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Capacity is exhausted at the busy hour, never at the daily mean

Before forecasting capacity, know that averaging daily or weekly traffic hides the per-cell busy-hour peak that actually triggers congestion and SLA breaches.

high confidence

Cells provisioned to daily-mean forecasts breached the 80% PRB congestion threshold on 38% of days despite mean utilization near 45%; busy-hour-anchored forecasts cut surprise breaches to under 6% of days.

Source: Capacity planning model backtest, national macro layer, 2025-H2

Traffic is bursty and diurnal. A cell can average a comfortable 45% utilization across 24 hours while spending its 19:00-22:00 busy hour pinned at 95% with users dropping. Capacity decisions made on the mean look fine and ship congestion to subscribers. The number that matters is the busy-hour load and its growth trend, not the daily or monthly average.

An agent forecasting capacity should extract the per-cell busy hour (the consistent daily peak window, identified per cell because it varies), fit growth on that series, and compare the projected busy-hour load against the congestion threshold — adding headroom for variance, not just the trend line. Report the date a cell is projected to cross threshold at busy hour, which is the actionable signal for carrier-add or densification.

Caveat: busy hour itself shifts — work-from-home moved many residential cells' peaks earlier and broadened them. Re-identify the busy hour each forecast cycle rather than caching last quarter's window.

Applies to

Capacity ForecastingCell Site LifecycleCore Provisioning & ActivationDemand ModelingNetwork Operations Exam

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