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Customer Experience Assurance (CEA)A complete solution to gain detailed insights about your subscribers’ experience when using Mobile Data Services

Mobile Network Operator (MNO) technical departments traditionally focused on Service Assurance are now struggling to extract valuable information to accommodate requests from multiple business divisions, such as marketing or sales. These groups want infor-mation regarding customer behavior when using the network and more importantly, what kind of experience are they having (typically referred to as Quality of Experience)? The main problem faced by the technical teams is that the requested information can vary widely in terms of content and area selected. One example (there are many) could be to provide a report on weekly data regarding users accessing Over-The-Top (OTT) applications split by location and device type. Service Assurance departments there-fore need the right tools to quickly react to such inquiries from various business units, without any advance knowledge of the type of the data that they will be requested to collect, correlate and present. However, these tools must also satisfy the “traditional” troubleshooting and diagnostic role on the same platform in order to reduce costs. Most legacy Service Assurance tools were focused on ensuring insight into network issues, but lack the required flexibility to extract the necessary data from existing and new technologies (i.e. LTE, IMS, VoLTE...).

Benefits

uu Deliver both real-time monitoring

and historical data analytics

uu Provide customer behavioral

analytics and network performance

uu Multi-dimensional correlation of

subscribers, devices, applications

and locations

uu Customizable tool for customer

care with visibility down to a single

subscriber

uu Well-designed reporting interface

for easy ad hoc analysis

uu Powerful data discovery tool to

ensure both technical and non-

technical users can quickly and

easily generate actionable insights

uu Easily scales to manage high data

volumes

FIGURE 1. INTELLISIGHT TARGET USERS

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UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR ON YOUR MOBILE NETWORKMNOs are dealing with a lot of changes these days. The explosion of applications accessible through mobile networks and the advent of Over-the-Top (OTT) services are clearly putting pressure on the traditional service providers to differentiate them-selves, attract a loyal customer base, and most importantly, reclaim revenues that are currently flowing to the OTT providers (or to the competition). In the past, MNOs were just focused on the bandwidth made available to the mobile users: just think about the evolution of network technologies for mobile data services. They went from 2G to 4G, passing through 2.5G and 3G. The only issue was increasing bandwidth, with no real focus on the services running over it (the advertised service was simply generic Internet access). MNOs based this action on the assumption that “more bandwidth = more subscribers”. However, when OTT providers appeared, the MSPs quickly become relegated to the role of dumb pipe providers, triggering a cycle where MSPs would invest a lot of money to increase network capacity, so their subscribers could access services provided (and billed) by other entities! The only possible reaction from MNOs now is to attempt to regain ownership of the services delivered, by emphasizing what the MNOs can control, a quality experience over their network. But first they need to have a clear picture about who is accessing the network, through which devices, from where and for what reason. With this information, the provider can more effectively allocate network expansion investments and guide marketing campaigns in order to retain existing subscribers and/or attracting new ones. The reality is that business de-partments are now putting a lot of pressure on the technical departments traditionally focused on Service Assurance to now collect, correlate and report on a variety of new information.

Solution Components

uu E-XMS Probe System

– End-to-end monitoring and vis-ibility across the entire network

– In-context troubleshooting, drill down and event ladders

– Provide in-depth view with single subscriber granularity

– Hardware appliances for captur-ing live traffic up to 40 Gb/sec

– Main source of data for the CEA solution

uu IntelliSight Analytics Platform

– Real-time monitoring and data analytics

– Easy integration with existing systems both north and south-bound

– Elegant customization interface for ad hoc reporting

– Powerful data discovery tools ensure that both technical and non-technical users can quickly and efficiently generate action-able insights

FIGURE 2. EMPIRIX SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

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The Empirix solution for monitoring the customer experience is based on the IntelliSight component of the Empirix System Architecture (ESA) that combines industry-leading probe technologies with advanced data discovery and reporting to solve key business problems. From an operational perspective, this solution provides a framework for improving network management, transformation and monetization that goes beyond the traditional reporting capabilities of most protocol analysis tools on the market today. With integrated data collection and analytics, Empirix is uniquely able to provide an in-depth understanding of both customer experience and user behaviors. Used to its fullest, Empirix solutions offer a cross-functional data analytics platform providing all departments involved in Customer Experience with actionable intelligence for faster and smarter decision making as operators strive to build stronger customer relationships and grow their revenues.

FEATURESSingle Subscriber AnalyticsProvide your Network Operations Tier 1 personnel with a solution that allows fast retrieval of individual subscriber information, including an analysis of the respective service experience summarized in a “non-technical” format for further analysis by non-techni-cal staff (customer care agents). This solution is also fully integrated with the Empirix probe system to allow the network operations Tier 2 personnel to drill-down from the main dashboard to the detailed protocol analysis to enable advanced troubleshooting and diagnostics of issues that cannot be fixed by the first level of support.

Network PerformanceAggregate any set of metrics by the respective network elements to periodically report on the performance of every node being monitored (i.e. MSS, GGSN, SGSN, DNS, HLR/HSS…).

Subscriber IntelligenceThe Empirix solution enables service providers to generate numerous reports that combine both usage and quality metrics by configurable dimensions like subscribers, devices, applications and location. The integrated data discovery tool is designed to let the end-user explore the data related to the subscriber sessions. Different from traditional Business Intelligence tools, the Empirix solution does not require any IT or SQL expertise, providing the end-user with a powerful tool that can be adopted without any specific knowledge of database technology or query language. All the information is available through an easy to use web-based graphical user interface (GUI) requiring simple drag-and-drop operation. The purpose is to let non-IT experts discover the information hidden in billions of data records while also enabling them to quickly define adhoc reports. These reports can then be distributed to other team members to provide detailed insight into the performance and quality of the network, as well as the services consumed and details regarding which customers are accessing them.

FIGURE 3. CUSTOMIZABLE SINGLE SUBSCRIBER ANALYTICS

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Real-Time MonitoringThis is an optional component of the solution which is capable of analyzing thousands of events (or detail records) per second that relate to both control and user plane and generate aggregated KPI/KQIs to be compared against configurable thresholds that provide early warning of issues that can impact the quality of experience as perceived by the subscribers. It has a fully configurable service model to enable individual providers to customize their service definition regardless the underlying technology (2G, 3G or LTE). Ideally this solution would be leverage by organizations looking to transition a Network Operations Center (NOC) into a Service Operation Center (SOC).

APPLICATIONS AND USERSNetwork Operations: Tier 1 and 2 SupportInformation from the E-XMS probe system is integrated with IntelliSight’s single subscriber analytics to provide valuable information to the first level support to quickly diagnose subscriber complaints. In case of critical issues, the problem is then transferred to Tier 2 support for further investigation, like activating the multi-leg, multi-protocol feature of the E-XMS probe system leveraging drill down capabilities in IntelliSight.

Network Engineering: A Subscribers View of PerformanceRely on IntelliSight’s Network Performance feature to monitor network node key performance indicators (KPI) correlated to the activity of the subscribers that are accessing them. Quickly identify issues related to each node being monitored so support organizations can have a direct and measurable impact on the service as perceived by your subscriber.

Network Planning: Trend IdentificationDiscover how a set of performance or usage indicators change over time to understand, for example, if the traffic is increasing or decreasing in specific areas compared with the past or how the network load varies each day.

Service Quality: ReportingThe IntelliSight platform provides all the flexibility required to generate reports related to the Quality of Service and the Quality of Experience, for example, by geographic location, type of mobile device, or application. This information is required by network planning teams to prioritize investments in order to upgrade overloaded areas of the network and also to empower executives or business units to constantly monitor network Quality of Service over time.

Reporting for Marketing and Corporate SalesThe IntelliSight platform provides detailed information regarding how service provider customers are accessing the network and the service quality they are experiencing. Marketing departments and corporate sales can leverage this information to identify usage patterns, propose personalized retail offerings per subscriber segment and analyze the impact of targeted marketing campaigns.

FIGURE 4. NEAR REAL-TIME MONITORING

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Real-Time Monitoring for OSS/Service Operations CentersThe IntelliSight platform can provide real-time views of the services accessed by mobile users in order to generate alarms about any issues that impact revenue, including issues that specifically affecting high value accounts or corporate users. This allows operations teams to proactively fix problems before they impact the perceived experience and minimize revenue loss due to a lack of service availability. Create your own view of the entities you want to keep under control and constantly display their status.

KEY BENEFITSDecrease Mean-Time-To-Repair (MTTR)Single Subscriber Analytics allows non-expert, technical support staff to troubleshoot basic customer-affecting problems so they can deal with a higher percentage of tickets and deliver a better service while also reducing the overall failure Mean-Time-To-Repair (MTTR).

Proactively Enhance the Customer ExperienceThe real-time service monitoring features of IntelliSight allows network operations to immediately prioritize fixing the highest revenue-impacting issues to defer investigating problems that are less important. This has the benefit to improve the quality of the service as perceived by your customers, increase the service availability and, consequently, guarantee the revenue stream derived from having more loyal subscribers of your service.

Reduce Operational Costs and Optimize Technical ResourcesEmpirix CEA solution satisfies the requirement to reduce the operational costs and optimize the network in order to keep services up and running. For example, personnel in charge of the nodes in the core network require flexible reports about the service ac-cessibility, retain-ability and performance provided by each network entity involved in the provisioning of the mobile data services. Personnel dealing with HLR/HSS needs to ensure these nodes are properly configured to accept all the authorized users are not overloaded. The Empirix solution helps to maintain the performance of all the nodes involved in the entire service chain to the desired levels.

Improve your Knowledge for Better Business DecisionsThe Empirix CEA solution allows Mobile Operators to have a clear picture about who is visiting the network, through which devices, from where, to do what and, most importantly, with what level of quality. With such information, they can better prioritize invest-ments about network expansion and marketing campaigns to retain existing subscribers and/or attracting new ones from their competition.

Extract Valuable Information From your Network TrafficBusiness Departments are now putting a lot of pressure on the Technical Departments traditionally focused on Service Assurance (OSS, Network Operations, Quality...) to obtain every possible type of information about subscriber behaviors and experience. The Empirix CEA solution, thanks to a embedded, powerful data analytics database, provides the flexibility to extract the right information at the right time to easily fulfill such requests without knowing them in advance and without the need to involve the IT departments to design specific applications.

E-XMS PROBE SYSTEM SUPPORTED FEEDSThe list below shows the E-XMS probe system feeds supported by the CEA solution.

Packet Switch — Coreuu Gn/Gp (GTPv1 + GTP-U)uu S11 (GTPv2 + S1-U)uu S6a/S6b/S6c/S6d (DIAMETER)uu Gx/Gy/Gz (DIAMETER)

User Plane (Application Service Data Records)uu DNSuu HTTP

SA:B

R:C

EA

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