Spark

In May 2014, Spark (formerly Telecom) quietly migrated 2.2 million mobile customers from its 3G Alcatel Home Location Register (HLR) to the 4G Ericson Home Subscriber Service (HSS).

Challenge

When other international mobile companies tried to upgrade their home location register, they suffered service outages. The challenge was to ensure the same thing didn’t happen in New Zealand.

Our role

Every night after midnight over a four-week period, a dedicated band from Ericson, Spark, Alcatel and Circini quietly delivered an upgrade that passed unnoticed, migrating 2.2 million mobile customers from its 3rd Generation Alcatel Home Location Register (HLR) to the 4th Generation Ericson Home Subscriber Service (HSS). Much of this work was done at night and over the weekends by a hugely talented team which included three Circini migration specialists: Sushila Bhikha, Beth Manning and Andrew Boswell.

Results

The migration proved hugely successful, enabling 2.2 million Spark customers to access the long-term evolution mobile network technology.  

Circini Director Sudhir Motwani says, "The greatest success of any migration is when no one notices."

“Numerous networks operators have tried this migration and had problems, but not Spark and not Circini.” - Andrew Boswell, Director.