For the fifth consecutive year: Record-breaking performance for Nokia and STC

The overall network traffic increased by 25% compared to Hajj 1426. Despite this, nearly every pilgrim who attempted a call, even during the busiest times, reached his or her intended recipient.

"Hajj is one of the most important journeys in a Muslim's life, and so naturally for pilgrims it is important to be able to call relatives from the Mashaer region. Nokia is committed to implementing and managing a network system that ensures not only that pilgrims can place their calls but that they can continue their conversations without being interrupted by a dropped call," said Ali Damiri, General Manager Saudi Arabia and Levant, Networks, Nokia. "All of our data shows that we have achieved tremendous success in achieving this goal."

During the Dhul-Hijja period from December 27 to January 2nd, almost 400 million calls were made. This sensational high traffic was in made in an area covering only 5 square kilometers making the holy city of Makkah to be the only place in the world to face this challenge. Nokia's optimization team, working in close co-operation with Saudi Telecom, monitored the network 24 hours a day and managed extraordinary loads generated.

Nokia's success was supported by Nokia's state-of-the-art GSM/EDGE Base Station System features in addition to the Nokia Latest software release as well as Nokia's UMTS / 3.5G services. Nokia has developed a specifically designed radio network software which was implemented to handle this high density capacity and proved to be a success during Hajj.

Also Nokia has delievered to STC 'first of a kind solution' for the Jamarat area and ensured that pilgrims could easily and efficiently make calls anywhere in that area, which was considered to be a heavily congested area. The solution was based on a Fiber optical distiributed antenna system. This was the first time for the solution to be implemented in the Mashaer area by a telecom operator.