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How Huawei's Softswitch Successfully Sustained Peak
Traffic during the Hajj Festival

By Wang Yudan

Ramadan and Hajj are two events of significance for Muslims. During each Hajj season, three to four million Muslims from all over the world will gather in the Holy city Mecca to pray and celebrate, make calls and send short messages at the same time, such extreme traffic levels have defeated many world famous telecom equipment vendors in the past.


Holy Festivals Set High Standards for Softswitch

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the largest country in the Middle Eastern in terms of area and population, is internationally renowned not only for its rich resource of oil, but also for the Islamic holy city of Mecca which occupies a sacred place in the hearts of one billion Muslims. Ramadan and Hajj are two events of significance for Muslims. During each Hajj season, three to four million Muslims from all over the world gather in the Holy city Mecca to pray and celebrate.

On the day before Ramadan officially begin, almost all Muslims say "hello" to one another and extend the forthcoming Ramadan season's blessings by way of telephone calls and short messages. During the Ramadan season, Muslims traditionally pray five times a day and forward greetings to their family and friends by calls after that. Such ritual will last the whole month of Ramadan, and then peak traffic occurs again for celebration of the season's ending.

During the Hajj season, many thousands of Muslims spend five days walking from Mecca (Saudi Arabia) to Muzdalfah, tracing the footsteps of their prophet Muhammad for spiritual rebirth. During this whole process, every religious journey and praying is extraordinarily meaningful and sacred, thus Muslims willingly share each heavenly moment with their family and friends.

During the Ramadan and Hajj season, millions of Muslims congregate at the same place and switch off their handsets before praying, then switch them on after praying, make calls and send short messages all at the same time. The concentration of people all moving in the same direction requires a large amount of location update and handover data to cope with the extreme traffic levels which has defeated many world famous telecom equipment vendors in the past.

In order to solve the traffic congestion problems of the previous years, STC chose Huawei's Mobile Softswitch equipment to serve Mecca. When signing the contract, STC unanimously affirmed that the upcoming 2006 Hajj season would be a significant and vital test for Huawei's softswitch equipment since other three Telecom equipments vendors have yielded up to such an extreme traffic level .


Hajj Communication History Re-written by Huawei

Lessons drawn from others' mistakes can be the guide for future affairs. Communication failures in previous festivals, as well as STC's high expectations placed a great pressure on Huawei. In August 2005 onwards, Huawei and STC formed a joint task force to guarantee the availability of the network. Through conducting an explicit analysis of Saudi Arabia's telecommunication traffic in previous years, unifying the characteristics of Huawei mobile softswitch, and coordinating manageable OM system, long-distance management and centralized monitoring and so on, the joint task force proposed a customized network optimization plan.

Early in the morning on 3rd November 2005, STC announced that Huawei's softswitch equipment had passed the test of Saudi Arabia's Ramadan. The Saudi Arabia representatives of Huawei were inundated with a continuous stream of calls from customers wishing to thank Huawei and the stable performance of Huawei's mobile softswitch equipment has since been highly praised by STC.

However, the success of Ramadan only signified a new target for Huawei since customers now had even higher expectations: if Huawei's mobile softswitch sustained the peak traffic of the Hajj season, the history of hard communications for 50 years would be rewritten! The traffic type of Ramadan is similar to that of other nations' grand festivals, with the only difference being that the situation is more centralized, the traffic type of Hajj, in which millions of people move collectively around just 10 square kilometers is absolutely unique in the world.

On 8 January 2006, Mecca met the first peak traffic of Hajj season with all indices normal. Consequently, Mr. Michael Kenny, CEO of STC gave high praises for Huawei's equipment and its emergency systems.

At 21:00 10 January 2006 in Saudi Arabia, a single office clicked and created the new record level of traffic. At that time, BHCA of each subscriber reached to 3.33 as well as the traffic reached to 0.033Erls, the average utilization rate of CPU was only 52.78%, with a peak value of 76%, and all equipment was running stably.

The festival was due to reach its peak on 11 January 2006 at which point traffic was expected to fall and the tension for all involved began to ease a little.
On 12 January 2006, a massive and fatal accident occurred in Saudi Arabia causing an unusual increase in traffic. Calls in several offices reached the highest peak in Hajj of this year, with calls in some offices exceeding the whole capacity of the system. During the emergency, urgent traffic control system activated automatically, the system kept running stably and only few calls were restricted or compromised thus underlining Huawei's guarantee to the government of Saudi Arabia to ensure full network availability during any accidents or emergencies.

By January 13, 2006, the main activity of the Hajj festival was over, and large quantities of pilgrims began to leave Mecca, some going to Muzdalifa. The traffic has no longer posted any threats to a single office and the communication guarantee for the Hajj festival come to a successful close.

During the Hajj season of this year's, STC faced the extreme traffic more than 10 times the normal volume, and more than 16 times the hourly frequency, with over 3 million subscribers gathering and moving in the same direction and at the same time. Nevertheless, Huawei's softswitch system kept running smoothly and the outstanding performance and stable network guaranteed the call completion rate remained over 65%. STC highly praised the stable performance of Huawei's equipment and the working attitude of Huawei people and expressed their gratitude to Huawei for the successful event.

Huawei took the lead in introducing mobile softswitch equipment in the industry in 2003. In 2004, Huawei undertook the construction of China Mobile's softswitch transit exchange and got smoothly through the peak traffic test during the Spring Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival of 2005. The guarantee of successful communication during Hajj season is another significant milestone for the large-scale, commercial use of Huawei's softswitch equipment.

Huawei's mobile softswitch equipment has been deployed in over 60 countries and regions, serving more than 100 million subscribers. Large scale application and industry-leading solutions make Huawei a leader in the global mobile softswitch sector. Huawei's success primarily lies in the principle that it is customer-oriented and always prompt in response, which continues to enable Huawei to be recognized and appreciated by international mainstream operators. The mobile softswitch is an epitome for the rapid growth of Huawei Wireless, which will continue to keep pace with its customers, based on the innovations generated from customer requirements.