Quality Matters

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In just a few years, the Indian economy has advanced from one of great potential to a major growth engine. With clear positive indicators despite the slowdown in western markets, the Indian economy is expected to maintain its growth trajectory, at a stable 8-9%. According to a report by eMarketers, India is expected to emerge as the second largest mobile market in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) nations, with 650 mn mobile users by 2012. Informa advises that India will exceed 54% mobile penetration by 2013.

Unfortunately, volume doesn't equate to ARPU. Indeed, with many customers generating low margin business, service providers have to maintain tight capex and opex controls-especially in times of economic uncertainty. This must be achieved while meeting the demand-both for large number of connections and quality of service (QoS).

While customer demand is strong, competition for new subscribers is intense for service providers to remain competitive. Indian service providers face network performance challenges as they accommodate both accelerated growth in subscriber demand and new applications that are being delivered onto the network. These market dynamics make it absolutely vital for leading-edge network and user-centric optimization to drive the best performance from existing network resources. Network optimization also assists 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 for the country to address several issues in order to offer better quality of service to Indian consumers. Some of the critical issues are:-

Spectrum crunch
Increased competition driving the need to differentiate
Regulators imposing quality of service threshold levels
Operations budgets are continually being reduced
Subscriber expectations are continually rising
'Time to performance' is critical to success

Optimization
With a wireless subscriber base of 427 mn in June 2009 (released by Trai) several cities are reaching a saturation point. Trai recently released a report on network/point of interconnection (PoIs) congestion of the Cellular Mobile Service Providers (CMSPs). The report highlights that performance with respect to congestion on PoIs has deteriorated while the subscriber base is continuing a steady growth trajectory. The circles/states more affected due to this PoI congestion include Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Kolkata, and Mumbai. Service providers are responding to enhanced competition by searching for higher economies of scale, reducing operating overheads, achieving a high level of network efficiency, and, improving service quality. While there has been progress in driving network efficiencies, it is imperative for the industry to have network optimization and performance measurement to become more analytical. A few examples illustrates the point.

Case Study 1: Turkcell
Turkcell has become the leading GSM operator in Turkey with nearly 32 mn postpaid and prepaid customers. In addition to high-quality wireless telephone services, Turkcell currently offers countrywide GPRS, EDGE in dense areas, and provides roaming with 541 operators in 193 countries. Turkcell reported that in FY 2005-06 there was a net revenue of $4.7 mn and has interests in international GSM operations in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Northern Cyprus, and Ukraine.

Recently, as a result of interference and excessive effects from neighboring cells, Turkcell's frequency plan needed improvement. "Opening new GSM sites is expensive and we are hoping to use our existing network investments with greater efficiency," says Ekrem Ozorbeyli, director, radio planning department, Turkcell. "Because we were growing so rapidly, we decided first to try optimizing the network." he adds. In the last few years, Turkcell's network was optimized by other network suppliers and by Turkcell's own team. However, the problem still remained.

Data collection process was initiated using specialized software tools and analysis. A measurement report (MR) data was generated by Turkcell's network subscribers as they used their phones within the network. Typically this data is used by the network and then discarded. However, MV-IOS collects, processes, and analyzes it, turning every user of Turkcell's network into part of a large 'drive test' team.

The telecom organization's network optimization service helped the team identify and eliminate existing and potential problems that were reducing Turkcell's network availability.

Call set-up success rate improvement of 0.39%
BQ disconnection improvement of 12.65%
Rx quality downlink distribution improvement of 9.21%
Rx quality uplink distribution improvement of 9.01%

Case Study 2: Zain
Zain is the pioneer of mobile telecommunications in the Middle East and now a major player in the African continent as well. In essence, the company was looking to transform its operating model in order to better serve its customers and improve efficiencies in its operations. Further, out-tasking key processes could allow Zain to become more flexible and responsive to customer demands.

For Zain, the KPIs to be measured included handover success rate (HSR) and dropped call rate (DCR). During a four month timeframe, the telecom player was able to provide substantial improvements to ensure Zain's network was operating at peak performance. For Zain, managed optimization service improved the dropped call rate by 9% and enabled improvements in the handover success rate leading to results close to 100%.

Improved Analysis
A seven-step analysis provides higher measurement metrics for improved network optimization. This process includes network benchmarking, a-interface analysis, intelligent hardware clean-up, power control optimization, intelligent neighbor 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 optimization should be improved and enhanced to fulfill a range of business and technical criteria.

Data collection and analysis should monitor all subscriber traffic, indoor and outdoor to realistically assess subscriber behavior as well as geographical locations and quality of service at the subscriber device.

Be multi-vendor capable to be applied across 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.
RAN-sharing approach of network resources to reduce operating costs is the way forward. Hence, it's is critical for multi-vendor optimization analysis to be applied to combined network resources. This requirement can also be applied to securely isolate and measure individual services performance on the same infrastructure.

Measurement Metrics
Accurate optimization is achieved when there are higher data collections across large parameters. Here is a list of reports for effective network optimization analysis:

Mobile Measurement Report (MMR): Measurement report data is created by subscriber handsets in 2G systems. It provides a single 'driver-less' multi-vendor assessment tool for the entire network to provide a more advanced and cost-efficient monitoring process. Analysis is based upon real traffic (not average or aggregated data) supplying an independent and accurate service quality analysis with monitoring reports and remedial actions across all network types with particular market interest focused around 2G and 3G.
2G Optimization Analysis: The analysis report of a 2G optimization solutions:
Identify unused or unnecessary neighbors
Identify missing valid neighbors that should be added to the network
Quantify overlapping coverage (which naturally occurs with an increase in subscriber density)
Recommends antenna changes. In extreme cases, an 'intelligent' optimization process can indicate that a site should be removed-a clear benefit in controlling operating expenditures
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:
Exact User Metrics: Raw measurement data can be geo-coded, enabling an automated approach to optimizing 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 utilization in great detail. By using this analysis to fine-tuning base station output, the performance of factors such as network interference to subscriber battery life can be improved.
Optimizing Infrastructure: Call failure and troubleshooting analysis is currently made difficult in UMTS systems through limited OSS counter and drill mechanisms. The exact nature of faults can be hard to trace.
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 optimization and capacity planning.

Knowledge is Power
The adage-knowledge is power-certainly applies when considering the analysis capability of implementing user-generated measurement reports into an end-to-end optimization management plan. The intelligence derived can be applied to drive maximum return from existing assets, enhance operational efficiencies, create a superior user experience and smoothen the introduction of new application services.

Conclusion
Optimizing the network is essential to ensure higher standards of quality of service for the highly demanding and ever-evolving Indian consumer. We believe, the time is now for Indian service providers to make a difference and improve network performance to experience customer loyalty and stickiness.

Subhendu Mohanty
The author is the country head, home and networks mobility, Motorola India
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in