Jakarta, 21 December 2021.Ahead of the long Christmas and New Year's holidays, PT XL Axiata Tbk (XL Axiata) has ensured network readiness to deal with possible traffic spikes in all services. At this year-end holiday, it is estimated that quite a lot of people will use it to travel outside the city, especially to tourist destinations in various regions. Along with this, it is estimated that there will be an increase in traffic of data and telecommunication use on the XL Axiata network.
XL Axiata Director & Chief Technology Officer, I Gede Darmayusa said, "We estimate that during the Christmas and New Year period there will be an increase in traffic of around 5 - 10% compared to normal conditions on normal days in the previous month, with the assumption that some people will start to dare take a trip for a vacation or at least go home. This means that many customers will use data services to share experiences during their vacation trips. Meanwhile, we estimate that access to video streaming services will increase along with the increasing trend of sharing video documentation either directly or through social media.”
In previous years before experiencing the Covid-19 Pandemic, during the year-end holidays where the two major holidays were existed, service traffic, especially data, always increased significantly. In the last two years, data traffic has only increased by around 3% compared to normal day traffic in the previous month, due to restrictions of community mobility related to the prevention of Covid-19 pandemic spread.
According to Gede, to ensure customers get the best service, XL Axiata has prepared a network with a capacity of 2x the normal day. The XL Axiata team has also identified cities that are prone to traffic spikes, as well as focusing on residential areas. These cities are mainly those on the main route of exodus, such as Bandung, Cirebon, Semarang, Yogyakarta to Surabaya and Malang. In addition, as well as Merak, Bandar Lampung, to Palembang are on the Java to Sumatra route.
The XL Axiata team has also prepared a diversion engineering or traffic breakdown if there is congestion in an area. Thus, the spike in traffic at a location will not cause a decrease in the services quality to the customers. In addition, data network performance will also be helped by the completion of fiberization in hundreds of cities in various regions, both in most parts of Java and outside Java.
Furthermore, other preparations include the deployment of no less than 16 units of mobile BTS (MBTS) at various location points that require support for strengthening signal quality, especially in the areas of Sumatra, Java, Bali, and Lombok. The location points in question include, among others, major transportation routes, tourist destination locations, crowd centers, to bus terminals, train stations, and airports.
"We have also prepared anticipation if at any time unexpected accidents occur, such as floods, earthquakes, and so on that are catastrophic, which have the potential to cause power failures to those BTS. Therefore, our team in the field will be on standby 24 hours during this holiday period, as well as a team that continues to monitor network conditions in all XL Axiata service areas through the services quality monitoring center of XL Axiata – Customer Experience and Service Operation Center (CE&SOC) located at the head office in Jakarta.”
Currently, XL Axiata has 57.98 million subscribers, and is strengthened by more than 153 thousand BTS including more than 69 thousand 4G BTS. XL Axiata's 4G LTE network also continues to be expanded, and currently it has reached more than 458 cities/regencies in various regions in Indonesia. XL Axiata also continues to invest in fiber networks, transmission, backhaul, network modernization, and various other network upgrades to improve stability, network capacity, and data service quality in line with the continued increase in data service traffic.
Readiness of Customer Services
Meanwhile, in order to serve customers, who need support during the long holiday period, the XL Axiata customer service team is also ready. To ensure that customers can be served optimally, XL Axiata provides around 500 customer contact service officers, either through call center services or digital care services. This customer service is on standby 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
XL Axiata has also prepared various facilities and infrastructure, either by telephone or digital services that can be done from home, including online XL Center services, Call Center services and Digital Care Maya services through the myXL and AXISnet applications as well as digital channels such as; E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Live Chat, to serve as well as provide solutions to various questions, both regarding service complaints and product information to loyal customers.
Not only that, customers can also get services, including various products at 96 XL Centers spread across various cities throughout Indonesia. In several cities, XL Center also remains open on Christmas and New Year's Day, especially those located in shopping centers or malls. In previous years, every long holiday, both Eid and the end of the year, the number of customers who contacted the call center actually decreased compared to normal days. Of the total customers who contacted the call center, the percentage of topics frequently asked by customers included 35% related to internet services, 26% about networks, the rest related to products/services, how to activate numbers and cards, XL Center locations, and others.