The boot has been on the other foot this week - a little - with Vodafone's 3G network suffering some minor congestion and maintenance issues (followed by a mobile broadband glitch today) while XT has been plain sailing 

Today, Chris Quin, head of Telecom's Gen-i services division, has again updated major clients on his company's ongoing efforts to stabilise XT.

Mr Quin said progress had been made in three main areas:

1. The deployment of the new (third) Christchurch Radio Network Controller (RNC) is now complete. As part of this programme, we have successfully migrated 200 cell sites off the original Christchurch RNC, which has shifted approximately 50% of the total southern XT mobile network load and gives us increased capacity and resilience on each RNC

2. We have deployed new software to minimise any delayed or duplicate transmission of text messages. Since the changes have been made, we have seen a rise in the rates of successful transmission of text messages within world class best practice standards.

3. We have continued the migration of cell sites from our existing Auckland RNC to our new (fourth) Auckland RNC. We expect the migration of cell sites to be completed late March, which will shift 50% of the current load off the existing Auckland RNC. All four RNCs will be rebalanced by mid April.

With the upgrades complete, Telecom will have four RNCs to Vodafone's six - RNCs being hulking pieces of hardware that control the flow of voice, txt and data around a mobile network in any given area. Read more on the great RNC debate here.

Mini outages
Mr Quin said the ongoing upgrades do result "in some short planned outages on the XT network, which are mostly scheduled for very early morning or late in the evening, and we have been directly communicating with affected clients each time. The programmes of work are also being communicated via regional newspapers and radio in the relevant areas."