Page 22 - Mobile World Daily - Day 2

NETWORK EXPERIENCE | AMDOCS NETWORK SOLUTIONS
Avi Schechter, President, Amdocs Network Solutions
How good is your
network experience?
The proliferation of smart devices
coupled with the dramatically
increased demand for data services
has created an inflection point for
mobile service providers. As revenue
streams dry up in the face of
competitive threats and mobile
networks become capacity
constrained, the ability to deliver a
better quality of experience (QoE) for
the end user is a serious challenge.
In Amdocs’ annual whitepaper report
“State of RAN 2015” we analyzed more
than twenty five million voice and data
connections from more than 100,000 mobile
devices on some of the busiest networks in
the world. Based on global analysis of cities
with high smartphone penetration, the report
shows that network data traffic has increased
by 100% from this time last year.
Users are no longer satisfied with basic
voice messaging and email and have
embraced real-time imaging and data
streaming. Not only are mobile users
streaming more content from sources such as
YouTube and Facebook, they’re also
uploading more content to these same sites.
The continued growth demonstrates
subscribers’ overwhelming use of
smartphones and tablets to consume and
share content. Several interesting insights
emerge from the study, including:
• Second-screen behavior at live events can
induce a 40% spike in data demand
• Growth in indoor data demand is
outstripping outdoor data demand by 20%
• 80% of voice call drops and 50% of data
throughput issues originate in the radio
access network (RAN)
• 10% of subscribers comprise 80% of
network data usage
And from external analysis of customer
feedback it’s clear that data demand has led to
an increase in dropped calls, while the stress
placed on networks has compromised many
customers’ quality of experience. Users
PAGE 22 Tuesday 3rd March
frequently cite a lack of call coverage and a
lack of data coverage as their top frustrations. operators can become more agile and
This feedback gives a stark reminder of the
ever-increasing load carried by wireless
networks and the level to which individual
customers are negatively impacted.
As networks become increasingly complex
with 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi and Smart Cell
technologies, operators need to centralize,
optimize and exploit a unified management
interface. In an effort to rein in complexity
they have to build the foundation upon which
to gain network oversight, and correlate
customer and network intelligence to deliver
a better customer experience.
Mobile operators are starting to
automate and optimize their existing
networks and they are evolving their
networks to respond to customer demand.
As they roll out new adaptive infrastructure
and integrate mission critical billing and
operational support systems with their
network assets, operators can deliver real
value. In effect, they can shape the network
experience to meet the specific needs of
the customer and their corresponding value
to the operator. At the same time, operators
are seeking to rapidly deploy new network
services and technologies. They want to
acquire new customers, retain their existing
subscriber base and monetize new and
more profitable revenue streams. But, given
unrelenting financial pressures, operators
have to accomplish this without incurring
unnecessary capital investments or
increasing ongoing operational costs.
As a result operators are seeking vendor-
neutral network solutions that enable them to
gain insight into their customers’ network
experience. In order to succeed, operators
should consider software-driven solutions
that can help them maximize network
performance but also deliver greater cost
efficiencies. Solutions that leverage customer
insights that result in better overall QoE for
users and more efficient network resource
allocation that can help to delay CAPEX and
minimize OPEX.
Another key consideration is how
enhance their provisioning of new service
offers. Operators need to rapidly deploy
multiple technologies such as fibre, LTE,
Small Cells, and Wi-Fi. In addition they must
be able to target service to key segments
(e.g. enterprise and M2M) with solutions
that cost-effectively create and rapidly fu lfil
data services.
With the challenge of flat or declining
revenue streams, policy control that enables
quality of service for strategic data offers
such as VoLTE and video is critical. Likewise,
advanced network control capabilities can
enable intelligent offload between Wi-Fi and
cellular networks and further enhance
customer experience. But most importantly,
operators need to monetize all of this in real-
time through the integration of policy control
and online charging.
Operators have to maximize network
performance, increase the time to market for
new services and enhance monetization
potential but these efforts cannot be
considered in isolation. It is essential to take linkage to customer billing data, big data
an integrated, end-to-end approach that can
help automate and optimize the many
network functions that directly impact
operational and financial objectives, and most
importantly the resulting customer
experience. Such solutions have to be
customer-centric, based upon sophisticated
analytics and user insights gained through
billing systems. Ideally they are real time,
automatic and independent of network
equipment providers’ hardware infrastructure.
An end-to-end approach to network
enhancement needs to be tied to policy
control, billing systems, RAN performance
insight and big data analytics. It needs to be
customer-centric and able to support
emerging smartphone applications and
services such as VoLTE. It should allow for
the integration and analysis of user data such
as personalized bandwidth utilization drawn
from user profiles, application-specific
requirements and geo-location data. As well,
MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS DAILY 2015 | www.mobileworldcongress.com
“Operators need to
address the challenges in
their mobile networks in
order to deliver the highest
levels of reliability and
customer experience.”
from a network planning perspective, an end-
to-end approach can help to identify and
monetize under-utilized cells and aid in the
rollout of Wi-Fi and Small Cell technologies
to augment network capacity and bandwidth.
From an ongoing operational perspective
better decisions regarding maintenance and
network optimization can be achieved with
this approach.
Customers and their quality of experience
have now become essential aspects of the
decision-making process for operators.
Whether it be in a particular geographic
location, during a special event or related to a
specific valuable customer or group of
customers, quality of experience is a key to
success. Solutions that support a critical
analytics and OSS can help operators predict
capacity bottlenecks and prioritize traffic on
their networks. This can allow for the
proactive analysis of the network and the
rapid remediation of issues directly impacting
customer satisfaction. After all, customer-
centric network performance improvement
directly impacts the end user’s quality of
experience, helping to reduce churn and
enhance revenue potential.
The implications are clear. Operators need
to address the challenges in their mobile
networks in order to deliver the highest levels
of reliability and customer experience. They
need to manage the complexity and rapidly
deploy automated solutions that can
integrate customer, network and operational
insight to dynamically respond to network
demand and customer expectations.