A French mobile operator expands and optimises its data network with EQual ONE to answer of customer's demand on high speed data services...

Key results

• Proven solution: Value from 24 hours after OTA deployment
• Operators become aware of network coverage weaknesses perceived by real customers, KPI status and configured alarms according to severity
• Increase Customer Satisfaction
• SLA or KPI\KQI degradation notifications
• Reduce cost for coverage survey or coverage drive testing
• One solution across any network bearers from 2G, 3G to LTE & WiFi
• Ensure sustained QoS for Voice, High Speed Internet and 3G Data Services.

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OVERVIEW

• Does the throughput performance of a specific device change over time within the mobile network coverage?
• How to monitor constantly the mobile data network coverage of other mobile telecom players in my country?

BACKGROUND

The success of data services, with data traffic increasing by as much as 400% per year, presents many challenges to the mobile operators:

• Engineers must understand, analyse and solve problems arising from Mobile data network congestion, inadequate radio resources, IP mobility and data network abuse.


• Constantly expand and optimise their data network to answer of customer's demand on high speed data services.


• Keep an eye on competition network coverage and their quality service (QoS), for being able to better position their data services offers and increase subscribers loyalty.


• Proactively monitor SLAs and react quickly to rectify problems that degrade Quality of Service and customer experience.


• Improve a customer centric approach by getting a real subscriber satisfaction insights about network coverage & performance, directly from a commercial device.

CHALLENGES

A French Mobile Operator performed manual tests to benchmark the QoS on its 3G network without any customer opinion insights. The customers’ perceptions are a key item for network quality optimisation acceptance to guarantee the best services and experiences expected from a 3G network for new and loyal subscribers.

As the results of those manual tests were not accurate and reliable from a customer's perspective, this operator decided to find quickly a solution to automate these quality of service tests and customer experience feedbacks, in order to be more efficient and to get relevant statistics to improve and increase their data network services.

The main goal of this operator was to make sure that its 3G network was reliable and strong in terms of quality against competition. Thus, in the meantime, the operator aims to benefit of a non-stop competition data network benchmark.

The technical department decided to focus on the customer experience and to use commercial Smartphones to check the coverage and monitor the QoE and QoS on their 3G network, and also from competitors. They have selected V3D solution: EQual ONE.

SOLUTION

V3D has offered to deploy EQual ONE software solution suite on many commercial handsets of engineers, sales people on operator shops.

EQual ONE Device Quality Agent (DQA) has been provisioned within less than 24 hours through OTA to the selected Smartphones (Google Android & Nokia Symbian). From the server side, the Monitoring Modeler and Campaign manager gave an intuitive graphical interface to create and deploy multiple services scenario on remote DQA. Performance and coverage test scenarios were running in background of each smartphones and the DQA was collecting relevant KPI/KQI of every single voice/data/messaging session. All KPIs were instantly sent to the EQual ONE carrier-grade platform through the HTTP gateway.

All network performance key performance indicators (KPIs) have been displayed in real time within a powerful and user-friendly dashboard tool available with EQual ONE platform.

RESULTS

After one month, with more than 340 000 coverage and performance samples, from 250 Nokia Symbian and Google Android devices, the mobile operator solved to detect and analyse data throughput quality issues within its networks that are not being able to be pinpointed previously by any technical tools. In addition, by reducing manual drive testing and saving direct focus group customer research, the OPEX was drastically reduced. EQual ONE provides immediate ROI after 200 000 measure samples.

Beyond quality issues, the average data throughput correlate with real customer experience are available within a national map layer.

Network Optimisation Strategy: provide a clever network capacity timeline driven by services usage for next optimisation phase.

Moreover, the mobile operator is still using EQual ONE solution to benchmark the quality of its own network against competition… because Quality really matters now!