This presentation summarizes a summer internship project at Idea Cellular Ltd. aimed at improving network availability by reducing downtime at major outage sites. Key findings include: (1) Out of 345 sites studied, 290 outages were closed as of May 10th, with improved availability of 0.7% by May 11th and 0.27% by May 27th. (2) Cost savings of INR 24.09 crore were estimated from reduced outages. (3) Notifications to engineers helped reduce outages by up to 18.68% from April to May. While improvements were observed, the study had limitations such as a small sample size and inability to determine all specific outage causes.

1. A Summer Internship Project Presentation on
Network Availability Improvement on
Major Downtime Sites of Idea Cellular Ltd.
Presented by:
Tanay Chaudhari
BM-014277
PGDM, IMS Ghaziabad

2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• Idea Cellular Ltd. is nation’s 3rd largest mobile operator and ranks 10th in
the world with a customer base of close to 10 crore users and counting.
• More than 1 lakh transmission sites are setup across 55,000 towns
• In UP-East circle, operates about 8 clusters comprising of 7,369 sites (as of
May 2015)
• Follows high-standard of network reliability of “4-nines” (i.e. 99.99%
availability of network services)
• Network Outage Alarm notifications of as short as 1 second on any given
site
• This parallel, maintenance project to check network downtime (time
duration when the network is non-operational)
• As an observed trend - mere detection and speedier resolving of errors
saves huge amount of operational expenditures

3. COMPANY PROFILE – Idea
Cellular Ltd.
• India’s 3rd largest mobile operator
• Ranks among the Top 10 country operators in the world
• Traffic of over 1.5 billion minutes a day
• Over 1,00,000 2G and 3G cell sites, spread across over 55,000 towns in
India
• The Customer Service Delivery platform is ISO 9001:2008 certified,
making it the only operator in the country to have this standard certification
• Winner of ET Telecom Awards 2012, in the categories - ‘Customer
Experience Enhancement’, ‘Excellence in Marketing’, and ‘Innovative
Products’
• Strives for conserving energy, recycling, or finding innovative solutions to
environmental and social challenges
• Use of the latest eco-friendly renewable energy sources

4. COMPANY PROFILE…
• Exploring options of Solar Hybrid Solution for running BTS, in parts of
rural Bihar for future reduction on conventional fuels for lesser hours
• Group operates in 25 countries, and is anchored by over 100,000
employees
• Associations with –
• Aditya Birla Nuvo Limited
• Grasim Industries Limited
• Hindalco Industries Limited
• Birla TMT Holdings Private Limited

5. BRIEF THEORY OF
TELECOM SERVICES
• The first generation of telecommunication services included analog mobile
phones [e.g., Total Access Communications Systems (TACS), Nordic
Mobile Telephone (NMT), and Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS).
• The second generation (2G) included digital mobile phones [e.g., Global
System For Mobile communications (GSM), Personal Digital Cellular
(PDC), and DIGITALAMPS (D-AMPS)
• The 3G brings digital multimedia handsets with high data transmission
rates, capable of providing much more than basic voice calls.
• Other important services are –
– Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) (plays a key role in 3G)
– Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
– Global System for Mobile (GSM)
– Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA)
– Time-Division Multiple Access (TDMA)
– Wideband CDMA (WCDMA)

6. BRIEF THEORY…
• Fault Management - to detect a fault in the network as soon as possible
after it occurs, locate it, make a notification of the fault, and if possible fix
the fault automatically and test the fix.
• Configuration management provides the operator the means to control and
monitor the configuration of the network elements. There are two distinct
areas involved - one that targets single network elements and another that
considers the network as a whole.
• Software Management - can be divided into two processes: the main
software-management process and the software-fault-management process
• (To manage fault) Reverting to an older version of the software may
sometimes help, but it may also contain the same bug (it is possible that the
bug simply wasn’t found before). Also, an earlier version may contain
some other bugs that were corrected in the later version.
• The best solution is, of course, a new corrected software version (that has
been properly tested). But a new version of software takes time to produce.
It may take weeks or months for the software vendor to locate the error, fix
it, test the fix, and make a new software release
• Reactivation of the current software is the easiest and quickest solution to
the problem

7. OBJECTIVES
• Major Purpose
– To increase the network availability (uptime) of Idea Cellular Ltd. sites
by checking the cases network outages (downtime) affected sites
• Objectives
– Reducing Downtime on Affected Sites and Calculating Improvement
on Network Availability
• Sub-Objectives
– Checking Trend of high downtime affected sites for April and May
2015 of Idea Cellular Ltd.
– Collecting and Updating outage information for these affected sites
– Communicating updated information and Escalating Reports to Site
Engineers, Cluster Managers and respective IP Vendor Cluster
Managers when required, in order to speed up the rectification of
network outages

8. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
• Assumptions
– Out of 7369 sites spread over 8 clusters of UP-East circle of Idea
Cellular Ltd, 345 sites are bucketed out based on the sampling
technique
– Taken as the ‘representative population’ of ‘the most outage prone sites’
of Idea Cellular Ltd. in UP-East circle
• Research Design
1) Conclusive Research Design – information is formal and structured.
Sample taken is large and considered as representative. Data analysis
followed is mostly quantitative and the findings are conclusive and used as
input in decision-making.
The criteria for sorting downtime-affected sites are –
a)Sites with 15 and more days of outages (for April 2015)
b)Sites with 30 and more minutes of Short-Duration Outages
(SDO; 5minutes and less) (for April 2015)

9. RESEARCH …
(contd. Research Design…)
2) Descriptive Design – involves prior-formulations of specific hypothesis
which is preplanned and structured. (as mentioned right before)
The project also involves study of secondary data of outages of affected
sites for April 2015 and involves repeated, periodic telephonic-enquiries
from Engineers of the sites, from which new data is collected and updated.
3) Longitudinal Design – fixed samples of population-elements is
measured repeatedly on same variables. Also, the changes are detected and
updated on the comparatively large amount of data collected to achieve
high accuracy.
• Errors - Possible errors in the project’s data collection and analysis are
1)Response Errors – incomplete and half-confirmed knowledge of site
outage
2)Recording Errors – mishearing of site outage reasons and wrongfully
noting and categorizing the same
3)Respondent Errors – time-quotient of enquiring of the outage reasons.

10. RESEARCH …
• Survey
The collection of data and its updation has following characteristics –
1)Primary Data – comprised of Outage Reasons and their distinctive
Outage Category with periodic updates involved.
2)Communication – Telephonic conversations with affected sites’
Engineers and their Site Incharges for updates on Outage issues. Also,
emails to forward the maintained data to the Engineers and their Cluster
Managers.
3)Sample – Out of the Sampling Frame of 7369 sites of Idea Cellular Ltd.
of the Sampling Area of UP-East circle, a Sampling Size of 345 sites was
sorted out from all 8 clusters which were overseen by a total of 62 Site
Engineers, based on a Stratified Technique Approach of Sampling.
• Data Collection
– Sources – Site Engineers, Site Technicians, Site Incharges, Cluster
Managers and IP Vendor’s Cluster Managers.
– Tools – Telephone, Email services, MS Excel

11. FINDINGS & ANALYSIS
• Tables
– Data of Outages maintained on MS Excel for the months of April 2015
and May 2015
– April 2015 was considered as base month and updates of May 2015
were checked for improvement over the outages of the base month for
the downtime-affected 345 sties
– The following main attributes were maintained in the Sorted Table of
345 sites –
• Idea Site ID, IP Site ID, IP Vendor, Site Name, District, Idea Cluster, Site
Type, Site – Indoor/Outdoor, Engineer Name, CM Name,
• April 2015 Outages with categories of TOTAL, INFRA, TELECOM, SDO
columns having sub columns as – Site Instance Count, Site Outage
Minutes for Total Till Date and Per Day Till Date,

12. FINDINGS …
(contd.)
• Reason Category (Infra/Telecom/Linked-Infra/Linked-Telecom), Culprit
Site, Culprit Site ID, Outage Reason(s), May 2015 Outages with TOTAL
column having sub columns as – Site Instance Count, Site Outage Minutes
for Total Till Date and Per Day Till Date and Outage Days involved,
• Remark (Open/Close), Current Status (Open/WIP/Close)
• Charts
– Maintained on Pivot Tables of MS Excel for Sum of Site Outage
Minutes (for both April 2015 and May 2015), Count of Idea Sites to see
cumulative data of the same
– Comparative summary of April and May 2015 based on Site Outage
Minutes per Site per Day and the percentage improvement on the
respective sites, sorted by Clusters

13. FINDINGS …
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
700000
800000
73 107 22 11 34 36 9 53 345
Allahabad Azamgarh Gorakhpur Jhansi Kanpur Lucknow Sitapur Varanasi Grand Total
Total Site Outage (min)
Sum of Total Site Outage Min (Apr-15) Sum of Total Site Outage Min (11-May-15) Sum of Total Site Outage Min (27-May-15)

14. FINDINGS …
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
73 107 22 11 34 36 9 53 345
Allahabad Azamgarh Gorakhpur Jhansi Kanpur Lucknow Sitapur Varanasi Grand Total
Site Outage Min/Site/Day
Sum of (Apr-15) Sum of (till 11-May-15) Sum of (till 27-May-15)

15. FINDINGS …
-40
-30
-20
-10
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
73 107 22 11 34 36 9 53 345
Allahabad Azamgarh Gorakhpur Jhansi Kanpur Lucknow Sitapur Varanasi Grand Total
Improvement (%)
Sum of (till 11-May 2015)(%) Sum of (till 27-May-15)(%)

16. OUTCOMES
• Out of observed 345 sites of maximum-outages, as of updates
taken-in by 10/6/15 for the month of May 2015 – 290 were
CLOSED, 33 were WIP, 22 were OPEN – with respect to their
current status of Outages.
• By cumulative calculation of Site Outage Minutes – a
476,576.67 minutes improvement in outages (about 0.70%) till
11-May 2015 over April 2015 is observed.
• By cumulative calculation of Site Outage Minutes – a
183,175.67 minutes improvement in outages (about 0.27%) till
27-May 2015 over April 2015 is observed.

17. OUTCOMES
• By cumulative calculation of Site Outage Minutes per Site per
Day (Cluster-wise distribution) – a 17.54% improvement in
outages is observed till11-May 2015 over April 2015 is
observed.
• By cumulative calculation of Site Outage Minutes per Site per
Day (Cluster-wise distribution) – an 18.68% improvement in
outages is observed till 27-May 2015 over April 2015 is
observed.
• A verdict of Network Availability “Improvement” is passed,
in general till 27-May 2015 over April 2015 is observed.

18. Site Outages (Monthly)
Apr-15 11-May-15 27-May-15
minutes 6,83,128 2,06,551 4,99,952
hours 11,386 3,442 83,332
days`` 475 144 348
(``NOTE: The above data is the "combined outage" (minutes, hours, days) of the bucketed 345 sites from all 8 clusters of UP-East circle of Idea Cellular Ltd.)
***The average-cost of operations per-site, per-day is assumed to be near Rs. (INR) 5,500/-
***Ideal Operational Expenditure on all the sites per-day (Op_Ex/day) is assumed to be = ( 5,500*345 ) = INR. 18,97,500
Monthly Op_Ex
Apr-15 11-May-15 27-May-15 (Op_Ex/day)*days
(INR) 90,13,12,500 27,32,40,000 66,03,30,000
(intermediate) (eventual)
Savings:
Apr-15 11-May-15 27-May-15 (Apr-15) - (Monthly Op_Ex)
(INR) 62,80,72,500 24,09,82,500
(intermediate) (eventual)
COST BENEFIT (Rough Estimate)

19. CONCLUSIONS & ANALYSIS
• ‘moderate reduction’ in downtime on affected sites is observed.
• Keeping the peak-outage months of network availability in perspective, an
improvement of 18.68% from April 2015 to May 2015 is acceptable and
shall allow further improvements in the forthcoming months.
• Recommendation - that the speedier the response taken on the outage
affected site in the form of notifications to the responsible entities (Site
Engineers, Site Incharges, Cluster Managers, IP Vendors’ Cluster
Managers), the more reduction in the outages is observed.

20. CONCLUSIONS …
• Since, UP-East is the second highest contributor in Revenue Market Share
(RMS)(as of Q3FY15 by TRAI) amongst all Idea Cellular Ltd. network
circles, hence, the amount of operational costs involved are comparatively
higher
• The current net worth of Idea Cellular Ltd. of about INR 22.8 thousand
crore.
• The eventual savings by cutting down outages were INR 24.09 crore
(based on Cost Benefit estimates).

21. LIMITATIONS
• The bucket of sites sorted out of the total population of UP-East circle of
Idea Cellular Ltd. was based on a combined criterion of a sampling frame,
which might not be effective in representing all the downtime-affected
sites of the circle.
• The duration of project was only 2 months, which is not very sufficient to
draw long-term inferences and conclusions
• Human errors in reporting and receiving outage details

22. LIMITATIONS …
• The data-availability of the month might not be representative
• Human-related outage reasons of Owner-issue (Access-issue) and Projects
(Under Development sites) cannot truly determine the causes of outages of
the respective sites.
• Similarly, Sector Outages affecting all the involved sites of the certain
sector don’t determine the categorically specific outage reasons.
• Due to the expansive nature of the project study, a suitable and definitive
Hypothesis Testing approach is difficult to be applied on the same.

23. THANK YOU
Presented by:
Tanay Chaudhari
BM-014277
PGDM, IMS Ghaziabad