No Fast Solution For 3G Improvement

Telecommunications companies in Laos need to increase the number of towers to improve high-speed third generation (3G) internet services for customers.

According to a 3G engineering official from a telecom company, who spoke to Vientiane Times yesterday and didn’t want to be named, slow 3G internet in Laos was due to a lack of capacity, meaning there is a lack of towers to serve customers.

“It requires a large amount of money to enlarge the 3G service infrastructure and this is what some of telecom companies in Laos will be doing in the near future for faster 3G internet in Laos.

But in the meantime people are complaining that local 3G is very slow compared with neighbouring countries,” he said.

He added that many people don’t understand this, but most of the telecom companies have good plans to enlarge the capacity for their customers.

The engineering official reported that 3G or 4G systems already have high speed internet but the problem is there is not enough capacity or towers to spread the internet signal to users, with each telecom company now facing the problem of having an increasing number of internet users.

“Recently, when 3G internet users knew that telecom companies were offering high speed internet many of them would register with the company’s service and what happened then was the internet became slower due to a lack of capacity or towers. Frustrated users would then switch to another telecom company for high-speed internet,” he explained. He shared the view that the best solution to solve the problem is to invest in enlarging and developing the capacity of 3G infrastructure.

Some internet users have also complained about slow internet in Laos through social media claiming the internet system in Thailand is better than Laos even though they just upgraded to 3G recently. In comparison, Laos was an early adopter of the generational technology but many complain the internet speed is still the same.

The engineer also noted that Thai telecom infrastructure was better than Laos because they have developed it over a long period of time as they have so many telecom companies and mobile phone towers throughout the country, so when they upgraded to the 3G system it was an easier transition.

The solution to solve the problem is for telecom companies in Laos to invest in infrastructure for better 3G internet services for customers but it will take time to develop.

Source: Vientiane Times