Investigation of Telephone Traffic Demands in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the growth of telephone traffic demands in the various parts of Saudi Arabia, as this would be useful for planning the future expansion of the Saudi telephone network. The paper describes a mathematical model that can be used for this purpose. The model considers both the traffic generated by the network subscribers, and offered at the local exchange level, and the incoming international traffic placed on the network at the international exchange level. The traffic generated by the network subscribers is viewed as intra-traffic, and local level outgoing traffic. Busy-hour and total traffic have been given in Erlang, and considered for an average day. For forecasting the future traffic growth, the subscriber behaviour has been considered, together with a previously developed model on the future telephone access development required to achieve satisfactory level of access. The method used in the practical applicaiton of the model to Saudi Arabia has been described; it includes: information collection, evaluation, and forecasting. The results produced give values on the various traffic streams associated with an average user for an average day. The results also show the expected annual growth of traffic demands for each major region in Saudi Arabia, considering two different future development scenarios, together with three different target dates of achieving satisfactory telephone access level in the country.