Muslim colleagues stationed in Mecca had to spend two or three hours making trips between the equipment rooms and dormitories fighting through throngs of people. Along the way, they had to stop at each base station and check carefully if each and every piece of our equipment was running normally.
During critical events, they simply lived in the equipment room. When they had no food, they went and stood in line for the chicken rice freely available from the government.
Mohammad, one of our local colleagues, was in charge of drive test during the whole Hajj, to provide corresponding data for network monitoring. Because of the crowds, it was impossible for him to drive a car for the test. So he had to "walk test" - walking along with the pilgrims, test instruments in the backpack on his back. During the Hajj, traffic accidents are not caused by automobiles, but by overcrowded pedestrians. Quite a number of stampedes took place during the Hajj in history. Mohammad had to conduct the test while walking slowly as everyone else did in the procession. There were few trees or other objects providing shades against the sun, so when he was back in our Riyadh office, everyone was surprised to see him get so tanned - he had been a fair-skinned young man!
The successful partnership with STC for the Hajj was impossible without the unselfish, hard work by each and every team member. In the celebrating dinner party, our customer presented us with the holy water fetched from Mecca.
According to their religion, the holy water can cleanse the soul, with Allah blessing the drinker with peace and prosperity. We all drank from the water solemnly, and, seemingly, our fatigue disappeared right away.
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