The second round of quality tests on the city's mobile network, conducted jointly by the Communications and Press Ministry's watchdog and City Hall's department of information technology, have shown improvement, a news report said Friday.
The tests were conducted on a zone between Leningradskoye Shosse and Dmitrovskoye Shosse
Officials from The Federal Mass Media Inspection Service, or Roscom, said the results showed improvement in the quality of the 2G and 3G networks of the big three carriers — MTS, MegaFon and VimpelCom — since the last test conducted in June 2013. These results were confirmed by Roscom chief Oleg Ivanov.
The test featured a new experimental measurement technique which included indicators such as voice quality. During last summer's test it was found that speech intelligibility was lacking on all three networks. Though network quality is now at normal levels for all three, they are not equal. MTS came in first, followed by MegaFon and VimpelCom.
The watchdog and city authorities began studying the quality of telecommunication services in Moscow last summer in response to Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev's criticism that the quality of the networks was poor. This was not the first time a senior government official expressed the need for quality control, in September 2012 the Communications and Press Minister Nikolai Nikiforov warned that the government was considering establishing quality standards.
The two organizations will roll out their quality tests across Moscow this year and conduct them in other major federal districts in the country, such as Kazan, said deputy chief of the inspection service Oleg Ivanov. The watchdog has developed measures aimed at improving communications quality in Moscow, he added. In particular, it will become easier to commission new base stations for cellular services.
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