Need new planning tool (using NetAct Planner)

[orangekors]

I use NetAct Planner from NSN but they have stopped support and development of it. It is basically the same product as Aircoms Asset but since I need to invest in an upgrade I wanted to know a bit about other tools for radioplanning.
There are lots of things that I currently don't like about NetAct Planner:
- It is a slow tool. Doing frequency planning takes more than an hour if you zoom to 50km and do a coverage plot, interference plot and run ILSA.
- There's no change management. If I want to rebuild a current site I have to make a copy of the site, rename it, and remember to change the names, cellids and so forth again when it goes on air.
- The syncronisation with the network does work. I always get a long list of faults that I have to edit manually.
- The 2G and 3G part of the tool have clearly been designed by different developers. This makes it confusing when you need to find some parameters.
- The recommend setup from Aircom is to have an "inservice" database and a "planning" database, but if you want to move sites between the 2 databases you either have to log out and log in or have 2 user logins (which doubles the license costs)

Feel free to share some information about other planning tools you know or help to my problems above.
If you know something about the price struckture of other tools I'd be glad to hear about them too.

[adeel]

Actually AirComm Asset is one of best in Market, Other than that you can look for TCP or some people also use Mapinfo with Mcom tool for some basic planning. MIPT is also good with Mapinfo but all of these need registration.

[banisha]

I hear Atoll is very good, but i do not know about pricing.

[Izani]

What do you think of TEMS Cell Planner?

[dekili]

It might be late to reply but Forsk Atoll or Mentum Cell Planer would be better choice. They are faster but you need to add AFP/ACP (automatic frequency/code planning) as additional modules. If you add measurements module in both, they can serve as optimization tools in some parts.
I had a chance to use Asset also and - yes, it is a good tool. But pay attention to your technical support and their willingness to reply to your requests. Usualy, non-vendor tools are better in that part, specially if you deal with multi-vendor network (as always).
Also, my expirinece is that you might need, from time to time, to have the tool on your laptop, somewhere where Internet connection is a problem. Think about the option to have one license with hard key instead of beeing network/server license. Just for such cases.
So, my advise is to go and c**** first with Forsk (Atoll), Mentum (Cell Planner), Aircom (Asset).

[jamesbond]

Hi
Does any of the friends have parameters for Attol for 1900MHz CDMA 1x, EVDO Rev. A and GSM too bot 900 and 1800.

Thanks in advance

[jeneldi]

Dear Moderator,


i am newbie can i join to this forum


thanks


"want to learn more"