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Phone and Internet subscriber base is burgeoning day by day, thanks to the cut-throat competition among cell phone service providers and Internet service providers. India has become the second country after China to cross the 500 mn subscribers mark. With the addition of 15.23 mn new wireless and wireline subscribers in September 2009, India touched 509 mn subscribers (mobile subscription 471.7 mn, wireline 37.3 mn). By December, the industry achieved yet another milestone of 500 mn subscribers in the mobile phone services alone, as the growth was driven by drastic tariff reduction by service providers. The ongoing year will be a challenging year for SPs and ISPs as they will be forced to focus on providing more services and improving QoS to increase ARPU. So they have no other choice but to upgrade or expand network infrastructure, and to increase their spend on T&M solutions to improve the network quality and ensure QoS to customers.

Technology Trends
The increased impact of air interface with new technologies like mobile, WiMax, LTE, etc, may move the focus from 'wireline interfaces' to 'wireless'. We start to see cases of hybrid solutions based on the concurrent presence of both monitoring systems and protocol analyzers together. Also we witness an increased velocity of definition and deployment of new UMTS releases, apart from HSPA and LTE deployments. The deployment and development of 3G and LTE has triggered the application of IMA, carrier Ethernet technology, and the emerging IEEE-1588 and synchronous Ethernet technology in mobile backhaul. Large scale deployments of communication technologies now require large scale emulation. More sophisticated service provider networks require advanced, economical monitoring solutions.

IPTV deployments are becoming feature-rich to compete with each other. T&M tools are needed to emulate these features. There has been a huge shift to IP based traffic in the telecom industry. Unlike voice, IP based traffic is more easily measurable in terms of QoS, and the focus of operators is turning more towards effective delivery of data applications that support business-critical enterprise applications. Voice too is becoming more IP enabled. All these trends are causing the telecom industry to focus more on end user experience, and therefore on T&M technologies that help instrument the network from the end user experience management perspective. Sophisticated application delivery controllers require more QoS/QoE sensitive traffic.

The evolution in data center Ethernet (DCE) creates more new test requirements like lossless Ethernet testing, high-density 10 Gigabit testing, SAN/LAN integrated infrastructure testing, virtualization testing, green or energy efficiency testing, etc. There are high demands for realism and higher performance in application and security testing. The industry is also witnessing a focus on the differentiation of UMTS and CDMA mobile terminal testing, and provide end to end solution.

The growth of bandwidth intensive applications such as video on demand, iSCSI, FCoE, high-performance computing, business continuity, and virtualization continue to push the limits of the current infrastructure. Thus, the need for 'life after 40' solution will increase demanding 40G/100G test solutions.

For those developing the next generation of Ethernet networks, performance, reliability and time-to-market are critical to success. A test platform that supports both new and legacy technology is essential to contain costs while accelerating development.

LTE promises higher data rates, better service quality, lower operational costs and more. The success of the early major LTE deployments is critical. The move from the existing technologies to LTE represents the wireless world's most significant evolutionary step, since the introduction of cellular services. New, complex modulation schemes (OFDMA, SC-FDMA), multi-antenna techniques (MIMO) and a new, all IP flat network architecture are all being rolled out simultaneously. The resulting increase in complexity presents major challenges when configuring and validating the performance of LTE implementations. Moreover, many operators plan to deploy LTE in newly available spectrum bands, such as 700 MHz in the US. While these bands are desirable in many ways, they also bring their own significant challenges and pitfalls.

Almost all Indian network operators are transitioning from circuit switched core to flexible, scalable and resilient core based on IP protocols. SPs are creating the LAB environment for POC testing of devices to enable this core and to deploy rigorously tested high availability solutions. So most of the carriers are planning to migrate to IMS access technology in the near future.

Highly scalable networks to support large number of phone subscribers have many challenges in meeting the QoS and QoE requirements. It is challenging to have the network that meets the QoS and QoE under all the loading conditions and any volume of network traffic. Under these conditions, self-healing optical network with extremely high grade of services are required.

Data from the network can now be turned more easily into reliable, actionable information, allowing faster resolution of performances issues and a better use of network and workforce resources. Real-time, signaling-based geo-localization of network issues is one example of what can be delivered by advanced T&M solutions.

The intelligence of the network with 3G is moving to the edge and this trend will be even more significant with LTE, requiring a critical approach to T&M strategies as opposed to former 2G network troubleshooting and optimization techniques. Experienced T&M partners will be able to guide operators and equipment vendors in making the right investments and decisions in order to maximize returns on T&M investments, both in terms of increased performance and reduced costs of operation.

Realism and QoE testing is one of the latest trends in the T&M space. Realism means real user behavior which include wide range of stateful user behavior, both benign and malicious. It also encompasses real converged traffic including line-rate, fully-emulated, stateful traffic across hundreds of ports. Apart from the above two, it also represents real network conditions.

With the evolution to intelligent content aware networks, service providers and network equipment manufacturers need to furnish tools and functions to plan, measure, monitor, and assure evolving traffic patterns, new services, and optimized application performance. This is not an easy task; it means that increasing port density or adding new protocols is necessary but clearly not sufficient for test engineers. What's required is a realistic network environment representing end-to-end complex conditions of next gen IP networks including aspects such as scalability and performance.

Traditionally, test solutions focused on a single dimension of either port density or layer 2-3 network emulation or layer 4-7 application performance. As a result, customer's initial investment was limited only to a specific test in the development cycle. As network elements and services become more sophisticated, they require testing beyond layer 2-3 considerations of throughput, latency and loss to include QoE measurements (layer 4-7).

There are solutions available with an innovative multi-core architecture that addresses port density as well as the critical aspect of realism required to ensure quality of experience (QoE) for new services helping to maximize RoI and TCO throughout the test lifecycle.

In the wireless technology arena, new demands are related to the availability of solutions that are able to cope with the increased importance and complexity of the UTRAN (3G access). Particularly, the ability to monitor and troubleshoot the IuB interface is demanded in a T&M solutions. Reliability of solutions for network optimization to reduce costs of operation and improve QoS have become the baseline of any solution.

Enterprises demand the availability of geo-localization applications that are able to map network issues and performances on the most common mapping tools for faster and more accurate resolution of network problems, and the possibility to access a pre-define library of KPIs as well as the ability to easily create customer-specific KPIs.

In the fixed technology arena, the main demand is that of running legacy and NGN test scenario with a single powerful platform, allowing to increase productivity of development teams and cut the time to market of the new core network products.

Choose Your Quality
Considering some important criteria by SPs, equipment vendors, and others to choose the right and reliable T&M solutions is essential to maintain the network quality. T&M solution by enterprises should have the ability to do true subscriber modeling. It is to match the expected usage patterns of users for voice, video, and data. The solution should be able to track and measure QoS adherence and QoE (for example, meet latency demands of voice and video traffic). Scaling beyond the capacity of the devices and network being tested is yet another important criteria to be considered. It will facilitate test admission control and QoS handling at line rate.

End users are ready to switch to a different service provider once the level of satisfaction in terms of quality, price, or both is below a certain threshold. With the increased competition and the new level of services that can be offered by new technologies, this threshold can be at a level which is dramatically lower than what was in the past. Therefore, while choosing T&M solutions, enterprises should look for those partners and those solutions which allow you to achieve the best performances and the best QoS and QoE without having to increase the cost of operations, so that both the levers (quality and price) can be under control. The right T&M partner can also grant a more comprehensive relationship, offering not only tools, but also a true pass of expertise to the workforce, reducing technology and business risks related to the roll out of new architecture or new services.

T&M focus should be on end user experience of services. While other aspects of service offerings can easily be imitated and responded by competition, it takes solid processes and tools to support such processes that deliver consistent and good end user experience of the services. To support such processes, operators should adopt concurrent proactive monitoring and reactive troubleshooting tools that enhance the processes ability to deliver consistent QoS.

C-level executives need to appreciate the opex savings that can result from an early testing. Problems found in the lab can cost 1/1000th of the cost of fixing them in the field. Early and frequent testing can bring reliable products and services to market, preventing customer churn. When choosing a T&M solution, they should consider the set of technologies that they offer today and will offer in the future, and choose a vendor with a proven track record for development and scale.

QoS is becoming just a first step towards a more comprehensive QoE approach. Equipment vendors and operators should now look for solutions not only to measure indicators of network performances and QoS from a network perspective, but also to create and measure a set of indicators that represent the true experience from an end user perspective and eventually correlate these with the network KPIs. Also, in a multi-vendor network environment, which is more and more frequent among all TLC operators around the world, a third party solution, not based on data coming from proprietary OSS feeds are the only viable and reliable solution.

Moreover, QoS and QoE can be improved with the new T&M solutions without having to increase the costs of operation. In particular, the right decision on the tools used to control and improve QoS will be able to help operators to optimize the use of their resources, delivering better performances, avoiding areas of waste and in many cases reduce the overall burden on practices and tools that are no longer accurate and useful in the new 3G environment. For example, the extensive use of drive test based tools will not be useful at all in 3G networks as the 'dynamic' behavior of the radio access in 3G cannot be addressed with the inadequate sampling model provided by DT campaigns.

One of the challenges that ISPs or SPs have in choosing T&M vendors is the choice of variety of test support in the products and the intensity of technology support in them. Considering this, operators need to take mixed approach in there measurement solutions build-up. There are groups to do the basic installation and testing and other groups to do the detail troubleshooting in the network and the testers are procured accordingly. Anticipating the need for the number of testers, training engineers to use these testers and using them to their fullest capability are some of the challenges that operators face nowadays.

There is a drive to improve the cost of operations at the top, and standardizing on a reliable vendor partner is one way where both the parties stand to gain. This is true even for test and measurement. While choosing a T&M solution or partner, enterprises need to consider the T&M vendor's focus and competency regarding commitment towards offering innovative and cost-effective solutions, and vendor's local capability regarding sales, support, repair, and calibration. Apart from these considerations, vendor's product offerings, roadmap, and warranty need to be considered. Product's interoperability and scalability are essential to be taken into account. Vendors also need to work closely with the standard bodies like WiMAX Forum, LTE and 3GPP to help enterprises at the forefront of new technologies. Scalability has become an important consideration in this area. This scalability can be at many levels and one of the scalability is on the bandwidth front. For example, the ability to test from 10 Mbps Ethernet all the way up to 10 Gbps forms an important aspect to be considered. Another level of scalability can be in terms of the number of services or the granularity per interface. Third level of scalability that needs to be kept in mind is the ability to simulate a large network.

Insure for Quality
In order to maintain the QoS and QoE, SPS, ISPs, and other telecom equipment users in India need to invest sufficiently. There is no doubt that the industry spends a huge amount of money for improving services. However, most of the time the industry ends up spending for managing uptime issues and not on improving the overall end user experience. Companies probably need to spend more than the present rate for improving the quality of services compared to a developed telecom market. In a developed telecom market, quality is the #1 focus and priority. Whereas in a growing market like India, it is the infrastructure that gets the #1 focus and priority.

Compared to developed markets, Indian manufacturers and service providers spend less money on T&M. This is due to various factors, including outsourcing of testing services. There has been no requirement to guarantee QoS, resulting in straightforward service offerings that do not stress voice and video over data. Over a period of time, companies would increase their spending for improving the QoS to foster customer satisfaction and retain customers.

Challenges
SPS, ISPs, and other telecom equipment users find some major challenges in adopting T&M solutions available in the market. Rapidly changing technology means that quality assurance departments need to learn and test new technologies. New technologies are often in flux with maturing specifications. SPs require more test ports with new, large devices as the usage of a network expands. Technologies like Carrier Ethernet and 3G/LTE are changing the dynamics of the telecom industry. More and more Internet subscribers are adopting mobile broadband and this throws up new challenges in delivering and managing these services. The networks these days are deploying a lot of technologies in the same network than a few years back. Testing these heterogeneous networks for the integration aspect is one of the major challenges in the next generation networks.

Lot of applications are sensitive to EMI/EMC issues and also many governments around the world enforce strict electromagnetic emission norms in their countries. Passing these government tests require thorough testing and measurement of electromagnetic radiation.

ITU and IEEE release standards for a lot of technologies and interfaces. While it is easier for a single vendor's products to work together, but inter-interoperability between different vendors require strict compliance to these standards. So every time a service provider inducts a new equipment into his/her network, he/she needs to test it thoroughly for compliance to these standards. Forums like MEF are standardizing the services offered by service providers and supported by vendors. These require testing capabilities for these standardized services like EPLine, EPLan and Etree.

T&M companies also need to educate customers about different offerings, and how they can help customers improve quality and increase revenue which will fuel the T&M market growth. In some cases, the migration from 2G to 3G may catch service providers unready in terms of availability of the necessary skills needed to run a completely new and different type of network and to provide a completely new and different set of services to their end users. The example is the explosion of data traffic due to the rapid success of iPhone and of the mass adoption of flat–rate mobile broadband packages. The main challenge therefore is to understand that what worked well in the past will be inadequate to solve the T&M needs; and new tools and perhaps a whole new T&M strategy needs to be deployed to win the game.

Growth Drivers
The growth of the T&M market will be driven by increased demand for protocol analysis based network optimization solutions for service providers. This will be dictated by the progressive inadequacy of drive test data because of the new radio network environment including MIMO and beamforming that cannot be analyzed by sampling campaigns, but need almost a continuous monitoring approach in order to capture the rapid variance in the network. Increased complexity of the wireless network scenario with co-existence of multiple technologies is driving the need for interoperability and inter-working tests; and thus driving the need for test and measurement solutions in the networking domain. Increased complexity in the end user services and the significant ramp-up of data traffic require innovative test solutions from vendors. Expanded wireless deployments, expanded broadband usage, more IPTV usage, and more VoIP and VVoIP applications will drive the testing solutions requirements in the Indian market.

Apart from 3G and WiMax adoption by service providers and users, rapid evolution of wireless communication standards moving to 3.5G and 4G. 3G will happen in a big way in 2010-2012 in most major markets around the world. Existing as well as new service providers would launch their 3G services once 3G spectrum auction is done for private operators. Already the state-run operator BSNL and MTNL have launched 3G services in about 760 cities in various states with a planned investment of Rs 2,700 crore for 3G services alone. 3G launches by service provider involves upgrading the existing infrastructure and deploying new technologies and new equipments. This can be for the radio networks, mobile devices, microwave backhaul, and transport technologies. So, the demand for T&M solutions catering to this market is expected to be very strong in the next couple of years.

Kannan K
kannan@cybermedia.co.in

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