11,000 transceivers re-parented without any major outages and minimal customer impact? Sure we can.

This challenge faced Kordia’s Technology Services, Engineering Services team, headed by David Sheppard, in May 2008. The project, completed ahead of schedule, was implemented across Australia’s Vodafone GSM network.

“With national presence in every major capital city, our Switch team covered every factor from planning and design to implementation of both data fill and physical changes,” explains Sheppard.

“This continuity of knowledge and local presence helps eliminate potential risks such as database mismatches with physical equipment. It also ensures consistency, meaning a project of this size can be delivered quickly at a competitive cost with less risk.”

This work was part of the Vodafone Xelerate project. It was driven by the reduction of existing Base Station Controllers (BSC) to new Ericsson Mega BSCs and modernise its network.

The Switch team was also supported by an equally committed RF Engineering team, which also provided network performance drive tests at night to ensure any potential faults were identified before causing any customer issues.

This Kordia team is also regionally located alongside the switch team, providing both effective communication between teams and the ability to check the RF network both in the field and via Performance monitoring.

The project included planning and design as well as provisioning, pre-implementation, implementation and post-cutover activities—all delicate tasks done over a live network with minimal customer impact.  Once again, Kordia exceeded the expectations of all involved.