Has MWC 2015 forgotten something?

 

When it comes to devices, the answer to this question is an obvious yes. Whether smaller, lighter, curvier or more stylish, designs tend to be realised with their users in mind. Technology, on the other hand, could be a different matter. Here, the focus has been on operators reclaiming lost revenue through reducing total cost of ownership but, with cutbacks normally having a negative connotation, can this also benefit customers?

 

Happily, the short answer to this question is yes, leaving the more pertinent question of how? 

 

As well as increasing network efficiency, SDN makes it much easier and quicker for operators to deploy new services. Rather than waiting for the correct hardware to be ordered and shipped, operators can simply programme the network to enable the innovative and enriched services so much desired. 

 

Likewise, with many operators exploring new avenues of revenue, a multitude of new applications, with the traditional assurances that operators offer, like SLAs and security, are appearing.

 

Speaking at a presentation titled ‘Digitalized Customer Care,’ Derek Chen, PCCW-HKT Customer Care Director, highlighted some o f the things his company is doing with the help of solutions from Huawei. 

 

“Meeting our customers’ needs is very important and we have to ensure that they have the same experience on all channels,” said Chen. “Our aim is to improve our competitive position and fence off competition so that we can continue to be a leader. The way we do this is to better utilise customer services resources. Today, we have already launched 30 apps and we are continuing to develop new ones for smart living and each one lets customers leave feedback on their experience which means we are continually evolving.” 

 

Meanwhile, Christophe Coutelle, Director of Marketing Operations, Core Network, at Huawei, explained how network evolution is helping develop services for the customer at a session titled ‘Service and Control Evolution for an Inspired Experience.’

 

“The way people communicate is changing but core functions will remain and evolve,” he said. “The target architecture is that the core will become layered, distributed and sliced. Sliced is particularly important as it means that core functions will be packaged according to the needs of a specific industry, for example, a connected car’s needs are completely different to eHealth requirements. This means that services being delivered will be innovative, contextual and on-demand.”

 

Away from new services, another concern of consumers and enterprise customers is the quality of service/experience, encompassing both performance and coverage. These factors are of particular importance when providing mobile broadband, which customers want to be instantaneous. 

 

According to Lou Zhiqiang, Director of Wireless Small Cell Marketing Department at Huawei, small cell technology can achieve superio r coverage, even indoors and in dense urban areas where space is at a premium. 

 

“When users go indoors, coverage always reduces and the quality becomes poor,” he said “The problem lies in the fact that 70 percent of indoor coverage is carried by outdoor macro sites, with the wall meaning that the location often cannot be reached. How to mend this should be a number one focus of operators as customers will not stand for poor quality.”

 

Zhiqiang went on to highlight Huawei’s multi-band, multi-mode outdoor micro small cell solution, the industry’s most integrated indoor pico small cell. Based on a "One Box, One Cable" design concept, it includes a highly integrated baseband, radio frequency unit, and a transmission antenna in one box. This approach means that only one box is required to provide the same capacity and functionality of multiple boxes. The new series of small cells also supports dynamic power sharing across different modes and band, and significantly reduces expenses to increase returns on investment.

 

Meanwhile, to increase outdoor coverage, Huawei also uses small cell technology in an extremely compact design so that it can be mounted on to street furniture like lampposts and bus stops. This eliminates bottlenecks that occur in large cities with heavy footfall.

 

Just as important as coverage is the quality of the service customers receive. SDN and NFV both promise to make networks more efficient, suggesting that there could be some improvement of quality too but is there anything else that can be done? Self Organising Networks is one approach that is beginning to gain momentum. 

 

Huawei was just one solutions provider offering this technology through its SingleSON solution. And there are clearly great gains to be made with this, as Hu awei signed its largest SingleSON commercial contract with leading Philippine telecommunications company Globe Telecom and Huawei during Mobile World Congress. 

 

According to Huawei, SingleSON empowers the telco to effectively manage a more complex network and deliver on its promise of providing a superior customer experience by utilizing real-time network optimization and cross-system synergy routines. 

 

The solution was recently tested live on the Globe mobile network’s 20,000 2G, 3G and 4G cells – the largest deployment thus far for Huawei’s SingleSON. According to Globe, the performance of the solution achieved remarkable results and exceeded expectations with immediate improvement on both dropped call rates and users’ throughput. It also exhibited better sharing of radio resources between layers and technologies. Globe now plans to deploy the SingleSON solution nationwide in 2015.

 

For any consumers wondering what Mobile World Congress offers them, then, they can rest assured that any innovation is being done with them in mind. If operators and service providers continue to embrace this approach and, of course, new technologies and services, the road to a better connected world is more than likely to be a smooth one.