Press News

Budapest, April 1, 2008

Three Magyar Telekom employees have developed a software system unique in the world which has earned them the special praise of the Hungarian Innovation Fund. The GSA system they dubbed “Geisha” gives alert signals if anything goes wrong in the mobile system.

Magyar Telekom continuously develops its mobile network in order to increase coverage and provide faster data communication. The concomitant rise in the number of cells, the introduction of new technologies (GPRS, UMTS) also carry more possibilities for failure. Earlier, the fault data were processed manually, technicians analyzed charts to identify breakdowns. But the complexity of the network, the determination to improve response time and the fact that the huge mass of data was becoming impossible to process manually, motivated the development of the GSA (Geisha) system. The very first version of the system was developed in 2001, and it has grown smarter with the expansion of the network. Last year it reached the level of development where it can cover the entire network.

The new system processes data in quarter hourly periods and sends an alert to the center before the failure actually occurs. The alert notice is thus received by the network tuners in email, sms, or through the network monitoring panel within 1-1.5 hours of the occurrence of the fault. With the new system very fine defects can be sensed, not only the failure of a cell but also if a station is overloaded with traffic. The Geisha also takes into account the historic data of the cells because it stores data back for thirty days and calculates an average on that basis, so as to reduce the number of false alerts. The software system is cost-efficient: it takes off workload from the network monitoring employees, processes a huge mass of data within a short time, does not issue unnecessary alerts and detects every latent error.