 | Issue: | Asia-Pacific III 2009 |
| Article no.: | 12 | |
| Topic: | User-centric data analysis and network optimisation | |
| Author: | Subhendu Mohanty | |
| Title: | Country Head, Home & Networks Mobility | |
| Organisation: | Motorola India | |
| PDF size: | 267KB |
About author
Subhendu Mohanty is the Country Head and Senior Director of Motorola India’s Home and Networks Mobility Business Unit; he is a member of Motorola’s India Country Council. Mr Mohanty has also served as Motorola’s Director of Operations for India CDMA, as Project Director of the Reliance Telecom, Pacific Bangladesh Telecom, MTNL CDMA and TATA accounts as well as Services Director. Prior to joining Motorola India, Mr Mohanty worked as the Sr. Program Manager at Motorola USA responsible for the world’s first CDMA deployment. Prior to this, Mr Mohanty was the Engineering Manager at Motorola Codex in their ATM Switch Development in Boston, USA. He also served earlier as a Principal Engineer with Aeronautical Radio, Annapolis, USA. Mr Mohanty received several awards from Motorola including the Leadership Essential Award from Motorola’s CEO. Subhendu Mohanty earned his MBA from the George Washington University and his Masters in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Texas. He has a Bachelors degree in Metallurigical Engineering, NIT, Rourkela, Orissa.
Article abstract
In India, the ARPU (average revenue per user) is among the lowest in the world and operators must tightly control their capital and operating expenses while increasing connections and quality of service. Competition for subscribers is also intense, so it absolutely vital to use leading-edge network and user-centric optimization techniques to get the best performance from existing network resources. Network Optimisation Services, based on actual subscriber usage data, can improve performance and reduce expenses sufficiently to provide a competitive edge.
Full Article
In recent years, India’s economy has turned into a major growth engine. Despite the slowdown in the western markets, India’s economy should maintain its growth, growing at a stable 8-9 per cent. According to a report by eMarketers, India should emerge as the second largest mobile market in the world, with 650 million mobile users by 2012. Informa advises that India will exceed 54 per cent mobile penetration by 2013. Unfortunately, volume doesn’t equate to ARPU (average revenue per user). Indeed, since many customers generate low margin business, service providers have to maintain tight control of their capital and operating expenses while meeting demands for both increased connections and quality of service (QoS). Although customer demand is strong, competition for new subscribers is intense. Indian service providers face network performance challenges to accommodate both accelerated growth in subscriber demand and the network demands of new applications that operators are introducing. Market dynamics makes it absolutely vital to use leading-edge network and user-centric optimization techniques to get the best performance from existing network resources. Network optimization helps expansion efforts resulting in better asset utilization, efficient launch of new services, new revenue streams, and extended customer loyalty. Today’s challenges It is imperative to address several issues to offer better quality of service to the Indian consumer. Some of the critical issues are- • spectrum crunch; • increased competition driving the need to differentiate; • regulators imposing Quality of Service (QoS) threshold levels; • operations budgets are continually shrinking; • subscriber expectations are continually rising; and • ‘Time to Performance’ is critical to success. The challenge is to deliver the best possible subscriber experience via an ever more complex network, at reduced cost in the shortest possible timeframe! Optimisation – critical business intelligence With a wireless subscriber base of 471.7 million in September 2009 (TRAI) several cities are reaching a saturation point. TRAI, India’s regulatory authority, recently released a report – Network/POIs (Point of Interconnection) congestion of the Cellular Mobile Service Providers (CMSP), which highlights that performance with respect to congestion on POIs has deteriorated while the subscriber base is steadily growing. The circles/states more affected due to POI congestion include Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Kolkata, Mumbai. The resulting competition to retain and attract subscribers has catalysed a fierce tariff battle and voice service is becoming a commodity. Service providers are responding to enhanced competition by searching for greater economies of scale, reducing operating overheads, achieving a high level of network efficiency and improving service quality. While network efficiency has improved, the industry obviously needs better performance measurement and analytics to optimise networks. Two examples – Turkcell and Zain – illustrate this point: Turkcell – network performance improved by 12.65 per cent Turkcell is the leading GSM operator in Turkey with nearly 32 million post-paid and pre-paid customers. In addition to high-quality wireless telephone services, Turkcell currently offers GPRS countrywide and EDGE in dense areas. It provides roaming with 541 operators in 193 countries. Turkcell reported FY06 net revenues of US$4.7 million and has interests in international GSM operations in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Northern Cyprus and Ukraine. Recently, because of interference from neighbouring cells, Turkcell’s frequency plan needed improvement. “Opening new GSM sites is expensive,” says Ekrem Ozorbeyli, Director, Radio Planning Department, Turkcell. “Because we were growing so rapidly, we decided first to try optimizing the network.” However, despite optimisation by various network suppliers and by Turkcell’s own team, problems still remained. Using specialized software and analysis, measurement report (MR) data was generated as subscribers used their phones. Typically this data is used by the network and then discarded, however by collecting, processing and analyzing it, every user of Turkcell’s network became part of a very large ‘drive test’ team. The telecom organization’s Network Optimisation Service helped identify and eliminate problems that were reducing Turkcell’s network availability. As a result: • call set-up success rate improved by 0.39 per cent; • disconnection improved by 12.65 per cent; • reception quality of downlink distribution improved by 9.21 per cent; and • reception quality of uplink distribution improved by 9.01 per cent. Zain achieves close to 100 per cent handover success rate – Zain is the pioneer of mobile telecommunications in the Middle East and now a major player on the African continent. Zain was looking to transform its operating model to better serve its customers and improve its operational efficiency. Further, by out-tasking key processes as needed Zain could respond more flexibly to customer demands, react quicker to market conditions using outside expertise and skills as needed, rather than constantly retraining existing staff or hiring new people. For Zain, the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) included Handover Success Rate (HSR) and Dropped Call Rate (DCR). Substantial operational improvements, implemented in four months, ensured Zain’s network was operating at peak performance. The Managed Optimization Service improved its dropped call rate by nine per cent and improved the handover success rate to close to 100 per cent. “If Zain is to continue its phenomenal rate of growth, our focus must be on ensuring that our infrastructure continues to evolve to effectively meet business and customer demand. We trust that standards-compliant infrastructure, knowledgeable resources and clear operational processes will help us meet the objectives of our 3x3x3 strategy that aims to make Zain a global player in three stages: regional, international and global, with each stage completed in three years. Managed optimization services offering gives a framework to benchmark our performance and stay current with global telecoms technology while lowering our risk,” said Mr Barrak Al Sabeeh, general manager of Zain Kuwait Analysis for optimisation A seven-step analysis provides higher measurement metrics for improved network optimization. This process includes network benchmarking, a-interface analysis, intelligent hardware cleanup, power control optimization intelligent neighbour optimization, intelligent coverage optimization and intelligent frequency planning. The network optimization must deliver business benefits such as improved coverage and capacity with minimal equipment investment, fewer dropped calls for more satisfied subscribers, cleaner RF environment for data services and a fully realized throughput and capacity benefits of higher GPRS and EDGE coding schemes. To derive business efficiencies, performance analysis and optimisation should be improved and enhanced to fulfil a range of business and technical criteria: • data collection and analysis should monitor all subscriber traffic, indoor and outdoor to realistically assess subscriber behaviour as well as geographical locations and quality of service at the subscriber device; • must be applicable to all infrastructure vendors within an operator’s network; • effectively manage and reduce the overhead costs associated with traditional tools and methodologies; • statistically relevant data must be captured quickly and accurately to support fast ‘time to performance’ changes; • detailed metrics must deliver intelligence to make informed decisions about capacity enhancements, simplify new applications and services introduction, reduce dropped calls and deliver overall network advances; and • RAN (radio access network)-sharing approach towards network resources to reduce operating costs is the way forward. It is critical that multi-vendor optimisation analysis be applied to the combined network resources. This can also be used to securely isolate and measure individual services performance on the same infrastructure. Metrics Accurate optimization requires high-level data collection covering many parameters. Here is a list of reports needed for effective network optimization analysis: Mobile Measurement Report ‘MMR’: Measurement report data are generated by subscriber handset usage in 2G systems. This provides a single ‘driverless’ multi-vendor assessment tool for the entire network and provides an advanced, cost-efficient, monitoring process. Analysis is based upon real traffic, not average or aggregated data. This provides the basis for accurate service quality analysis and reporting and highlights remedial action needed for all network types; market interest is currently focused around 2G and 3G techniques. 2G Optimisation Analysis – The analysis report for 2G optimisation solutions: • identify unused or unnecessary cell network neighbours; • identify missing neighbours that should be added to the network; • quantify overlapping coverage – occurs naturally with increasing subscriber density; • recommends antenna changes: In extreme cases, ‘intelligent’ optimisation can recommend site removal and cut operating expenditures; and • provide intelligence to base RF coverage on actual user requirements, as opposed to over-specifying the footprint needed to service a particular area. Radio Resource Control data (RRC) – The radio resource control data is mapped in 3G systems to derive an accurate analysis. 3G Performance Analysis – User-generated information enhances the measurement of UMTS networks through: • exact user metrics: Raw measurement data can be geo-coded, enabling an automated approach to optimising antenna configurations in terms of height, azimuth, beamwidth and tilts. Controlling overlapping coverage is key to increased UMTS capacity and link quality. • power performance: By collating and post-processing measurement reports, it’s possible to assess power utilisation in great detail. By using this analysis to fine-tuning base station output, the performance of factors such as network interference and subscriber battery life can be improved. • Optimising infrastructure: Call failure and troubleshooting analysis is currently difficult in UMTS systems due to limited OSS counter and drill mechanisms; the exact nature of faults can be hard to trace. Analysis of measurement reports provides a greater level of intelligence and indicates enhancements to ensure existing systems operate at utmost efficiency. • improving RF performance: With a precise record of interference caused by overlapping • coverage – Also provided by user-generated measurement reports, service providers can execute system modifications to improve optimisation and capacity planning. Knowledge is power Knowledge is power and analysis of user-generated measurement reports gives one the power to devise as end-to-end optimization management plan that can drive maximum return from existing assets, enhance operational efficiencies, create a superior user experience and smooth the introduction of new application services. It’s an important breakthrough in the quest to rebuild margins by enhancing returns from capital expenditure while reducing operating costs. Conclusion Optimising the network is essential to ensure high standards of Quality of Service for the highly demanding and ever-evolving Indian consumer. We believe that the time is now for Indian service providers to make a difference and improve network performance to experience customer loyalty.
