Quality Brand MBB Network in the Era of User Experience

According to GSMA statistics, the number of users who connect to mobile networks is over 7 billion in the world, which brings direct income greater than 1,000 billion dollars each year. Therefore, the mobile telecom becomes a part of social economy and human life. During the current mobile telecom, user behaviors change. With the evolution of networks and intelligent terminals, these users use phones not only to call and send short messages, but also surf the Internet, use in car navigation, use mobile accounts to make online payments, and watch videos. In these service scenarios, operators must focus more on user experience and network requirements. They need to find out the most important method to enhance user experience.

In the MBB era, user experience affects user behaviors, thereby affecting service income of telecom operators. The search volume reduces by 8 million times each day when network response delay increases by 0.4 second, according to statistics from Google. A similar report from Amazon stated that annual revenue reduces by 1.6 billion dollars if response delay on its shopping website increases by 1 second. About 64% of global users consider network quality as the most important factor when choosing telecom operators and 48% of global users turn to other telecom operators who can provide better network coverage, according to a surv ey from Yankee. To enhance user experience, operators need to ensure that: 

> Users can connect to services anytime and anywhere. 

> Voice quality is clear. 

> Video playing is smooth. 

> Applications are agile. 

> Problems can be quickly solved.

Mainstream telecom operators have realized the importance of improving user experience. In Huawei global user conference in 2014, 89% operators think that their core task is to provide high-quality user experience. About 96% operators think that the key pain points of users can be removed by improving network coverage and service rates.

The quality brand mobile broadband (MBB) network is the best solution to meet the challenges brought by service diversity and users’ high requirements on service experience. They hope that quality brand MBB network features the leading brand, high efficiency, high performance, experience-oriented operation and maintenance, and smooth evolution.

Test ranking influences brand recognition.

Operators in different countries face different competitors and therefore have different goals on the quality brand MBB network. How do operators determine whether their networks are quality brand MBB networks? By reputation, social media, or institution test ranking?

Institution test ranking is the most commonly method to identify a quality brand MBB network. The Ranking test can be initiated by well-known third-party institutions, such as P3 test in Europe, smartphone test software SpeedTest, or local telecom management organizations and operators. Test results and ranking are released by European public media, which will influence the loyalty of end users for current networks. Therefore, these tests are big events for local telecom operators.

Some leading telecom operators in the US and Europe are concerned about the Benchmark test. Operators intentionally freeze their networks during the test an d the test is just like a contest among operators. After the test, if ranking at the top, an operator publicizes the result on its website and sends short messages to inform its users of the result. This indicates that operators not only concern the ranking result, but also pay more attention to the brand effect behind the rank. Building a top-ranking quality brand MBB network becomes a part of brand strategy for operators, helping them maintain and improve user loyalty, especially of high-end users.

Precise network planning and optimization in large-traffic scenarios.

Operators worldwide have deployed different telecom networks. However, many of them consider network coverage and rate as the first place in their quality brand MBB network strategies during mobile network deployment. The only difference is that they plan different network coverage and rates in specific services. In most African countries, mainstream users are still 2G subscribers (accounting for 86%), and the coverage of high-quality voice and short message services is the focus for local operators. In the US and Europe where data services develop rapidly, mainstream users are 3G and 4G subscribers (accounting for 50%). Operators, such as VDF, TDC, and EE, are experiencing network modernization and smooth evolution to LTE. Faced with multiple-network standards and multiple bands, they plan to use multi-network coordination and re-farming services to quickly and effectively achieve smooth network evolution. LTE is being deployed in China currently. Operators there effectively ensure investments by multi-network coordination. They use CSFB or VoLTE to ensure the high quality of voice services and data services. Meantime, they use smart policies to diversify users’ application experience, thereby increasing operation income.

As user behaviors and service goals change, large traffic flood affects network performance. 4G service traffic increases by 79% in Q2 of 2014 compared with that in Q1 of 20 14, showed the statistics from 30 typical sites worldwide. Video services account for 40% in the global mobile bandwidth data services and become an important counter for operators to measure network capabilities. For high-speed data services, especially HD video services, 1–3 Mbit/s data transmission speed is the common goal of quality brand MBB networks for European operators. 5-10 Mbit/s data transmission speed is favored in the US and Middle East. A key method for operators to ensure user experience is to enable users to enjoy services at a high speed anytime and anywhere. During major festival events around the world, such as the World Cup, F1, and various global political and economic summits, local or roaming users arrive at sites and cause dramatic traffic increases in regional hotspot areas, which brings great challenges to Telecom networks. For example, during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, a large number of end users were streaming live broadcasts, using mobile accounts to make online payments, sharing through online social networks, and using instant messaging software. Compared to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, data traffic consumed by each user increased 12.5 times; 1.6 million photos were uploaded on the Internet and 860 GB data was generated on average, and data traffic for instant mobile video services increased exponentially for each game. With end users’ requirements for information services being increasingly ubiquitous, operators will face more scenarios like the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Therefore, it is necessary for them to plan and prepare for the oncoming heavy data traffic.

Operators can predetermine heavy data traffic based on cell-level data analysis. Specifically, they obtain detailed cell-level data. Related to services, technologies, business, terminals, and charging, they produce a graphically visualized display to obtain periodic prediction results. Based on these results, they make an E2E plan and network development strategies, su ch as a HetNet plan, a bearer network customized plan, network modernization reconstruction, network combination, and sharing policies, to cope with big data flood. 

After the network runs for a while, a new round of network traffic status and network data is used as the input data, allowing the operators to produce the next set of large data forecast and solution. The forecast and solution can support short- and medium-term traffic forecast analysis in order to quickly adjust the network accordingly. In addition, they help operators launch services, thereby improving the service brand. Meantime, the forecast and solution can support mid- and long-term plan to schedule network technology evolution and develop strategies, increasing return on investment (ROI).

Due to uneven service distribution, operators are facing the following challenges during network deployment and evolution: 

> How do operators deploy adequate resources in different regions? 

> How do operators maximize network resource potentials when faced with different service requirements in different regions? 

> How do operators increase ROI? 

To overcome these challenges, operators need to perform geographic analysis based on data obtained from traffic, users, terminals, income, user satisfaction, and coverage, in order to precisely identify valuable hotspot areas and analyze user behaviors and ROI. This will allow them to effectively locate proper sites and maximize ROI when meeting user requirements.

During network optimization, operators monitor and evaluate network performance KPIs and service quality KPIs. Operators can perform routine optimization in key areas and perform coverage evaluation, neighboring cell optimization, interference check, and transmission layer optimization with the help of network layer-7 optimized methodology, demarcation, location, and optimization methods for service quality in an end-to-end manner, and geographic met hods. These activities enable operators to optimize overall network and service QoS. Aided by coverage and capacity goals and by iterative methods, operators introduce capacity expansion method, new feature application, RF parameter adjustment, and GUI bearer policy adjustment to implement automatic optimization of cells, thereby greatly improving optimization efficiency.

User experience management and quick response.

Shortened service delay and efficient problem solving speed are essential for a quality brand MBB network. Most common users cannot see the actual network but they definitely experience the services provided by operators. So operation and maintenance based on user experiences and customer services is paramount. The OTT is now a mainstream service offered on mobile Internet. For complaints related to OTT services, how do operators quickly identify whether an issue is caused by operators or OTT providers? How do operators effectively ensure service quality for specific OTTs (OTTs that influence operator brand and operation income)? The answers to these questions depend on whether operators can accurately analyze OTT services, actual requirements, and users’ behaviors.

Informa Telecoms & Media conducted a global survey with 115 operators, indicating that the most important challenges for operators in the next three years are improving the management of service quality and user experience. These operators can use the service operations center (SOC) as follows to implement improvements from end to end and to effectively cope with operational challenges: 

> Using the service quality evaluation function provided by the SOC, operators can observe network weak-points and evolution trends allowing them to evaluate network development, thereby helping marketing and sales departments in the decision making process.

> Using the user satisfaction monitoring function provided by the SOC, operators can pay special attention to VI P users allowing them to quickly respond to complaints and manage user experience, thereby improving overall user satisfaction. 

> Using the service quality monitoring, issue identification and locating functions provided the SOC, operators can better implement network planning and optimization strategies. 

Focusing on the service quality management function, operators can actively operate and maintain the service quality from end to end. Using the rapid fault location function based on the Per Service Per User (PSPU), operators can quickly locate service issues, organize departments from network, sales, and marketing to jointly resolve issues, and convert network-oriented operations to service-oriented operations, ensuring service quality and improved end user experience.

Quality brand MBB networks help operators with strategic transformation.

The increasing network traffic is mostly sourced from OTT applications. The number of social information service users worldwide is increasing rapidly, according to this year’s GSMA statistics. The top-three user numbers are WhatsApp (500 million), LINE (420 million), and WeChat (400 million). These OTT applications increase data traffic and contribute significantly to operators’ income from voice and short message services. The rapid development of OTT applications adversely affects telecom operators. They have been re-evaluating their roles in mobile value chains and are seeking a strategic transformation. No matter how they define their roles, network assurance is the foundation and so they are all required to improve network competitiveness. A quality brand MBB network provides excellent user experience to maintain user loyalty. Focusing on an improved competitive performance, operators can build their transformation capabilities in various sectors, such as business roll outs, experience creation, and multi-service marketing, realizing digital operations based on experience and value.

For example, some operators in the US, Japan, and South Korea target application innovations in the service strategy and transfer to new services and vertical applications to overcome OTT challenges. In network strategy, they achieve leading high-speed services by deploying LTE services. After building, planning, and optimizing LTE services quickly and effectively, these operators ensure a smooth evolution and first-rate performance. Moreover, they can improve their capabilities in network support and service provisioning for different types of user experiences. The Quality brand MBB network meets different requirements for various individual users, home users, and enterprise users to effectively support operators’ strategic transformation, ensuring that operators can take the lead in the market.

(Huawei will showcase its comprehensive technology capabilities and innovations at Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona, Spain. For more information, please visit: http://www.huawei.com/minisite/mwc2015/preview/en/index.html) 

Written by Zhang Sen and Yang Li