02.02.2022

“Considering that the subway is one of the main transport solutions used by many residents of Bucharest, in 2021, alongside the monitoring campaign we conduct every year, we decided to also measure the mobile voice signal coverage in the underground. Thus, we updated the aisemnal.ro platform with these measurement results which show a 99% cumulated coverage with mobile voice services of the Bucharest subway network”, Mr. Cristin Popa, executive director of ANCOM, said.

In 2021, ANCOM conducted two monitoring campaigns concerning mobile voice signal coverage: one which regarded the Bucharest subway network, and the national one, which regarded the localities where significant improvements have been made in terms of voice service coverage.

The results of the two campaigns have been uploaded on the www.aisemnal.ro platform.

Map of voice signal coverage at Bucharest subway network

Measurements were made directly in the subway, on both ways of each metro line, using the mobile equipment. Given that there is no GPS signal underground, the registered values were averaged by the second and distributed between the stations.

The measurement results indicate a 99% coverage of the Bucharest subway network, taking into account the cumulated coverage offered by all the operators. In all stations there is a very good level of voice and data signal from all the operators, and upon mapping the approximately 9,600 points, the resulting measured coverage of the tunnels corresponding to the metro lines would be 90% for RDS-RCS, 88% for Orange, 87% for Vodafone and 66% for Telekom Mobile.

Campaign for checking the national coverage

“In continuation of the campaigns conducted in the past years, in 2021 we performed measurements only in those localities where the operators notified ANCOM that significant improvements have been made in terms of voice service coverage, by the installation of new sites or modernisation of the existing ones. Aisemnal.ro was updated with these new data too. For this year, we plan to enlarge the measurement area and, alongside the national measurements which comprise details on the involuntary roaming, the cumulated coverage and the metro routes of the Bucharest subway, we intend to check the signal level on the railway infrastructure”, Mr. Cristin Popa said.

The monitoring campaign was conducted between September - December 2021 only in those localities where the operators have brought significant improvements to the mobile voice service. Thus, measurements were made in 1,786 localities, with more than 10 inhabitants, covering 25,156 km of roads.

Out of the 3,562,308 points corresponding to measurements made in 2020 and represented on the aisemnal.ro map, the points associated to the squares (50x50m) where measurements were made in 2021 were removed and replaced with new measurements, thus the 2021 map displays a number of 3,581,833 points of which 383,828 points correspond to 2021 measurements.

www.aisemnal.ro

The national mobile voice coverage map – www.aisemnal.ro is the information platform which enables the users to find out the exact coverage degree and the level of 2G, 3G and 4G signal for each of the mobile operators active on the Romanian market.

Due to the annual measurements, the users can see the evolution of the mobile voice signal coverage from 2019 through 2020 and 2021, while also being able to consult the cumulated coverage with mobile communications services nationwide.

The map also includes the localities where users risk entering involuntary roaming, being identified and represented on the map 298,674 of points with a risk of involuntary roaming from among the localities located at maximum 15 km from the border.

The interested persons can watch how monitoring campaigns are conducted here.